As soon as during perinatal period, healthcare providers should screen pregnant and postpartum patients for their risk of perinatal depression and anxiety depending on guidelines from the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologist, and the American Academy of Pediatrics, at the 1-, 2-, and 4month wellchild visits). What you don’t know and do not see is that she is a Third Culture Kid a child who has moved in and out of foreign countries as her parents have transferred around the planet.
Feeling out of place is only the tip of the iceberg.
She ain’t from anywhere. Then again, for her this country is another foreign assignment, she was born here. She is struggling through one more adaptation, another culture shock, another freefall. Whenever moving internationally, born into one culture, raised among others, her identity is most closely aligned with others raised like her. By the way, the grief of children is often invisible.
They are ld they’ll get over missing that friend, they’ll get another pet, they’ll have a nicer room in the new house.
They are ld they will adapt, they are resilient.
They don’t have time to mourn their losses, Their family is rushed. TCKs are the children of international business people, global educators, diplomats, missionaries, the military anyone whose family has relocated overseas because of a job placement. So it’s their most difficult relocation. Normally, the children attend international or host country schools, or are sent to boarding schools, or are home schooled. Others in Department of Defense schools on international military bases; around the planet. Nonetheless, even if they’ve only been back on furlough, they are supposed to be coming home even if they’ve never lived here. Herself a TCK, Ruth Van Reken has spent a lifetime writing and advocating and teaching about the psychological impact of an internationally mobile childhood.
Loss always engenders grief and the greater you have loved a situation or place or people, the greater the grief.
With the many benefits come challenges that must be faced with any move the child makes.
She states, The issue is that transition always involves loss, should be. Friends, community. Fact, family, toys. Loss of a place of comfort, stability, a safe and predictable world. Now regarding the aforementioned fact… Layers of loss run deep. Sounds familiar? Weather, food. Loss of identity. Fact, home. Kathleen Gilbert has researched grief among TCKs, and writes, Losses that are not successfully resolved in childhood have an increased likelihood of recurring in adulthood. Seriously. Way in which they process these losses will change, or may even wait for ages after their childhood. Generally, for TCKs, questions about who they are, what they are, where they are from, what and who they can trust are examples of existential losses with which they must cope. Open doors.
Ask her what she’s left behind.
Don’t ask her where she’s from, or what’s troubling her, when she comes to you.
Ask her where she’s lived. Just listen. Some info can be found online. She needs and deserves to be heard, and to be healed, and to be whole. She has a story many stories. For instance, give her the time and space and permission she needs to remember and to mourn. Memoirs of Growing Up Global. Now pay attention please. Nina Sichel is coeditor of the collections Writing Out of Limbo. She leads memoirwriting workshops in the Washington, DC area and continues to collect stories and research about international and cross cultural childhoods. It’s a well she can be reached at nsichel@yahoo.com.