TCKs

Despite being on holiday, I have been revising my Hebrew and doing some reading to prepare my Pastoral Studies assignment. I’m going to be writing about bringing up children in another culture, and I’m reading a book called “Third Culture Kids: The Experience of Growing Up Among Worlds”. The “third culture” in question is the non-geographically identified culture of those who have grown up between their parents’ culture and another culture in which they have lived. Children who have this kind of experience reap many benefits but can find that they end up not feeling they really belong anywhere. It’s the responsibility of their parents to give them as stable a home life as possible, in spite of moving back and forth across continents, and to help them develop into independent adults.

One thing that stood out to me was when the authors said that a problem for Third Culture Kids is that they feel they have no say in the movements of their family. I noticed this because when Marc was talking with missionaries from SIM in Bénin they said that SIM takes the children’s opinions into consideration, and a missionary family can’t go back out onto the field after Home Assignment (time back in the home country) if any of their children over 12 don’t want them to! To me that seems very healthy – I hope I’ll still be saying that in 11 years time!
Of course, the situation will be even more complicated for us because Simon won’t just have one “passport culture” but two!