Third Cultural Kids: Disadvantages

What are TCK?

TCK (Third Cultural Kid) is “a person who has spent a significant part of his or her developmental years outside their parents’ culture.". This means that TCK are kids that grow outside their country; obviously this had many advantages; but, what would happen if they came back to their original country? They are going to had many difficulties, and this is what we are going to talk about.

Disadvantages of being a TCK:

As I said before, being a TCK have many advantages, such as: high flexibility, maturity, etc. But not everything is good as it seems because returning to your original country after many years, makes you a little bit different from the others. Now we are going to see the challenges that the TCK’s have their life and how they can be solved:

·        Ignorance of home culture: TCK’s are often lacking in the knowing about their own home country, culture, town, nation, etc., and with the current technology leading all the information around the world, this will become increasingly less of a challenge, providing to the TCK’s the use of modern technology with their guest cultures that are a normal aspect in their life, and connect them to their home culture. Everything depends on the comprehension that has a culture with regard to the topic that they are the TCK’s. Though, to consider as a difficulty the fact that borders itself to the TCK to entering a culture, for the same fact that they know that it is late to enter to another one; impeding this way the permanency of his original culture.

·        Discrimination: One of the problems that TCK’s have is the discrimination they may suffer on the place they move to live. This special kids are usually victims of discrimination because they are new in the school they enter and this relates to the country the came from, his/her origins, etc. The solution for this big problem that would affect the development of the kid, would be to use the knowledge he has of other cultures in order to share it with his/her new classmates so they can understand their customs, way of being, etc.

·        Social life: Because TCK’s are always living in to different places, one after the other. They need to leave the friends they have in one place because they are already moving to another country, and this means having a new life, meet new people again, and try to do some friends. This may become TCK’s into shy persons, and this would also him/her when they need to work in groups, do projects, play sports, or just meet people of different places. A way to solve this problem would be to ask for advice to their friends he/she already made in other country so they can remember how they met.

In conclusion, being a TCK can be something great, but also it could be a challenge, but if you know how to manage them, everything would be good.

Number of words: 499

Sources:

·  ScoopEmpire. (2014). Recovered on October 27^th of 2015: http://scoopempire.com/perks-drawbacks-third-culture-kid/#.VjA3JLcvfIU

·        Quora. (2011). Recovered on October 27^th of 2015: https://www.quora.com/What-are-some-examples-of-being-raised-as-a-third-culture-kid-What-are-the-benefits-and-disadvantages

·        Third Culture Kids of the World. (2013). Recovered on October 27^th of 2015: https://thirdculturekidsoftheworld.wordpress.com/2013/04/19/advantages-and-disadvantages-of-a-tck/

·        The Difficulty of Life as a Third-Culture Kid. (w.d.) Recovered on October  27^th of 2015: http://www.internations.org/magazine/the-difficulty-of-life-as-a-third-culture-kid-15288

·        The trouble with third culture kids. (2014). Recovered on October  27^th of 2015: http://www.cmhnetwork.org/media-center/morning-zen/the-trouble-with-third-culture-kids

·        [Image 1] Calling All Third Culture Kids”. (2011). Recovered on October  27^th of 2015: https://edspired.wordpress.com/tag/third-culture-kids/