Where do you come from? The question Third Culture Kids avoid, and why they do.

Made by Third Party Family Therapy

Where do you come from? For most people this question has a simple answer.

The reason most Third Culture Kids shy away from it is that it’s so tough to answer. Imagine that you’d lived in four difference countries, made great friends and developed a love for the different foods. The schools you attended and the sports teams you played on were wonderful. Which country would you choose? How could you choose? Should you just stick to your passport country even though you’ve never really lived there? It’s really uncomfortable to be put on the spot, feel uncertain of how to answer, and to hesitate whilst struggling with the simplest question. For Third Culture Kids it’s anything but simple. It’s complicated and may elicit strong feelings and behaviours.

The developmental years are significant to this question because human developmental years are about growth and change. The important domains in relation to this are those of cognitive, language, social-emotional and physical development.
When you move around the world and live in different countries during your developmental years (0-20 years,) the cultures, feelings, smells, languages, food, and friendships are all part of your developmental experience and become part of who you are.
How do you explain simply, in one sentence all the complexity of who you are, all of what you love and relate to? You belong to more than just one country. You don’t come from, or even prefer just one place. You’re a multicultural tapestry.

*Stephanie, a 20-year-old TCK described her feeling of home as a sensory experience. She said “I know which country I’m in when I breathe in. You just get that feeling in your body.”
For many parents, it seems the most natural question to ask your children where their new friend at school is from. This may be frustrating for your child, because this is not important to them. As a TCK they may not have even asked that question. They may be trying to tell you something about their new friend that they find interesting and relevant, and it’s completely unrelated to where the friend comes from.
There’s a difference between adult expats and children who are TCKs. Whilst we learnt about other countries at school, our TCKs learn this through personal experience as they’re growing up. They’re interacting with people from different cultures and countries as they’re moving through their developmental stages. These different cultural perspectives aren’t just learned, they become part of who our children are.

Our children don’t have to read the newspaper to be informed on what is happening in different parts of the world. They have friends, teachers or coaches from all over. They empathise with the experiences of people who live on different continents because they may have a personal connection to that country through relationships or travel experience. They will have formed their own impressions of the place and the context and won’t need a journalist’s perspective on global occurrences. The way they behave and interact in different situations is determined by their learned experiences, both good and bad.

TCKs prefer to avoid the question “where are you from” because they have positive experiences from many places. Those same places may also have some negative associations. The same would be true of adult expats, but the difference for TCKs is that those experiences may elicit stronger emotional associations or reactions because they occurred during the developmental years. It’s difficult to choose just one country and define that as home, or the place they most identify with because they’ve been shaped and influenced by many. Most feel that they carry parts of many countries and cultures within them as part of their identity. Some TCKs feel resentment at the attempt to categorise them, and confusion over why it’s even relevant or necessary to choose one place over another. Being asked the question by friends and family who are close to them can feel hurtful as it feels as if their identity is being questioned by people who should know who they are without trying to categorize them as one nationality over another.

We’re all unique, multifaceted individuals. One of the greatest advantages TCKs have is that the way they learn to view the world as they grow up doesn’t include categorising people according to where they come from, which language they speak, or their ethnic origins. They just see people, in all their multidimensional glory. There’s something to be learned from this. As communities have become more global, we can look forward to a time when everyone views people the way TCKs do, without stripping away the layers of identity trying to find one fact that allows us to categorise them. Instead of “where do you come from?” we may hear “tell me about yourself.”

*Name changed to protect privacy.

Co-written by Nicola Jane Gregory and Jo Green