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Third Culture Kids & Parachute Kids: Building Their Resilience

Ever heard of ‘parachute kids’? Roughly defined, they are children who get dropped off in a foreign country—or parachuted in, so to speak—to further their education. The kids are usually middle school or high school aged but sometimes younger. Meanwhile, their parents fly back and stay in their home country.

So what does this have to do with Third Culture Kids?

To find out, join us at the special event hosted by the Families in Global Transition!

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I’ll be co-hosting Third Culture Kids & Parachute Kids: Building Their Resilience with the wonderful super-coach, Sundae Bean of the popular Expat Happy Hour podcast.

And we’ll be talking to two experts with fascinating backgrounds themselves:

Dr. Jang Eun Cho is a former parachute kid and one of the few specialists in cross-cultural child and adolescent psychiatry in the United States. She initially had studied to be a surgeon and had already completed half her residency when she made a u-turn and became a psychiatrist.

Jang now runs Cultivate Psychiatry and is the Director of the Consortium at the Harvard Medical School-affiliated MGH Center for Cross Cultural Student Emotional Wellness.

Dr. Timothy Stuart is an adult TCK who is also mixed race. His father is Native American and his mother is Anglo American but he grew up in France and Germany as well as the United States.

Tim did his doctoral research on resilience and trauma at a First Nation reservation school and is now the Head of School at the International Community School of Addis Ababa. He also wrote the book, Children At Promise (you can find it here).

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  • Listen to Danau’s interview with Sundae Bean on the Expat Happy Hour here.
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The First Goodbye

Before the pandemic began, my nephew left for another country and I wrote a little tribute to him soon after. This is an edited version of two previous posts.

My nephew is aged two years and a bit. Sometimes he speaks little sentences, sometimes Frenchy jibberish.

When a plane flies overhead, he hears its far away howl no matter the commotion in the room. Ears perked up and eyes locked with yours—he gasps: ‘Awat? Kouki!’

Photo of a toddler at an airport looking out the window at airplanes. This is his first move and first goodbye.
My nephew looking out the window at an airport

They both mean ‘airplane’. In my nephew’s toddler language, ‘awat’ is short for pesawat and ‘kouki’ is short for hikouki. The first is in Indonesian, his parent’s language, and the second is in Japanese, his grandmother’s language

So, we pick him up and dash outside to the backyard chasing the sound.

Sometimes we see nothing, and we just wait until the howl drowns out. Sometimes we catch a glimpse of the flying steel as it goes across the sky from behind the roof to behind the clouds.

At times like this, his arm is raised high and his little finger points at the sky. Still sitting in your arms, again, he gasps: ‘Kouki!’

One day last month, he fell asleep and woke up at the airport just after daybreak in another country. He and his parents were on their way to move across the Pacific Ocean. He looked out the big windows—and oh, the delight! So many airplanes, so close to him.

Auntie wasn’t there, but I could hear him squeal from across the seas.

It’s now been a couple of weeks since my nephew left Indonesia. It broke my parents’ heart and mine. We were the ones who had been left behind, not him, but we didn’t think he’d understand.

The other day, we video called him. ‘Jiiji! Baaba! Auntie!’ squealed my nephew as he called out to his grandpa and grandma in Japanese. As for me, he calls me ‘auntie’ because the Japanese version—obachan—is one too many syllables for a two-year old.

In his broken, toddler Indonesian, he told his grandparents that he wanted to come over to their house the next day. My sister, who was sitting next to him, explained that it was too far. We agreed with her.

So, my nephew asked us to come over instead. His eyes sparkled at his own brilliant solution to the problem.

But still we told him that we couldn’t. ‘Why?’ he demanded. It was still too far, we said. We would need to take an ‘Awat’ or ‘Kouki’, we explained.

He told us to take that airplane. We explained again. My sister tried too. My brother-in-law also chimed in to help.

Then, my usually hyperactive nephew fell silent. He continued to sit there, squeezed between his mother and father, on the new sofa in the new apartment. But his eyes were on the floor. He didn’t look at the phone screen again or say another word for the rest of the call.

At two and a bit, he understood neither distance nor time. What he understood was that he was there but we were not.

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‘Why are all the local kids sitting together in the cafeteria?’ Presenting at the AIELOC Conference

The Association of International Educators and Leaders of Color (AIELOC) has joined hands with Women of Color in ELT to host a free online conference on November 14-15, 2020.

I’ll be speaking on the first day on: Why are all the local kids sitting together in the cafeteria? (Saturday, November 14 at 9:30AM New York (EST) / 3:30PM Berlin / 10:30PM Singapore & Perth.)

I’ll be speaking alongside a host of selected speakers, many of whom have been advocating for diversity in the international education sector for awhile. Among those who I know or have heard of are:

Amanda Bates who is the founder of The Black Expat and hosts The Global Chatter podcast.

Jasmine Cochran who was interviewed by the BBC in the wake of the George Floyd’s death as the news and protests began affecting students in her international school classroom. She was interviewed by Sundae Bean of the Expat Happy Hour.

Dominique Blue who is an international educator and part of the AIELOC Advisory Council. She is an advocate of diversity and has been a great supporter of TCKs of Asia and the research that I do.

Daniel Wickner who is an international educator and has been advocating for the importance of affirming students’ identities within the classroom.

To register or for more details, visit the AIELOC website. Scroll down to find the speaker bios, schedule/agenda, and session descriptions for each day.

Why are all the local kids sitting together in the cafeteria?

Saturday, November 14. 9:30AM New York (EST) / 3:30PM Berlin / 10:30PM Singapore & Perth.

In 1997, Beverly Tatum wrote that, upon seeing a group of Black students on an American campus, “The question on the tip of everyone’s tongue is ‘Why are the Black kids sitting together?’ Principals want to know, teachers want to know, White students want to know, the Black students who aren’t sitting at the table want to know.” The same was true at the international school where Danau Tanu conducted her doctoral research, except the main concern was the “local kids” of the host country and the “Korean kids.” These students were seen as “self-segregating” and “not international.” But were they really?

In this session, Danau will demonstrate how the biases and prejudices held by the administrators and educators at the international school contributed to the issue of “self segregation” on their campus. The mostly white, Anglophone teachers acted as gatekeepers for the dominant culture of the school and determined who was considered “international” and who was accused of “self-segregating.” The expectation they placed on students to assimilate into the dominant school culture acted as a crucial push factor that caused students to retreat into their language groups. Danau will also show that the high student turnover rate at schools catering to internationally mobile children can further exacerbate the formation of cliques based on race or language for students who do not fit in with the dominant school culture.

Danau’s research data is based on a yearlong participant observation conducted at an international school and over 130 in-depth, ethnographic interviews with high school students, their parents, alumni and teacher.

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Third Culture Stories – a podcast by TCKs of Asia

TCKs of Asia has just launched our new podcast: Third Culture Stories! It’s where ‘Third Culture Kids’ share stories from Asia.

Icon for Third Culture Stories podcast. Tree with leaves in diverse colors.
Design by Karen Tan of ThinkImpact

We can experience the liminal in-between spaces of the third culture as a child in many ways – by growing up internationally, through education, being mixed, migration, international adoption and so on.

Third Culture Stories is about uncovering what we share in spite of our differences.

We are excited to share our first two episodes with the world. Both episodes are based on the live forums hosted by TCKs of Asia.

Third Culture Stories – Episode 1. Third Culture Kids & Family Ties: Relationships with Parents & Siblings

Click here to read speaker profiles and access the PowerPoint slides for Episode 1.

Third Culture Stories – Episode 2. Language & Power: Stories from Asia

This episode was a collaboration between myself and Isabelle Min, a former radio host and KBS broadcaster as well as one of the first generation of Koreans who grew up overseas. It was also informed by my research, Growing Up in Transit: The Politics of Belonging at an International School.

Click here to read Isabelle’s profile for Episode 2.

Coming up on October 6! – A Foreigner in My Own Family: The Hidden Loss of Language & Intimacy

If you like the podcast, don’t forget to register for our next open forum!

Poster with boy wearing DIY superman cape and pointing to the sky. TCKs of Asia presents an open forum. A Foreigner in My Own Family: The Hidden Loss of Language and Intimacy.
Design by Asako Noda
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TCKs of Asia: A Foreigner in My Own Family. The hidden loss of language & intimacy

TCKs of Asia is back! For those who don’t know, I’ve been involved with a group of friends who run online forums for TCKs with some sort—any sort—of an Asian connection. Many of the themes we cover aren’t unique to TCKs of Asia but we had to call it something, right?

Read on for more details or register now.

Poster: TCKs of Asia presents an open forum. A Foreigner in My Own Family: The Hidden Loss of Language & Intimacy. Tue, 6 Oct, 9AM NY, 3PM Berlin, 9PM HK.
Design by Asako Noda. To register: tiny.cc/ask7dz

‘My parents wanted me to learn English and fit in. But they expect me to be fully Asian too. They don’t understand that I sometimes feel I’m not Western enough and I’m not Asian enough.’

Many Third Culture Kids (TCKs) grow up speaking a different language from one or both of their parents. Some experience a disconnect, a lack of language to communicate with those who are closest to them: their families. To one degree or another, they may feel a sense of loss of home language and culture, as well as the frustration of not being understood by their own family.

From the earliest age, children get their cultural cues from their parents, who are important anchors and mirrors for a child’s identity. But when a child’s strongest language is different from that of one or both of their parents — and because language and culture are so closely intertwined — it can create a sense of cultural disconnection that can affect the parent-child relationship, even into adulthood.

In this open forum, we will hear from a few Third Culture Kids about how becoming fluent in English or losing their home language complicated their relationship with their parents, their home culture and their sense of identity. We will also have time for an open discussion with all attendees.

From the TCKs of Asia website

Featuring Ardi Kuhn, Aiko Minematsu, Karen Tan, Isabelle Min and myself.

Tuesday, 6 October 2020
6am Los Angeles – 9am New York – 2pm Lagos – 3pm Berlin – 4pm Beirut – 9pm Singapore & Perth – 10pm Seoul & Tokyo

Click below for speaker bios & more details.

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Growing Up in Transit: The Politics of Belonging at an International School - book cover (Asian Third Culture Kids)

Learn more about the book