third culture kids Archives - Gina Brenna Butz

The Extraordinary Childhood of a Third Culture Kid

Post author:Gina B
Post published:March 30, 2015
Post category:culture parenting third culture kids

The Extraordinary Life of a Third Culture Kid — photo by Gina Butz

I grew up on a corner lot with a huge backyard across the street from a giant park. The world was our plush, Kentucky bluegrass playground.

Our kids grew up surrounded by concrete. The nearest decent patch of grass was a solid mile away across a busy street.

One day, when they were littles, I lamented this fact to God. I felt like our kids were missing out on a “normal” childhood by being Third Culture Kids (TCKs). His clear response to me was, “Really, Gina? Your kids have ridden elephants in Thailand and climbed the Great Wall. They have been exposed to cultures and languages most people don’t see in their lifetimes. Is this not good enough?”

He made a strong argument.

Our kids never ate Cheerios or played little league or rode in car seats (yeehaw!). I always feared that their strange upbringing would be a source of distancing from friends here in the States. Instead, it seems to have given them some street cred.

Lately, our kids and their friends have shared more stories about this sad, grassless childhood with other kids school which has led to one girl declaring that she wants to be adopted into our family so she can travel with us (perhaps she doesn’t know she could go on her own?). As the stories come out about exotic places they’ve been and lived, the admiration climbs. It led Ethan’s friend and fellow TCK to say to me one day, “I think I’m realizing I have lived a good life.” Yes, yes you have.

In lamenting the fact that I couldn’t give our children a “normal” childhood, in some ways I missed the fact that we were giving them an extraordinary one. No, they don’t exactly know what to do with a backyard, but they can navigate an airport on their own. They can’t tell you how an American baseball game is played but they have road tripped between countries.

Being a Third Culture Kid comes with its gaps in experience, but the experiences they have are so incredibly rich that I wouldn’t trade them. I’m thankful that our kids spent their formative years in other cultures. More than that, I’m so thankful that they consider it a blessing as well.

A Different Childhood

Back to Normal, for Now

Post author:Gina B
Post published:July 7, 2014
Post category:third culture kids transition

The other day, our daughter said, “If we could bring Scout out here, I would want to stay here forever.”

So it seems she is enjoying the summer. And why wouldn’t she be? Two of her oldest and dearest friends are here with her, along with a couple dozen other TCKs (Third Culture Kids), for six weeks. Weekday mornings we have meetings, during which the kids are together doing fun activities. The rest of the time we all live together in college student housing all centered around a common courtyard. We’re back to the days of, “I don’t know where the kids are, but I know they’re having fun. They’ll probably come home when they’re hungry.” In other words, it’s their paradise.

It’s also their normal. Our kids came into the world when we lived in a building with 29 other people we worked with, as well as nine kids under the age of 5, most of us within 5 stories of one another. We bought a security door with our American neighbors and placed it 10 feet down the hallway (instead of each of us having our own outside our doors) so that we could leave our own doors open for the families to go back and forth at any time.

When we moved to Singapore, we again had numerous families we knew all centered around a common courtyard, this time with a pool. Every day at 2 pm, that’s where we were. Our last two years in Asia, most of the people from our office lived within a 2 mile radius of one another. Between us there were 60 school age kids, and most of them were homeschooled. There wasn’t a day that went by without friends.

Then we came to the States, and our kids didn’t know what to make of it. Ethan’s managed to find some friends a couple blocks away, and they are over as much as possible, but we’re still praying for Megan to have at least one good friend in the neighborhood. They are realizing that what they grew up with just wasn’t the norm.

Throughout our transition, this has been one of the places of deepest grief for our kids. As much as they want life to be the way they knew growing up, they simply cannot make it that way. They are still trying to figure out how to do without.

And then we come here, and life IS that way, and we’re all kinds of happy and thankful and relieved (it’s hard to think of things to do without friends!).

So what is my conclusion? I confess I’m tempted to look ahead and gather my emotional energy for the fallout of losing this environment once again. I’m trying instead to simply be grateful for the gift of having this amazing community.

A Different Childhood

Post author:Gina B
Post published:November 9, 2012
Post category:third culture kids

How many Twinkies have you eaten in your lifetime? I haven’t had one in about a millennium, but our kids have never had Twinkies. Or Ho Ho’s. Or Little Debbie snack cakes, Ding Dongs, etc. etc. They also are unfamiliar with Cool Whip, Velveeta, and Cheese Whiz.

This came to our attention last night at dinner, and it occurred to me that I was both wildly happy and a little nostalgic for them. It’s like they missed a little part of Americana because of their overseas childhood, where these things were never or rarely obtainable.

Truth be told, I try to avoid putting sugar and/or processed food into our kids as a general rule, but not having EVER eaten any of those things seem akin to never watching Sesame Street. Come to think of it . . .

Yeah, our kids had a different childhood. When I first lived overseas, I was determined that our kids were going to be American, gosh darn it! No third culture kids here. (The reality is, I was told, the second your kid stepped on a plane to live in another country, he became a third culture kid and there’s nothing you can do about it).

Our kids do probably have a greater grasp of American culture than the average TCK simply because where we lived and how we lived allowed us to be more exposed to it. But the fact is, they are different. There are things they don’t know, won’t understand, won’t love, things that don’t have any association with childhood for them. And that’s ok.

But I think I’ll still put a Twinkie in their Christmas stockings.