Helping expat kids adjust to their unique lifestyles on the move

Expat parents can stifle their children’s futures if they don’t allow them their own, unique perspective on life.

Many children who’ve been brought up far from their parents’ cultural homelands are now known to have developed a totally unique perspective on life. They’re known as ‘third culture kids’, and include the children of expat professionals as well as those whose families are in military service overseas. Living and studying far from their parents’ cultural roots, they’re believed to more adaptable, open-minded and far better at cross-cultural communication.

Expat parents relocating more than once with their families are often concerned about the effect on their kids of immersion in a series of different cultures, fearing identity confusion at best and withdrawal at worst, but today’s young global nomads seem to be able to adjust far faster and better than their parents. Even so, with some contracts nowadays as short as two years, leaving close friends behind and starting over yet again with a new school and new friends in an unfamiliar environment can be stressful as well as confusing.

It’s possible parents have a harder job in these circumstances than do their young adult children, as they’re also attempting to adjust to yet another change of lifestyle whilst coping with a new work environment as well as finding time to relate to their childrens’ needs. The best medicine is parental love and affection, proven far more effective than therapy, but in itself totally time consuming. If third-culture kids re encouraged to see their experiences as positive as well as training for their own expat lives as adults, they’ll have a huge advantage when dealing with their own children’s adjustments to life on the move.