Helping TCKs in Transition – Collect Your Recipes
Practice Makes Permanent
Third Culture Kids get good at adjusting to new life situations, but just because you’re good at it, doesn’t make it easy. Remember the Olympics? That’s intentional practice making hard work look easy. When life hands you repeat situations, that can be an opportunity to become an expert. But repetition doesn’t automatically make you improve. My high school band director would remind us, “Practice makes permanent.” You have to revise and edit how you operate in order to become great at your specific challenge. Reflecting on this same idea, the theologian Pat Keifert said, “No one learns from experience. One only learns from experience one reflects upon and articulates.” TCKs need to reflect on what works for them in each life situation, so that they can take that information forward and use it to develop their new life in the new place.
Parents’ Role – Take Notes
Parents, while you and your TCKs are settled, your role is to help them observe what they love about where they live now; what’s working well? Who are their best friends? What makes those friends so special? Why do they like those kids? What roles and activities bring them joy and fulfillment? Think of this as a recipe and write it down. Of course you will also want to know what’s not working. Don’t fear, in my experience, you’ll likely hear plenty about what’s not working if you ask about what is going well.
When you are in transition, parents, you can help your TCKs grieve by talking together about what they have loved about where you live now and that they are losing. Demonstrating that you want to hear about their sense of loss will make it more likely that they will bring their grief to you. The best way to keep grief healthy is to share it. And when one grieves well, you get to keep your love for what you lost as a part of you. On the other hand, if you suppress your grief and try to forget about what you lost, you don’t have the information about yourself that you’ll need to move forward and find the new way to be you.
Like a coach, or a musician making fingering notes in the sheet music, keep notes on what works for you and your family. What kinds of routines are helpful, who needs down-time when. How do you recharge? how do you de-stress? Let your notes be extremely location specific and worry about how to accomplish a similar aim later on.
Read Your Recipe
A type of counseling called Solution Focused Brief Therapy is based on the idea that by using what has been working, a person can create a recipe for what might work this time to achieve their goal. Take time when you arrive at your destination to name your goal. What would a well-done transition look like for your family? Have you had a way to take quiet planning time in the past? Name what worked before and choose a way to experiment with a localized version of it. Then do the same for your family. Name what has worked in the past. This is why it’s helpful if you’ve got it written down already, and why my favorite recipes are taped to the inside of my kitchen cupboards. Begin with that recipe, modifying ingredients as needed.
You Might Need a Coach
If you find yourself stuck off course of what you know it takes for your family to thrive, family therapy with a TCK specialist can help you re-orient and find what works for your family in your new situation. Moving a family around the world is an Olympic-level challenge and a family therapist can be your coach in the process. Want to talk about how a TCK specialist counselor can help your family in transition? Click below to schedule a 15 minute free consultation.