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How do I prepare my 9 year old daughter for the TCK future?

tckid

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tckid

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An e-mail sent to us by a parent of a future TCK. Can you give him your advice?

“I am American and my wife is Thai. This seems to be a non-issue for my nine-year old daughter. It may never be but who knows? My wife and daughter go back to Thailand without me, every other summer, so that i do not get in the way of her being immersed in Thai language and culture. I just thought it would be a good site to hear what other Third culture (or cross culture, in my daughters case) kids have to say and deal with in different situations. I am trying the approach of mainly having here live in America for the most part and visit Thailand to let her feel or call something home. This idea of “home seems to be a repeated issue. If she gets moved around after age 14 she will have some sense of of something, whatever that may be. Who knows how things will work out.”


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December 31, 2007 | Filed Under Ask Uncle, General Forum 

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4 Responses to “How do I prepare my 9 year old daughter for the TCK future?”

  1. 1
    AlastairS
    AlastairS Says:
    December 31st, 2007 at 5:16 am

    [Warning: This comment is very weird and may not be for everyone! haha]

    I think Cynthia’s post on “Home is where the heart is” really nails it. Home is generally where kids have loved ones.

    I think the thing that made me “happy” was realizing that I defined ME, not who i was with or where I was. I mean people and places have shaped me, but I realized that I could be the same person regardless of where I was! I define myself, and as I said to Cynthia, My skin is the best place in the world. I’m very secure and confident in WHO i am, and i sorta love who i am hahaha.. So basically I’m at home EVERYWHERE, as long as I have me!… weird.. and maybe not applicable to everyone, but thats how I deal with the home issue. I take it with me, in my heart hahaha…

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  2. 2
    Ayako
    Ayako Says:
    December 31st, 2007 at 7:02 am

    This is just my personal opinion based on my own experiences but I think it’s really important for kids to know that both parents are in agreement about things.

    In this case it would be culture -especially Thai culture. I feel it’s important for dad to be in the picture here, even if it’s just eating Thai food together at the dinner table.

    There’s nothing more stabilizing for a child than to know that both parents are appreciating what she’s appreciating. So I hope you do like Thai food…a lot :)

    I also am assuming she does have a firm base camp planted in American culture. It’s just too confusing for children to have one foot in one place and the other in another. It will get increasingly confusing especially during adolescence when children become confused anyway.

    The real upside for your daughter is that she’s an American citizen (?) and my long time TCK friend and I agree that at the end of the day, Americans are the most tolerant of TCKs provided they speak American english…lol

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  3. 3
    Brice
    Brice Says:
    December 31st, 2007 at 3:50 pm

    Those are very good points, Ayako. I noticed parents raising multilingual children where the child would speak only French with his mom, and German with his dad. When they’re eating together at the table, the family would speak English.

    There’s no doubt that children will have a relationship to any cultures they interact with, especially if they come from multicultural parents.

    It won’t help the search for “identity” and they’ll go through this whole “where do I belong?” phase in the teenage years, which I think is inevitable, but it will definitely help to be surrounded by friends and family who come from different backgrounds.

    She’ll be able to identify with ‘multicultural’ American/Thai kids a lot more because no matter where she grows up, if both parents are from different cultures, she is a CCK and those issues will eventually come up.

    At least you’ll be better prepared for it!

    I highly recommend you buy the TCK book too.

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  4. 4
    Unregistered
    Tess Says:
    January 2nd, 2008 at 8:51 pm

    I would have been helped a great deal by knowing that there are lots of people like me who don’t belong clearly in any culture, and that that is a socially valid identity to have. However, this would have helped me the most during repartiation to my supposed home. If your daughter remains a cross-cultural kid as opposed to a TCK, she may never face the issues that I and evidently many others faced upon repatriation. My parents aren’t from the same country either, and we have a split-language system at home. I used to visit my mother’s country during summers without my father, much like your wife and daughter do. However, we all ate the same food at home and mixed traditions and folklore. The impact of our summer trips without my father was mostly that of showing me how helpless someone who doesn’t speak the language can be somewhere. However, if you don’t have a cross-cultural family cuisine and/or traditions, perhaps the impact will be different for your daughter. I’ve always felt stongly that we have a third culture in our family, constructed from both of my parents’ cultures (without particularly marking what came from where) and our host cultures. Having that sense of a common family culture where I absolutely, positively belong was very helpful. No matter the specific circumstances, I have to think such a unique family culture would be a great support for your daughter.

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