Hey Team Tenacity! Click on the link below to answer a few questions about our awesome China Alive trip last week. Thanks for being such an amazing, hardworking and super fun group! (you were only kind of annoying once in awhile). You guys are ROCK STARS! No, literally, you rappelled and climbed really well. 🙂 Thanks for the memories Team Tenacity!!! Sticky Rice Forever!!!
As a parent of a 4 year old girl and 2 year old boy, I constantly reflect on how I deal with various situations with my children. From what they wear, to tantrums, to physically fighting with each other. “Did I handle that situation correctly? Did they learn from what they did wrong or am I encouraging this type of behavior to continue? Will what I did and what I said help them become a strong, but yet caring individual?”
We’ve all made our mistakes and regretted how we’ve handled certain situations as parents. And most of us are always searching for new ideas and tools on how help this little human being grow into someone who is thoughtful and kind. A recent article written in the New York Times by Adam Grant entitled Raising a Moral Child is an excellent read for parents and a great educational source for me as it reinforced a lot of the ways we parent at home, but also gave some new great tips on how to encourage kind, caring and compassionate behavior in our children.
In the article, Grant states only 1/4 to 1/2 of a child’s prosperity of acting in a kind, caring way is inherited leaving a lot of room for nurture to ensure a child will act with these values in mind now and in the future. Parents, you may think you’ve “ruined” your child for life, but this is far from true. There’s always time for nurturing change, no matter what the age of your child. For kindness and compassion lies within all of us.
Kids who grow up overseas away from their home country are called TCK’s (Third Culture Kids) and often have hard time associating what is “home” to them. Ruth Van Reken and co-author of Third Culture Kids, Growing up Among Worlds definition of a TCK is, “A third culture kid is a person who has spent a significant part of his or her developmental years outside their parents’ culture.” Where is a TCK’s home? Is it the country their passport is from? Is it the country they are living in now? Is it the country they have lived in the longest?
In our world today, families move away from their home country to live far more often than they did 20 years ago. These Expat (Expatriate) families have a lot to get used to when they move to a country that is foreign to them. For the children, not only do they have get accustomed to a new school and friends, but also a new culture and possibly a new way of living (ex: small town to city life). Some TCK’s are born in a what we call their “host country” and if and when they repatriate back to their home country they go through culture shock and have to learn what’s culturally normal and appropriate even though this is their home country. Even just keeping up with what’s going on culturally in their home country may be a hard thing to when you are thousands of miles away.
As a parent of two TCK’s and a teacher of TCK’s making sure they know who they are and giving them the tools to answer hard questions (to them) like, “Where are you from?” in the future is extremely important to me. Here are some great resources and articles for those expatriate families looking to help their children understand who they are and where they come from. Enjoy!
Confessions of a Third Culture Kid
TCKid: A Home for Third Culture Kids
Great books:
Third Culture Kids: Growing up Among Worlds
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Health and Happiness 