An international is someone who has spent a large part of the developmental years in another culture than the ones their parents have. Because of the time spend in different cultures these children develop a relationship to both cultures without have any sense of ownership in any of these cultures.
International facts
- 90% of them do not fit in with their peers
- 80% believe they can get along with anyone
- 45% of TCKs go to 3 universities before getting a degree
- 44% earn an undergraduate degree after the age of 22
- Common professions for TCKs are: Educators, medicine, professional positions and self-employment
- Government, big businesses or parents’ career choices is something you’ll not easily find TCKs in. Same goes for large corporations.
- 4 times more likely as non-TCKs to earn a bachelor’s
- Suicide and Depression rate is higher with TCKs than for non-TCKs
- Lack a sense of belonging
How do you know you are an International?
- “Where are you from?” is a tricky question
- You tend to have a culture shock when re-entering your “home” country
- Your friends are from different countries
- Your accent tends to change depending on the person you are talking to
- You spent a lot of time on an airplane or at the airport
- You may not look like everyone else but don’t feel like you fit in
- You don’t really know where “home” is
- Your life story contains several “then we moved…”
- Geography of the rest of the world has no secrets for you. Your “home” geography is something else entirely.
Term TCK
This stands for Third Culture Kids. In the early 50s Ruth Hill Useem, sociologist, spent a year in India with her three children. Learning how to relate to different cultures is how they first used the term. After a while they started calling the children of parents in a different culture “Third culture kids”. The reason Ruth Useem used this term is because TCKs take parts of their birth culture and some of the new culture and turn it into a ‘third culture’ very specific to each individual.
Term CCK
A Cross Cultural Kid is someone who has lived or is living in to or more cultural environments for a significant amount of time during the first 18 years of their live.
Mindfulness
Have you ever driven your car somewhere and arrived at your destination only to realize you don’t remember anything about the journey? The majority of us have.
This is a typical example of mindlessness. When your brain is on autopilot this is exactly what happens, you are no longer present in your own life. You go into a state of “wondering” which is all too easy in today’s hectic and fast paced world.
This state of “wondering” makes you unaware of the signals your body is sending you and can do a lot of harm when being ignored. Research shows that the more mindlessness we are, the more prone we are to anxiety and stress.
Multilingualism
More than half the worlds’ population speaks more than one language. This means the other half of the world is monolingual. Have you ever wondered how you and/or your children can benefit from speaking more than one language fluently and how this affects their everyday lives?
Advantages of speaking several languages fluently:
- More career prospects
- Creating opportunities for early diversity
- Improving your working memory
- Multiple cognitive benefits
Raising multilingual children might arise some questions such as:
- Is consistency a must?
- How do we go about this?
- What will my children gain from this?