Ruth van Reken speaks on the Impact of Growing up in a Globalized World

Two years ago I had the privilege of meeting and hearing Ruth van Reken speak at the Euro TCK conference in Germany. Ruth van Reken is co-author of the book Third Culture Kids Growing up Among Worlds. You should hear her too.

In this short video Ruth explains what third culture kids are and what cross-cultural kids are, she shares her personal story. She encourages parents who are raising kids cross-culturally to make sure that they know how to prepare their children for their transitions. It's so important to say goodbye appropriately. This TedxINSEAD talk was given in May 2015.

There are challenges for children that grow up cross culturally. The 2 main issues are:

1. Identity: Who am I? Where do I belong? Where am I from?
2. Unresolved Grief: this can be a result of all the invisible losses, called "hidden losses". With one plane ride the whole world as the child knew changes. These are the kind of losses there are: 

• loss of their world
• loss of status
• loss of lifestyle
• loss of possessions (it can be a bicycle, toys, tree houses, pets)
• loss of role models
• loss of system identity
• loss of the past that was/ or wasn't

Parents should not just tell their children how great it will be in the next country, but they should take a minute and say "I understand", it's hard to leave and say goodbye. They should validate the emotions their children feel.

Recently there was an interesting discussion on Goodreads on the topic of unresolved grief. Lois Bushong was the facilitator of the discussion. 

What can we do with the grief? Some people use journalling, music or painting. It can help to talk to a friend about it. Others talk to a therapist. If you need a therapist you could check the International Therapist Directory.

In the talk Ruth poses the following question: How can we help people to use the incredible riches of their childhood? She suggests the following:

1. Normalize the story
2. Celebrate the both/ and's (celebrate the positive and acknowledge the challenges)
3. Identify/mourn the hidden losses
4. Re-define identity (can we be international?)
5. Establish portable roots
6. Recognize marketable gifts (like language, cross-cultural adaptability)

I recently wrote a guest post on MaDonna's blog called Raising TCKs. In it I share my personal story of leaving the African nest, leaving Zimbabwe to go to university in the Netherlands. With one plane ride my whole world changed drastically.

Did you grow up cross-culturally? Did you celebrate the good things and acknowledge the challenges? Please share your story or your advice. I would love to hear from you. 

Related links:    

• 14 Ways to embrace your global identity by Tayo Rockson (HuffingtonPost)
• My 10 disadvantages of growing up cross-culturally DrieCulturen
• Meet More Third Culture Kids (uydmag.com)
• Transtioning Globally to university guestblog (DjiboutiJones)

Sharing New Third Culture Kid Links

A couple of times these past few days I thought "oh that's an interesting post that I want to share with you!" So that's what I am going to do. Here comes 5 interesting links that are worth checking out:

1. A Series called Painting Pictures: Who are Third Culture Kids. It's a series that started in May 2013 on the Djibouti Jones blog written by Rachel Pieh Jones. She has a call for submissions too. Ruth van Reken starts the series. Ruth’s and Rachel's desire, for this series, is “the normalizing of experiences and then the empowering of TCKs and ATCKs to live life to the fullest potential.” There are many good posts there already and every week new posts are being posted, so it's worth checking her website. This week there was a great post called A Whole New Self by Dr. Susannah-Joy Schuilenberg who is is a Canadian behavioural health psychologist. She has experience working with adult third culture kids (ATCKs). She gives 8 tips how to maximize the upside and minimize the downside of the TCK experience. In the comments you can find sound advice on how to find a therapist if you need one.
2. There is a new article on DenizenMag Making the Most of Your TCK Experience When Applying for a Job. As the author says: Cross-cultural and multilingual communication skills are assets in the workplace. This is so true!
3. If you need a good laugh it's time to check 31 Signs You're a Third Culture Kid.
4. What's it like when someone who has always lived in one spot falls in love with a third culture kid? This is a guest post written by James R. Mitchner's girl friend on his TCK Life blog.
5. Here's a link to a post on Irina's blog. She interviewed me on: why I started my DrieCulturen blog. How I find things to write about? What my future plans are etc. You will learn more about me than that I have shared here. Irina is from the Ukraine, she now lives in Denmark. At 19 years of age she worked in Belgium. She is not a TCK but  after she returned to the Ukraine after one year it was very difficult, she had changed a lot and she felt that her life wouldn't be the same, with some friends unfortunately she didn't have common interests anymore, but she found new ones. Actually, no matter where she is she always finds good friends, she tries to be open to people. She has just started her blog.

By DrieCulturen seen at a local hotel in Holland

If you dicovered any interesting new links on third culture kids please share them here. 

Related Posts:

• Adult third culture kids an under-tapped source of high quality expats?
• A Third Culture Kid Poem: Who Am I? by Marina Sofia
• Military Brats
• Interview with Apple Gidley   

Reporting from EuroTCK in Germany

I am very privileged to be able to attend the Euro TCK conference in Germany at the moment. I will try and share some of the information I am hearing here. I have never been in a place where there are so many people interested in third culture kids and so many workshops about all kinds of topics related to third culture kids. To my delight the main speaker is Ruth van Reken, she is the co-author together with D.Pollock of the book "Third Culture Kids, Growing Up Among Worlds".

This morning Ruth talked about Living with change. One of the things her father always said was "unpack your bags and plant your trees". So make Sure you fully start living in the new place or country you have moved to.

We heard about how we learn about culture.


1. We learn the rules as children.
2. We test the rules as adolescents.
3. We internalize and operate the rules as adults.

As we grow up we learn about culture. Our family, our community and the place we live in serve as mirrors to us. A child form's their own identity by using these mirrors. What happens when children grow up internationally in many different places and countries is that these mirrors keep changing which makes it more complicated to form the own identity.

Once you do know how a culture works it gives us a sense of belonging, identity and confidence. We know how it works!

Ruth mentioned that there are 3 different ways children react when they enter a new culture.

1. The chameleon: tries to find "same as" identity.

Ruth van Reken at Eurotck 2013

2. The screamer: tries to find a "different from" identity.
3. The wallflower: tries to find the "non-identity", to be invisible.

We had a discussion during our session and some adult third culture kids said sometimes they were a chameleon but at other times they really wanted to be different and they acted more as the "screamer".

Tomorrow Ruth van Reken is speaking about growing through change.

Related Posts:
Guestblog an Ode to Third Culture Kids by Casey
I am from ....and where are you from?
An interview with graphic design student Jessica on her third culture kid book project

International Third Culture Kid Events in 2013

It's always good to look ahead when a new year starts. Last year finished with a book giveaway here on the blog. The interesting thing was that a Dutch TCK living in Norway won the book and it turns out that our parents know each other from the time they lived in Zambia and Malawi. It's a small world after all.
I see that there are some interesting international conferences coming up. These are the ones I have come across.

1. EuroTCK 2013 25th - 29th April 2013 is a conference in Germany for all people with a heart for Third Culture Kids, whether you have TCK responsibility within your mission, organisation or church, whether you are a dorm parent, teacher, re-entry camp staffer or provide any form of TCK Care. Adult TCKs not involved with any organisation are also welcome. Guest speaker will be Ruth van Reken.
2. Nacada International Conference 2013 Enhancing Student Success: A Global Perspective 5 - 7th June 2013 in Maastricht, the Netherlands. The aim of this conference is to explore the ways in which personal tutoring, academic advising and other forms of institutional student support and guidance contribute to improving student success in higher education. More than ever before and across the globe there is a growing recognition for the crucial role institutional support such as academic advising, personal tutoring, and career services play in promoting all these aspects of student success.
3. Children Migrants & 3rd Culture Kids International Conference 2013: Roots and Routes. 7 - 9 th June 2013 in Kraków, Poland. During the conference the experiences will be analyzed of children who have spent a significant part of their childhood and/or youth in other country than their parents’ country of origin. They hope that the analysis and discussions will also result in identifying the ways of helping those, for whom migration has been a difficult or traumatic experience. There's a call for papers too they can be submitted before the 1st of March 2013.
4. Families in Global Transition 2013 22-23 rd March 2013 in Silver Spring, Maryland, USA. FIGT has, for over ten years, led the worldwide community in empowering families and those who serve them in global transition. FIGT is the premier advocate and educational resource for families, organizations and service providers. They build the global community by bringing together corporate, diplomatic, academic, the arts, military, missionary, and NGO sectors to share and develop leading edge research and concepts that address international relocation issues. The conference is all about families and third culture kids too.

Some more dates:
Transitioning to the USA this year? From 27th of July - 2nd August 2013 in Colorado, USA there is a transition seminar by Interaction International. This transition seminar is for adolescent third culture kids, if you want them not just to survive the transition but to thrive send them to a transition seminar. Research shows that the transition to the passport culture is the most difficult transition.

Global Connections in the UK have holiday camps for third culture kids in the UK in July and August 2013. There are camps for different ages (6-12 yrs, 8- 12 yrs, 13-18 yrs).

MK Focus have a missionary kids weekend from 27th - 29th September 2013 in Putten, the Netherlands.

Thanks to Sheryl 'O Bryan I can add some more information to this post. Sheryl works with third culture kids from all over the world.

In July 2013 there are 3 transition seminars for mission kids run by Barnabas International in California, Ohio and Oregon, USA.

From 3rd - 9th August 2013 there is a transition seminar in Littleton, CO, USA run by Sheryl 'O Bryan. Any third culture kid who is returning to the States or Canada to live and study is welcome to attend.    

Maybe you know of more conferences or TCK transition seminars? Please leave a comment with the details. Have you been to TCK conferences, weekends or transition seminars? What was it like? I wish there had been a transition seminar when I returned to the Netherlands but I will write about that another day.

Dealing with Third Culture Kids

Some time ago I wrote the post Counselors be curious about the upbringing of third culture kids. I received a comment from Elfie and she wrote about her experiences with therapists: Counseling a TCK. Of all the therapists she had there was not one who knew the term "third culture kids". It's sad that therapists do not know what kind of challenges we face. Luckily there are some that do know! There is an International Therapist Directory. Maybe that can help.

On the Children's Mental Health Network website I came across an interesting article The Trouble with Third Culture Kids. Here's part of what it said:

"Rebecca Grappo, an educational consultant who specializes in the placement of these children, says there are three basic things all children need:  belonging, recognition and connection.  For TCKs, these basic needs are ripped away with each move.  Powerless in the decision to relocate, their many losses are often not acknowledged even by their own parents, and the main problem is unspoken, unrecognized, shunted aside.

It looks like depression, but it’s not.  This is the face of TCK grief.

And, according to Ruth Van Reken, unresolved grief is the most urgent mental health issue facing TCKs -- the children as well as the adults they will become."

So there are many losses that third culture kids go through. There's grief. There's something that looks like depression. Maybe sometimes it is a depression. There's a good article on Denizen "Dealing with depression as a TCK student". The article includes 5 tips on how to stay mentally healthy as a TCK when you are feeling challenged.

This week I read a post by a third culture kid called Hippie in Bloom. A friend of hers who also grew up making international moves as a child wrote: “I don’t like it much. Life would’ve been much easier if I were one of those people who never left the country and didn’t care about stuff.” 

The problem is that we can not change the past, so we need to find a way to deal with it. I think that's one of the challenges that we, (adult) third culture kids have to face.

Related posts:

• New mentoring program for expat teens
• Third Culture Kids going to university
• The Most difficult transition for third culture kids
• I'm all the places in which I have left my heart

Image thanks to grietgriet at Morgue File

A Confession to make about the term Third Culture Kids

Well I have to admit that I have a confession to make. So listen all. I hope you have discovered that I am passionate about third culture kids and that I want more people to know what third culture kids are. I want you all to know why and how cross-cultural childhoods affect children and that cross-cultural childhoods do matter.

For those who are new to this DrieCulturen blog. I want to let you know that it all started on the 12th of June 2011. As I write I want to let you know that the past 24 hours people from 8 different countries have visited this blog. You came from Germany, Singapore, India and Sweden for example. The blog is just over 4 months old and people from more than 50 countries of this globe have visited here. I am so glad you came and I really hope you found what you were looking for. In Indonesian they say "Selamat Datang" meaning Welcome!

The most readers to date were from these countries. Here's my top 5:

1. the Netherlands
2. USA
3. Belgium
4. UK
5. Canada

Now the confession. When I started this blog I took the definition of third culture kids from wikipedia. Recently I discovered that experts like Ruth van Reken are not happy with this definition and actually think it is a little incorrect. This is the definition I found on wikipedia in June 2011.

Wikipedia: 
A third culture kid (TCK, 3CK) or trans-culture kid is "someone who, as a child, has spent a significant period of time in one or more culture(s) other than his or her own, thus integrating elements of those cultures and their own birth culture, into a third culture." 

To all the readers who have read the definition on my blog I want to say I am sorry that I had the wrong definition. The problem with the above definition is that it talks of integrating pieces of culture. Culture is not individualistic, it must be shared.

The correct definition is the definition used in the book "Third Culture Kids, The Experience of Growing up Among Worlds" written by David Pollock and Ruth van Reken. So please forgive me for leading you astray. I will better my ways from today.

“A Third Culture Kid (TCK) is a person who has spent a significant part of his or her developmental years outside the parents’ culture. The TCK frequently builds relationships to all of the cultures, while not having full ownership in any. Although elements from each culture may be assimilated into the TCK’s life experience, the sense of belonging is in relationship to others of similar background.”

While I am writing this blog post I have just discovered that wikipedia has recently changed the definition of a third culture kid. It is now a correct definition. In April 2011 Ruth van Reken wrote an article explaining what third culture kids really are.

Dr. Ruth Useem a sociologist from Michigan state was the first to introduce the name third culture kids in the 1950's. Originally her definition was very simple "A third culture kid is a child who accompanies a parent into another culture".

If you want to find more information about third culture kids visit TCKid.com
DenizenMagazine is an online magazine dedicated to third culture kids and written by third culture kids. It's really worth a visit.

Read my blog on: Third culture kids learning to be themselves and on cultural identity confusion and third culture kids. Well that's enough talk on definitions. I was really relieved to discover that I was a third culture kid. Relieved that there was not something wrong with me but that the feelings I experienced had to do with my cross-cultural childhood. What a relief that was, of course it does not explain everything but it gave me a good starting point from which to go forward. What are your thoughts on "third culture kids"? Are you one? How was it to discover that? Do you know one? Please share with us. Thanks.

10 voordelen van het opgroeien in het buitenland!

De volgende eigenschappen heb je (waarschijnlijk) ontwikkeld:

1. Cross culturele vaardigheden
2. Sociale vaardigheden
3. Taalkundige vaardigheden
4. Goed kunnen observeren
5. Het makkelijk kunnen aanpassen
6. Het waarderen van diversiteit
7. Een brede wereldvisie
8. Het accepteren van een andere denkwijze
9. Bruggenbouwer
10. Fundament leggen voor het zijn van een echte wereldburger

Meer informatie kan je lezen in het boek "Third Culture Kids: the experience of Growing up among worlds" van David C. Pollock and Ruth E. van Reken.

Meer lezen kan ook op de website van het Denizen online magazine. Het is een groep third culture kids (TCK's) of wel mensen die in het buitenland opgeroeid zijn die daar verhalen publiceren. Het is de moeite waard om daar eens te kijken. 

Zoals aan veel dingen zitten er ook nadelen aan: De 10 nadelen van het opgroeien in het buitenland.

Welkom op deze blog! Over mij.

Frangipani die in Malawi in onze tuin bloeide

Welkom op mijn nieuwe blog: drie culturen! Leuk dat je even komt kijken.

Ik heb deze blog zo genoemd omdat het heeft alles met Third culture kids (TCKs) te maken heeft, expat kids en kinderen die in een andere cultuur opgegroeid zijn. Ze heten ook wel eens global nomads. ATCK zijn adult (volwassen) third culture kids.

David Pollock en Ruth van Reken leggen in hun boek Third Culture Kids (the experience of growing up amongst worlds) uit wat deze kinderen en jongeren bijzonder maakt: "Het kind komt uit een bepaalde cultuur (van de ouders) terecht in een andere, tweede cultuur. Omdat het kind in ontwikkeling is en het die twee culturen probeert te integreren, creëert het zelf een derde cultuur: een mengelmoesje van die twee culturen. Daarom spreekt men van derde-cultuur-kind of Third culture kid (TCK)."

Wikipedia: 
A third culture kid (TCK, 3CK) or trans-culture kid is "someone who, as a child, has spent a significant period of time in one or more culture(s) other than his or her own, thus integrating elements of those cultures and their own birth culture, into a third culture."

Ik ben zelf in Zambia geboren en ik heb in Malawi en Zimbabwe gewoond. Ik voel een drang om mijn ervaringen met anderen te delen en zodoende is deze blog "geboren". Ik voelde mij erg Nederlands tot dat ik op mijn 19de naar Nederland kwam en er toen achter kwam dat ik helemaal niet zo Nederlands was. De ham vraag was dan ook: maar waar kom ik vandaan? Nou ja, ik herkende mijzelf in de verhalen van andere TCKs. Het heeft mij erg geholpen om meer te lezen over TCKs, ik hoop dat het jullie ook helpt.

Ik heb zowel mijn lagere school als mijn middelbare school volledig op Engelstalige scholen gedaan(deels internationale scholen). Het zou kunnen dat er wel eens Nederlandse spellingsfouten tussendoor glippen op deze blog, excuses daarvoor. Ook zal ik wel eens Engelse woorden gebruiken omdat het soms gewoon beter klinkt in het Engels, daar kan ik niks aan doen. Dat heeft te maken met mij en mijn levensverhaal. Iedereen heeft een levensverhaal. Deel het met anderen.

Alle reacties zijn welkom.