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You are here: Home Moving to Relocation Helping children avoid the pitfalls of global living

08/02/2006Helping children avoid the pitfalls of global living

Do you take country-hopping in your stride? Even if you feel the answer is yes, beware. The baggage you carry around with you could be unresolved grief and you might already be suffering from the symptoms. We investigate further.

Are you a third culture kid or TCK? Or maybe your children are TCKs in the making? Or perhaps you can call yourself a third culture adult (TCA) or ATCK (Adult TCK)?

Moving countries requires much more than simply packing boxes

Puzzled about these terms and what the 'third culture' is anyway?

These might mean coming to Spain from Britain, America or even India, then settling here and picking up something of another culture, say the Catalan way of living, if you have picked Barcelona as your base.

In presenting her book 'Third Culture Kids: The Experience of Growing Up Among Worlds',  Ruth van Reken introduced the notion of TCKs.

She found more and more people fitted at least one or more of the following groups: 'traditional' TCK, children of bi/multicultural parents, children of immigrants, children of refugees, children of minorities, children of international adoptees or 'domestic' TCKs — children who have moved around within the same country, rather than internationally.

If you recognise yourself or your children in one or more of these groups, then you are joining an increasing number of cross-cultural kids (CCKs), as Van Reken calls them, who are a reflection of a rapidly globalising world.

The third culture

Van Reken says the third culture is the interstitial culture, the shared commonalities of those living international lifestyles. The 'third culture' is interwoven with the home culture or 'first culture', which is interwoven with the experience in the host or 'second' culture.

In other words, a TCK is a person who has spent a significant part of their developmental years outside the parents' culture or cultures. The sense of belonging is in relationships to others of similar background.

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