Friends everywhere, roots nowhere, loving places you don't belong, belonging to places you don't love, hating the thought of one more good-bye, afraid to make friends, afraid to lose friends, afraid to love, needing to love and be loved.
Source: Andy, ATCK

Tomorrow I travel to Houston to attend the Families in Global Transition conference. I will be participating in the pre-conference workshop, ATCK Trauma: Recovery into Triumph. I had to put down two choices, so if that workshop is full, will be redirected to To Catch a Dream: Pursuing Your Passion in a Transient World. Either workshop will be helpful to me.

ATCKs often feel like they are pursuing life with the Navajo dream catcher. They sometimes struggle in special ways. A TCK is a third culture kid. In their book, The Third Culture Kid Experience: Growing Up among Worlds, David Pollock and Ruth van Reken came up with a good definition for this term first used by Ruth Hill Useem, a former professor at Michigan State.

A Third Culture Kid (TCK) is a person who has spent a significant part of his or her developmental years outside the parents' culture. The TCK builds relationships to all of the cultures, while not having full ownership in any. Although elements from each culture are assimilated into the TCK's life experience, the sense of belonging is in relationship to others of similar background.

An ATCK is an adult third culture kid. Missionary kids are TCKs.

Those of us who are adults who chose to live in a foreign culture, learn new languages and customs can consider ourselves bi-cultural - tri-cultural, and so forth. Our children, who had no choice, but who never-the-less grew up in another culture, are third culture kids. TCKs feel different from everyone else, never quite fitting in. Their parents may have returned to the States and are now considered former expatriates. But third-culture kids can never say they are former third-culture kids. They will always be hybrids, the offspring of two cultures. They think differently. They act differently. And they are different in the way they are put together. These differences are very real, regardless of how much they might try to act like the mono-cultural children around them.

In spite of any personal difficulties, I've never known a TCK regret being third culture. They would not trade their experiences for anything. It seems to me that Adult Missionary Kids often have a world view that is inclusive; they seem to care about all kinds of people groups. MK/TCKs gravitate toward minority groups (afterall - they are a minority); toward foreigners, toward the disenfranchised and toward other MK/TCKs. That seems Christ-like to me. MK/TCKs have much to teach us.