I came across the term “TCK” while attending a parents’ workshop upon our relocation to Hong Kong for our first overseas posting. We were a young family starting to navigate a new life abroad with a very lean support group. It was quite a challenge to run a household while breastfeeding a six-month old daughter, watching over a five-year-old hyperactive boy and gracing Filipino community events in between.
Transitioning from my erstwhile role as a career woman and mother to being a full-time homemaker, I had to wrestle with many how’s. Foremost was how to raise our children in an adoptive territory while maintaining a semblance of home, the country they were born in. While I had sought advice from friends raising “dip kids” (a term for children of diplomats) and had read some literature, I felt they were not enough. I saw the need to have an anchor, research-based data and practical techniques to equip myself, as I nurture my children who were growing up in a country not our own. I attended talks and workshops, subscribed to an online newsletter and joined a group of parents who, like me, were raising TCKs or third culture kids.
The TCK phenomenon was a by-product of cross-country migrations and globalization in which children had to go where their parents go, mostly due to career moves by one or, in some cases, both parents. Dr. Ruth Hill Useem, an American anthropologist and sociologist, first came up with the term TCK in the early 1950’s to refer to “the children who accompany their parents in another society.” The late David Pollock, author of “Third Culture Kids: Growing Up Among Worlds,” defined a TCK as “a person who has spent a significant part of his or her developmental years outside their parents’ culture.”
Such is the case of my children, now in their early 20’s, who have lived in four countries, have each attended more than six different schools and have returned twice to Manila for home postings. How they thrived and sailed across as global nomads led to extraordinary encounters, such as adapting to the cultural nuances of our host countries, learning new languages, accustoming their palate to the local cuisine, traveling to interesting, if not exotic, destinations and forging friendships (mostly transiently, rarely lasting) in a multi-cultural environment. In the ideal world, their experiences look impeccable. In the real world, their lives are far from perfect.
Understanding their identity while blending in, in their new environment and establishing where home really is, are just two of many issues a TCK has to contend with. On his first week in an international pre-school in Hong Kong, my son eagerly told his teacher and friends, he’s “British-Filipino.” Perhaps, bemused by his classmates’ hyphenated nationalities and how they introduced themselves as Thai-British, Canadian-American or British-Australian and how they all spoke in a common language, my son didn’t feel any different. He coined a stamp of his own. Mortified, I wrote a note to his teacher to clarify my son is purely Filipino.
A few days after our cross posting from Hong Kong to Beijing, our daughter complained about not being able to play with kids in our new neighborhood. She couldn’t understand Mandarin, which was very frustrating for a three-year-old. Her wailing, “I want to go back home, I want to go back to Hong Kong,” pierced my heart. I was sorry she could not speak Mandarin yet and even sadder because my daughter was confused where home really is.
As we steered life overseas and very much aware that our children were gradually absorbing aspects of a new culture (which were to their advantage), we ingrained in them things that are uniquely Filipino. I read to them bilingual books on folklore, modern literature or life stories of our heroes – from Jose Rizal to Ninoy Aquino. Adobo, pritong isda, nilaga, pancit and sinigang were kitchen staples. To this day, they greet or express respect to the elderly with a “mano po” and our daughter calls her older brother Kuya.
We looked forward to national day celebrations at the embassy inasmuch as we actively participated in international day events in their school or in church. On these occasions we girls donned our baro’t saya while the boys wore their barongs. We served our most sought-after chicken adobo with rice as we proudly waved the Philippine flag during the parade of colors.
A study of TCKs reveals these unique individuals cannot change into “monocultural” persons. They will always have with them a life that’s enriched by the culture they grew up in and shared with the people they interacted with. Research also tells that being rooted and uprooted can oftentimes be painful, if not traumatic, for TCKs, especially if the move takes place at a stage when they have already established strong relationships in school or in the community. I saw this happen to my children. On one hand, I also witnessed how they tenaciously adjust every time we move.
One of the things I gathered from a talk by Dr. Ettie Zilber, an educator and author who focuses her studies on TCKs, is to bring along fixtures (e.g. a bed, a piece of furniture, a pet) that will serve as constant reminder of home anywhere a family moves. In our case, it was a rattan sofa set, a bed and a pet dog.
As our children grew up into teenage-TCKs, the idea of home has evolved.All the more now that they’re called adult-TCKs. From a place of longing for the home we had once lived in and left behind to an apartment in a new country where we are temporarily settled, home could be anywhere now. Beyond a physical place, home is when we gather as a family or with visiting relatives and friends. More tenderly now, home could also mean a reminiscence of events past, which we hold dearest to our hearts.