Third Culture Kids

What is a third culture kid?  By definition,

“A third culture kid is a person who has spent a significant part of his or her developmental years outside their parents’ culture."

Kilee with friends Ruthnadine and Gloria

I'm not sure exactly what constitutes a "significant part", but I'm thinking my kids fit the bill.  Sociologist Ruth Hill Useem coined the term "Third Culture Kids" after spending a year on two separate occasions in India with her three children, in the early fifties. Initially they used the term "third culture" to refer to the process of learning how to relate to another culture;  in time they started to refer to children who accompany their parents into a different culture as "Third Culture Kids." Useem used the term "Third Culture Kids" because TCKs integrate aspects of their birth culture (the first culture) and the new culture (the second culture), creating a unique "third culture" According to tckid.com, you know you're a third culture kid when. . .

-“Where are you from?” has more than one reasonable answer.

-You have a passport but no driver’s license
-You don’t know whether to write the date as day/month/year, month/day/year, or some variation thereof.
-You believe vehemently that football is played with a round, spotted ball.
-Your good friends have names that sound drastically phonetically different than yours.
-You feel odd being in the ethnic majority.

and a couple of original ones from Haiti. . .

Josiah and his little buddy Colinn playing "Moto"

-Your 6 and 3-year-old kids ask how much longer the generator will be on before starting a movie.
-You find yourself looking in the back seat of your car, not to see if your children are properly secured in their 5-point harnesses, but to see if they're wrestling on the floor of the truck.
-Your 6-year-old warns your 3-year-old to put his shoes on or he'll get worms.
-You can't have secret mom-dad conversations in Creole anymore because your kids now understand the host language.

Kilee and Madam Ruth dressed to the nines to attend a wedding of one of Ruth's relatives.

Attending a Story Hour with other third culture kiddos.