TCK Academy Class 2

The second class of the TCK Academy was held yesterday (evening for me, 5a.m. for some others). It featured Robin Pascoe as the guest speaker – the title of the teleconference was “Raising Global Nomads: Parenting Abroad in an On-Demand World”. Robin Pascoe is the author of several books about parenting abroad, and has a very useful and interesting site at ExpatExpert.

As a 21 (almost 22) year-old with no kids and not even considering starting a family in the next few years, I wasn’t sure that the class would be highly relevant to me. And to be honest, there were one or two parts that weren’t. But they were very few and far between, and on the whole I came away from the teleconference with a lot more knowledge than when I went into it – hopefully some of which I’ll remember if I ever get round to raising my own kids abroad.

There were other sections of the class that were relevant to me simply as a child raised abroad. One question that was asked was what age is the best to move a child? Robin’s answer was under the age of 13. Before 5, the child’s world is essentially his or her parents. As long as everything is ok with the parents, everything is ok for the child. After 13, the child’s peer group becomes critical. Moving after this age can be very distressing, and the toughest years to move are in the last two years of high school (11th and 12th grades in particular, as they begin to look forward to graduation). Whenever possible, parents should try to stay put, although unfortunately it’s often the company’s decision to move and there’s no choice. I remember, very clearly, struggling to repatriate at the age of 16 in the middle of my 11th grade school year to a passport country I had only visited twice before. On top of that, we were given a month’s notice and I had to go to a boarding school with my parents in another country. They were dealing with their own repatriation at the same time so on a number of occasions I felt very on my own – on top of the way I was torn away from my ‘home’ so abruptly, so close to graduation (in addition, I would have graduated in front of the pyramids in Cairo – 4 years later I’m still bitter that I was forced to miss that!)

Robin mentioned that when her family moved back to Canada some times, she would go and ‘brief’ her childrens’ teachers ahead of time to tell them not to draw attention to them (for example to avoid them announcing to the class “_____ has just moved back from Korea”). When I first got to this boarding school in the UK, everyone heard that I had just moved there from Egypt. Everyone was constantly asking me questions (some of the typical stupid ones like did I live in a pyramid?), and so I felt uncomfortably singled out, when all I wanted to do was do the usual TCK-chameleon thing of blending in at first to get my bearings, unnoticed by the others.

This leads to another issue that came up in the class – the articulation of experiences abroad. When I first repatriated, if people asked about me, I’d tell ‘my story’. However I’ve learned not to do that anymore. People who don’t have similar experiences don’t know how to react – in the same way that we don’t necessarily know how to react to someone who, having heard our story, says “I’ve lived here all my life”. Often TCKs – even just adults who have lived abroad – will keep quiet about their experiences, to avoid having people accuse them of making things up or bragging.

Other points that Robin touched upon included hyper-parenting/hovering, what to consider for a TCK repatriating to the passport country for university or college and the ‘benefits’ of visiting the passport country(ies). Hyper-parenting or hovering is when parents become too involved in their kids and don’t leave them sufficient independence. This is particularly common when moving to a new culture if the child doesn’t find his feet quickly – the parents sometimes want to do whatever is possible to make their child(ren) happy, and will sometimes over do it. This can result in the child being unable to fend for him/herself when entering university. As Robin pointed out, it’s not the responsability of the parents to ensure that a child is happy every second. In some situations, they just have to tough it out. When returning to the passport culture for university, there are certain things to look out for however. What can help is having family nearby (to avoid the TCK being stuck in the dorm during, when everyone else they know at university probably goes home) and choosing an institution with a certain level of internationalism. TCKs do tend to come together, and putting one in a highly mono-cultural environment can be a big shock. As for frequently returning to the passport country, it actually tends to be more detrimental than beneficial. Often it delays the integration into the new culture, prolonging the culture shock and not at all helping to resolve any issues. It is better to only return for major holidays, such as for summer.

Now it’s easy in certain circumstances as a young adult to look back on your childhood and identify aspects of it that you think your parents could have handled better than they did. But when all is said and done, parents clearly want what is best for their kids, and they will have done the best they could. On top of that, it’s all too easy to dwell on the negative points. During the class yesterday Robin made a point somewhat parallel to the one I’m trying to make. She said that often it helps the repatriation process to, as a family say at the dinner table, reminisce with your children about your time abroad. Children tend to remember when things went wrong (her example was when Dad left the passports on top of the taxi that took them to the airport), but they gloss over the parts that went more smoothly. So sure, I’m critical of a couple of things that happened in my mid to late teens, but my parents also did a hell of a lot of things right.

Simply the act of raising me as a TCK in multi-cultural environments has benefited me tremendously. They also managed to raise me with a certain amount of common sense, by which I mean that they taught me how to be independent (e.g. do laundry, cleaning etc.) despite having household help for a few years. At the same time, they were sometimes too over-protective and fell into the traps of hyper-parenting, but that was more of an exception than a rule – in general, I’ve come out of it not only being able to find my way around airports from Beijing to Bangkok, Delhi to Dallas, and of course the ubiquitous Amsterdam (how many times have I passed through Schipol now?!?), but also being able to handle money, find my way around a city even without knowing the language and easily take care of my day to day needs.

I’m going to end this post with a phrase Robin quoted from the Dalai Lama during the class:

A tree with strong roots can withstand the most violent storm, but the tree can’t grow roots just as a storm appears on the horizon.

Moral of the story: I may not have my own family yet, but if I ever do raise kids abroad, then hopefully yesterday I started growing roots for them – even if as TCKs they may not ever have roots in a ‘home’ country.

Also a big thanks to Brice and TCKID for organising this – all of us in the TCK community owe him a big thank you and, to be honest, I wish I had as much drive and energy as he has put into this!