Tomorrow will mark two years since we packed up our suitcases and got on a plane as we set off on a journey toward a new life and ministry in France. The eighteen months leading up to that point involved meeting with countless people as we sought the prayer and financial partnerships we needed to support and sustain this next step in our lives. As a result of those meetings, and through much prayer, our vision for the role we wanted to play in caring for the personnel in our organization slowly began to take shape: to offer proactive and preventive family care. Laura and I are both trained counselors, and most of the time counselors are counted on to respond to difficulties that arise in their clients’ lives. But we began to dream of how to get out in front of the obstacles that expat families experience. Our desire was (and still is) to help defuse challenges before they become potential crises.
During our first year in France, we continued to think about and plan how we could see our vision for preventive care come true. As some of our plans started coming together, I “met” Lauren Wells at a webinar that she led on preventive care for Third Culture Kids. I feverishly took notes as everything she shared struck a nerve in me. It felt as though she was putting words to what I had been reflecting upon for the previous several years. I was elated to hear that she would be releasing a book that would further elaborate on how to proactively care for TCKs.
Wells’ book, Raising Up a Generation of Healthy Third Culture Kids: A Practical Guide to Preventive Care was released in March and in my opinion it is a “must read” for every expat family. Her stated goal in writing her book is as follows:
“My goal is to begin supporting families while their children are young and to apply practical prevention science to globally mobile families like yours with the hope that it will decrease the risks and increase the benefits of the TCK life.”
All thirteen chapters of the book begin with a statement on what preventive care should produce, namely, a healthy TCKs. Here is the opening statement for chapter 3 (Tuning-In to Your TCKs’ Needs):
“Healthy TCKs are in-tune to the emotional needs of others because they have either had their needs met by intentional, engaging, healthy parents during their developmental years, or they have processed and grieved the pain of unmet needs.”
From the premise of what a healthy TCK looks like, Wells guides her readers through the acronym CARE (Conversations, Awareness, Relationships and Example). Parents, and other TCK caregivers, are presented with: ideas for having Conversations about difficult things with their child(ren); a deeper Awareness of the challenges that their child(ren) might be facing; ways to deepen and stabilize their Relationship with their child(ren); and models how to be an Example of healthy living. This practical approach is one of the things that sets Wells’ book apart from other resources for the expat community, as she works through what can often be complex and multi-layered issues, breaking them down clearly and offering hands-on ideas for how to best care proactively for TCKs.
Throughout the book, Wells presents her readers with the ampersand of the TCK life: the many benefits & difficulties of spending a significant portion of ones developmental years in a foreign land. Her theory: if TCKs are well enough cared for and equipped to face the inevitable challenges of growing up overseas, they will develop into healthy and active contributors in an increasingly globally mobile world. This message resonates loudly in my soul as I consider my own TCK story, raise my kids in a foreign country and begin to walk alongside of other expat families in our organization.
If you are a TCK, are raising TCK or are preparing to move to a foreign country, do yourself a favor a snatch up a copy for yourself and start processing the benefits and challenges of the TCK life. You will not regret it!
Lauren also has many other fantastic TCK resources (workshops, blog, etc.) on her website TCKtraining.com.
TCKonnective 