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Missionary Kid/TCK Effective Care, Missionary Kid/TCK Effective Care …

- - - - The benefits of knowing people wherever you go:
        "With friends from their childhood now in countless places, TCKs build a rich international network that is useful for all sorts of things—from finding cheap room and board while traveling to setting up business connections later in life" (p. 196).
      - The stress of keeping up:
        "For all the good ways technology helps TCKs (and others, of course) keep in touch with past relationships, it is true that this can lead to other types of stress. Feeling obligated to keep up with the past can, indeed, be overwhelming. With instant communication possible everywhere, these tweets and texts and messages can consume an enormous amount of the TCKs’ time" (p. 197).
      - Inability to move from past to future:
        "One other potential problem, however, is that keeping up with past relationships prevents some TCKs from moving into the present and future" (p. 197).
        "Parents also express concern as they watch their TCKs arrive at a new place and refuse to engage with people they are meeting at school or in the community. Instead, these TCKs prefer to rush to their rooms after school to connect to far-flung friends via the Internet rather than making new friends" (p. 198).
    - - Difficulty in developing relationships with those that are not TCKs:
        "Presuming that the TCKs have found a “both/and” way for keeping past relationships while moving to the present, it seems there are particular challenges when those who have grown up in the third culture try to establish real-time relationships with those who did not grow up in this lifestyle" (p. 198).
      - Perceived shallowness:
        "One common complaint from many TCKs is that they feel people in their home cultures are “shallow” or “don’t care about me.” Conversations with peers seem boring, and the TCKs long for the good old days with their international friends" (p. 199).
      - Time is of the essence:
        Because of the transient background of TCKs they are much quicker to delve into deeper topics by asking probing questions in an effort to form a relationship. People in their home culture may not be receptive to this because perhaps they are not quick to just let anyone into their lives, which gives the semblance of being shallow and surface. TCKs, out of survival and experience, are quick to get to know someone because of their need for connection (pp. 199-202).
    - - Refusal to care:
        "Some try to limit their vulnerability to impending grief by refusing to acknowledge they care for anyone or anything" (p. 206).
      - Quick release:
        "When friends are about to leave, or when TCKs think they themselves might be leaving, their response is frequently to let go too soon. Friends stop calling each other and don’t visit, play together, or go out for lunch" (p. 206).
      - Emotional flattening:
        "Even when TCKs feel intensely about leaving a friend or relative, some refuse to acknowledge the hurt to others or themselves. It’s almost as if they will themselves to be emotionally flat—feeling neither great joy nor great pain" (p. 206).