Being a TCK means...

Well, it means being a Third Culture Kid. What’s that? Traditionally, it’s when your parents are from one country, but you grow up temporarily in another country, planning to return to your parents’ country at some point. Therefore, two countries’ cultures strongly influence your childhood and identity.

But it can become much more complicated: I’ve known Cambodian children raised by adoptive American parents in Cambodia, Koreans who have lived in three or four countries but never spent more than a month in Korea, and even a friend in college whose parents were German and Filipino, but who grew up in Hong Kong, Brazil, and America.

To some extent, every one of my students is a Third Culture Kid, because a Cambodian attending an American school with international classmates sees the world differently than his or her Cambodian peers. TCKs have unique strengths and challenges. If you’re one of my students, here’s how being a TCK might affect you:

-The grandma that raised you for five years is in a coma in another country; you’re staying home alone with your cousins while your parents visit her.

-You want to tell your mom about Jesus, but even though you’ve studied Khmer in school and always speak it at home, you don’t know the formal language required to talk about God and royalty. When you try to use more everyday language, it doesn’t make sense to her.

-You know two or three other languages as well or better than your “native” language.

-You’re Cambodian and have never been to Korea, but you know how to write your friends notes in Korean.

-One of your Khmer friends suddenly starts staring at your face. “I’ve never really looked at an African nose before,” she tells you. You’re biracial American.

-You have to miss your senior trip for a “visa run” – a trip to the border to renew your visa.

-Your Filipino peers have started college this year, since they finish high school in grade 10. You’re just now returning to the Philippines, missing the last two years of school with your Logos friends, struggling to regain academic Tagalog after seven years away, and a grade behind your Filipino peers.

-You're Korean, Singaporian, or Malaysian, living in Cambodia, but you get nostalgic for the Dominican Republic, America, Pakistan, or Vietnam more often than for your "native" country.

-Your parents live in a town with no international school, so you’ve been living on your own with your siblings for years to attend Logos. When the school gives your parents an ultimatum – find you a host family or withdraw you from school – they send you to New Zealand to live with Koreans that you’ve barely met. After a year, you’re back at school again, living with a Filipino friend and his family.

-You’re considering college in three different countries, and you can’t agree with your parents on your preferred country. Their applications, expenses, and environments are all completely different. Scholarships determine everything. One year from now, you have no idea what your life will look like.

-Many of your closest friends live in other countries, some in countries you’ve never been to. 

-Spending years in Honduran public schools, surrounded by Latino classmates and friends, means your attitude toward time is diametrically opposed to the attitude of your Korean parents.

-You get – or have– to decide which culture’s definition of success you’ll judge yourself by.

-You get in trouble when you visit relatives because you keep accidentally offending them.

-Your parents are divorced, and one parent lives in a country you haven't been to in over five years.

-You feel to some extent like you belong in neither your host nor your passport country/countries, but are only truly at home among foreigners.

-You have no idea where you’ll live when you grow up.