TCK's

It happens so often that I read somebody's blog en think: I should have/could have written this. That happened to me this morning when I read 'Change the Tone' on  http://shamozal.blogspot.in/  and watched the video she posted. The blog entry is about children from expats, so called Third Culture Kids. My kids are TCK's and I see a lot of positives and some negatives about it.

In the video they ask the TCK's where their home is and none of them can answer it without thinking and explaining why they are not sure. Maybe it is a bit easier for my boys, since we all have the same nationality and have a house in The Netherlands. It is the place where our relatives live and where we flee to when things go wrong in our host country. But the boys have only really lived in NL for 3 years, when they were still quite young, most of the memories that they have of their time spent 'at home' is from holidays, not about real life with school and homework.
Ruben and Simon would love to move back to NL, while Joshua wants an expat life once he has graduated.

The one thing I have always considered a big bonus for TCK's, is the fact that they grow up with children from so many different nationalities and religions and such different back grounds. In Libya there were over 60 different nationalities in their school, here in India about 40 I think. We have lived in Christian, Muslim and Hindu countries and experienced a variety of political systems and degrees of corruption. It has influenced our lives and our way of thinking, both positive and negative. We have been foreigners and minorities for most of my children's lives and that changes your perspective too.
I hope and think it has made us more open minded and tolerant.

Moving every 4 years (or rather 3.5 years with our track record of being evacuated), can make or break your relationship and your family. We have seen several marriages end in divorce or families move back to their base counties, because either the spouse or a child couldn't cope with life abroad.
Adriaan and I are still going strong, TG. Moving to new places also makes your family the only constant factor in your life. It has made our unit stronger.
We love how this life gives us an opportunity to get to know many countries and cultures up close. But we also realise this is our choice and not necessarily the way of life our boys would have chosen. The boys are getting a great education, but they have been 'the new boys in class' a bit too often for their liking (3 school in 6 months last year was a bit much) and they make friends for a few years, not for life as they might have done if we had lived in NL.
I am sure that if we had lived in NL, Joshua would have had better opportunities to make the most of his swimming talent and could have been on a proper swim team. That is one regret I have, that he has missed out on that.

Life is all about choices, not always made by yourself, and it is only in hind sight that you can tell whether you have made the right choices or not. I hope and pray we did!

My TCK's are growing into wonderful teenagers at the moment and I hope they will become well balanced TCAdults one day, that can look back on a very diverse and a bit chaotic time growing up. If not, I hope we can afford to pay for therapy ;-)