Cross-cultural Kids – CDFR Assignment

Cross-cultural kids are children who are living in two or more cultural environments for a long time while being in their childhood. This means that they are raised in a multi-cultural environment regardless to their situations. TCKs are a subgroup of CCKs. They struggle with unresolved grief over there many changes and goodbyes they have had to go through within their lives. Today, more children than ever before can rightfully be called a Cross-Cultural Kid. The cross-culture kids group includes TCKs, children of immigrants, children of refugees, international adoptees and children of minorities.

Cross-cultural kids are also defined as children who are raised in a multi-cultural environment. Third Culture Kids are youngsters who have spent a major part of their time outside of their parents’ culture.

Traditionally they come from families who are involved in foreign service, the military, or missionary service. This part of their life must be their developmental years which is 0-18. They are not new to us, and there are many more than you would believe. The TKCs talked about in the text are told to have parents who share the same nationality as them, but the TKCs often grew up in host countries. The TKCs could not contact their family members because Facebook and Skype were not around back then, and international phone calls were very expensive. There are many different kinds of TCKs out there which include high prevalence TCKs and traditional TCK to name a couple. Nowadays TCKs use the internet to communicate with friends and family. TCKs have common characteristics which include their physical appearance, privileged lifestyle, and system identity.

TCKs are naturally good mentors, teachers, and even mediators. TCKs have a lot of benefits which include expanded worldviews, three-dimensional view of the world, cross-cultural enrichment, less prejudice, appreciative of authority and they have a sense of urgency. The transition will be hard for children from their home to their adoptive culture will be much worse if you do not inform the child, so they can say goodbye. Some of the similarities of Third Culture Kids and Cross-Cultural Kids are that third culture kids are a subgroup of cross-cultural kids.

Because of this, they share many of the same things. To qualify as a third culture kid, you might be able to qualify as a cross-cultural kid. Third culture kids struggle with grief, as well as cross-cultural kids. Both groups have to go through stressful times, and for children this will always be hard no matter what groups you are a part of. While reading this book I found that both groups have to go through hard times, but they are told to react differently. The differences between TKCs and CCKs is that the third culture kids are children who have spent a majority of their life outside of their parents’ culture. Cross-culture children are kids who have lived in two or more cultures while being under 18.

Third culture kids have unresolved grief, restlessness and developmental issues because of the difficult challenges of a third culture kid life. Third culture kids have a hard time with goodbyes because they have to say it so often. Cross-cultural kids do not move as much as third culture kids and therefore cross-cultural kids do not have to say goodbye as much as third culture kids.

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