Welcome to another edition of Recommended Reading!

Meeting the Emotional Needs of TCKs
Lauren Wells (LinkedIn)
This post not only contains incredibly helpful advice for parents on how to meet their TCKs’ emotional needs, it also gives the best summary I’ve seen for why this is so important – especially since so many of the parents I talk to are so loving and caring and trying so hard. I could quote the whole post to you – it’s that good! Please read it – starting with this explanation on that all important why:
“The challenge that I often run into when discussing the topic of “unmet needs” with parents of TCKs is that they, most often, are wonderful parents who have done a fantastic job of meeting their children’s emotional and physical needs and therefore, they don’t think that this will be an issue. Unfortunately, I believe that this contributes to why the issue of “unmet needs” is so prevalent among TCKs. During high-stress seasons (such as transitions to and from living overseas), the children’s need for emotional support goes up while their parent’s mental and physical capacity to meet their children’s needs (and even their own!) goes down. This often results in stressed-out parents who have children with unmet emotional needs. Even the most fabulous, attentive parents can run into this challenge if it is not consciously combatted.”

Jakarta Transitions
Third Culture Thoughts
In this piece a young adult TCK muses on coming “home” to a place that both does and doesn’t feel like home. There is familiarity, and nostalgia, but also the knowledge that time has changed both person and place. I also appreciate the way different aspects of transition are parsed – not just place, and language, but changes to both work routine and social life. A great snapshot of a well-examined life in transition.
“While some areas of Jakarta have changed a lot, some haven’t too much. Even little subtle things, like phrases, body language, and mannerisms just feel good to recognise. At the same time, I’m also a different person coming back here, and the way I grew up here wasn’t exactly normal. Growing up as an expat kid means that your exposure to the culture around you is mixed and can vary a lot. When I went to the US later, people would sometimes try to figure me out and assume that 14 years should be enough to determine my sense of identity, but I knew very well that I didn’t really qualify. Today, I know that any sense of identity that isn’t a legal nationality is really just up to you, but I can definitely say that while there are ways that Indonesia feels like home, there are also ways it doesn’t.”

About the Sexual Abuse of Third Culture Kids, Resources and Way Too Many Links
Djibouti Jones
I was so pleased to see this list of resources that Rachel put together. It is so sad that a list like this is needed but, oh – is it needed! As I’ve mentored and interviewed TCKs over the past decade and more, I have heard so many stories of abuse – physical abuse, sexual abuse, spiritual abuse, emotional abuse. Too often TCKs are extra vulnerable, because they’ve been told they must behave in order to protect their parent’s work and the family’s ability to stay in their host country. Or they may be linguistically, culturally, or geographically isolated from support and resources they might have access to otherwise. This is an excellent starting place – a lot of different resources to help different people in different situation. I was also humbled to see Misunderstood given a place on such an important list.
“I’m not saying mental illness and abuse necessarily go together, but that there is a lot of brokenness and grief that isn’t often addressed well in the world of expatriates. TCKs face this in unique ways, sometimes by nature of living in the home of their abuser at boarding school, sometimes leaving a country before resolution has been found, sometimes having no safe place or safe person to tell. There are so many goodbyes, so many losses, so many fears and insecurities. There is so much vulnerability and hunger for belonging.”

The Unspoken Swiss Trust
April J. Remfrey (LinkedIn)
A lovely little article illustrating a particular cultural difference: trust. How much do you trust strangers/fellow citizens to do the right thing? A small question, it might seem, but April illustrates beautifully how differently trust can operate in different cultural settings.
“After much thought, reflection, and dinner conversations, my husband and I have decided that trust is the most noticeable difference between our home country of the United States and Switzerland. One trusts that their neighbor is going to put their garbage in the correct shared receptacle. One trusts the people walking down the street to watch out for small children on the sidewalk.”

When to live inside your comfort zone
Stephanie Johnson Consulting
This post asks questions without offering much of an answer – and I love that! It’s an invitation to sit with the tension of “comfort zones” and whether to stick in them or run away from them. There is so much advice about leaving our comfort zones – and so much to learn by doing so. And yet comfort is not an enemy in and of itself. I often feel a guilt about the comforts I cling to – and I know I’m not the only expat to feel that! But over time I’m learning the balance I require. What about you – where do you find your own balance?
“After a year of dealing with a serious medical issue and a move to a new country, I find myself wanting to claw my way back to a comfort zone in order to re-establish a sense of equilibrium. Yes, I have changed. Yes, I have grown, but I’m ready for some sameness and consistency for a while, thank you very much. I’m not advocating for a life in which you constantly say within your comfort zone. This would be hypocritical of me to say the least. But we have to remember that change and challenge need to happen at the right time and in the right way, whenever possible. A life filled with constantly living outside your comfort zone would be chaotic, anxiety producing and disruptive. We have to make sure we don’t fall for the illusion that, by constantly challenging ourselves, we will reach a state of self-actualized bliss. We can make meaning of our lives now regardless of how exciting or mundane they are.”

What Does It Mean to Be a Canadian Citizen?
The Atlantic
This piece raises a big question: what does citizenship mean? In this post the context is voting rights, and whether those living outside their country of citizenship longterm (and not paying taxes) should maintain the right to vote. What one thinks about the specifics, and the author’s particular views, are less important to me than the fact that these questions are asked and pondered. It’s something I ask a lot of the ATCKs I’m interviewing: what does their citizenship mean to them?
“What does it mean to be a citizen? Is citizenship a kind of subscription service, to be suspended and resumed as our needs change? Are countries competing service providers, their terms and conditions subject to the ebbs and flows of consumer preference? Edmund Burke long ago articulated an ambitious vision of society as a “partnership not only between those who are living, but between those who are living, those who are dead, and those who are to be born.” Does any of that still resonate? Or is it a bygone idea of a vanished age, dissolved in a globalized world?”

Mixed Up: ‘People try to guess my ethnicity – they always guess wrong’
Metro
I’m finishing this week with another post from Metro’s Mixed Up, a series looking at the highs, lows and unique experiences of being mixed-race.” There is a LOT in this post that reflects stories I’ve heard from TCKs of mixed heritage. A person with mixed heritage is another sort of Cross Cultural Kid, so there are definite overlaps worth exploring.
“For many mixed-race people their ethnic ambiguity can be the source of much scrutiny. It can become quite a burden having to spell out your heritage to people. And there is a difference between curiosity and ignorance. ‘I started to notice that pretty much every day I would have to be explaining to someone what my ethnicity was – or people would try to guess, and they would always guess wrong,’ Lara tells us. ‘The only people who ever really guess right are Asian people. But they normally assume I am Indian, they never ask if I am mixed. I get all sorts of guesses – Venezuelan, Turkish, Greek, Spanish – it annoys me. I know I do look quite ambiguous, but I don’t like the fact that there is no acknowledgement. Even the people who will say – “oh I just thought you were white” – it completely erases my real identity… In the context of race, privilege is a complex concept. It seems to be that the closer your proximity to whiteness, the more privilege you have. But when you’re mixed, where do you fit on that scale? ‘As a mixed-race person you never get your white privilege,’ argues Lara. ‘You’re always seen as “other”, so you might not identify with the non-white side of your family, but you can never be seen as white. You can never get the privileges that come with that.”