Elijah and Moira Hall TRIBAL MISSIONS - Reaching the unreached So what is a “Third Culture Kid”?
It is a child who spends a good deal of time away from the parents’ home culture, and doesn’t really feel “at home” in the home culture (American culture in our case) or the host culture (Papua New Guinean culture, for example).
I imagine our son Elisha in twelve years or so. He’ll most likely have spent four years of that time here in the USA – getting acquainted with the way we do things, what we say and what we DON’T say, how we greet people…chances are it won’t be anything like what he’ll learn in the country we spend the other eight years in. And switching back and forth between differing versions of appropriateness can be tough…
He’ll know he doesn’t “fit in” in the tribe when all around him, his friends – the boys his age – may be getting married already and he still couldn’t legally if he wanted to!
Or when he has dinner in America and isn’t sure the most proper way to hold a knife and fork (it never was very important at home in the tribe, after all, especially when the others in the village don’t even own silverware!)
One of the classes has recently emphasized the need for us as parents and others in the “home culture” – our family, friends and supporters – to recognize and make allowances for the probability that our children may never feel that the USA is their home quite like we do.
You know, that’s all right!
It’s reminding us that we should not feel too comfortable or at home anywhere on this earth. After all, aren’t we pilgrims and strangers here too? Shouldn’t we be like Abraham who “looked for a city whose builder and maker is God?”
