Navigating Grief Together: Strategies for Parents of TCKs
Photo by Christopher Ott on Unsplash
I was about to leave my home of eight years to move across the sea. Everything felt strange, unnatural. I didn’t know how to process such a massive shift—leaving the beaches of Tunisia for the affluent suburbs of Illinois. My friends hugged me and cried about our impending separation, but I felt only numbness. All my tears had been spent years before, when several best friends in a row had left the country suddenly. After that, what was the point of being upset?
I wondered at the time if there was something wrong with me. “Are all my tears locked away, or dried up?” I wondered. “Can I be homesick anymore? Is it possible to be too adaptable?”
Recently, I sent out a survey to other Third Culture Kids (TCKs) to ask about their experience with loss. I learned that I was not alone in struggling with forming relationships and processing emotions. Other people who experienced similar losses struggled in the same areas.
But none of us moved overseas alone. Every TCK is brought along for the adventure by a family who can provide some support and community. What if TCKs could rely on their parents to help them process transition well?
How Have Parents Dealt with Their Children’s Losses?
I asked the survey respondents, “What was the most common way that your parents or caregivers responded to the losses you experienced?” About a third answered, “They sat with me, listening to my feelings, validating my feelings, and helping me process.” The same amount of those surveyed said, “They tried, but were not equipped to handle my feelings.” One TCK added that their parents “got angry when I expressed my feelings and ordered me to shut them down.” Another shared that “They didn’t know how to ask me because I didn’t know how to express what I was going through.”
To me, the most succinct response was this: “My parents were also dealing with their own losses and emotions so they may not have had the capacity to also deal with mine. There was a pressure to figure it out on your own because you didn’t want to cause your parents more stress.”
Over and over again, children felt like their emotions didn’t matter, weren’t justified, or weren’t big enough to bother parents who were already overwhelmed. They were “spread too thin,” situations were “out of their power to control or fix,” and “the importance of caring for their emotional health wasn’t always modeled for them.” Several TCKs shared that their family was in “survival mode.”
Does any of this sound familiar? If you are a parent of a TCK, how much do you deal with in your day-to-day? You have to handle tangled paperwork, strained finances, relational stress, and the shock of being a parent in a culture that you didn’t grow up in. You’re handling a lot, and your kid might be more observant than you realize.
How was the experience of some TCKs affected by not being able to rely on their parents?
“I still view problems as something that I have to address personally, rather than something I can get help with.”
“I feel like a burden.”
“It’s made me seek validation from other people.”
“I feel afraid of really having a deep relationship with someone, because I would have to take down my walls and really tell someone what I feel for the first time.”
“I struggle to still validate and make room for my own feelings.”
By contrast, those who experienced care and stability from their parents describe empathy, comfort and encouragement, and feeling like their experiences were heard and valued.
How Can You Help Your Kids Process Loss?
As much as you would like to, you can’t protect your kids from all the struggles of life. But what can you do to help them navigate the losses of cross-cultural living? Here are a few suggestions drawn from the experience of over fifty TCKs from around the world.
Acknowledge your child’s losses.
Your child loses a lot when you move to a new country, and they often continue to experience more losses than the average kid their age. Instead of brushing them off, ignoring the sad things, or insisting that everyone only focus on the positive elements of life in your host country, express your child’s losses and give them space to grieve.
“I wish [my parents] didn’t tell me to ‘move on’ or think about the gains. After all, there are times when I can be positive and sometimes when I just want to mourn.”
“Having permission to feel sad has been really welcome, as well as the expectation that it comes in waves, that it can take years, and that it can permanently change me.”
Share and relate with your child.
Your TCK looks to you as a model for how they should react to the world. If you either never address hard things or never address your own struggles, they might feel like they are the problem. Showing that you find this transition or loss difficult, too, can help validate your child’s emotions and give them an example of how to process.
Of course, sharing some big adult problems is not appropriate, nor is treating your child like a mini therapist. That can make them feel like their problems are unimportant, or that they need to care for or protect you and not the other way around. Instead, share things you struggle with that they can relate to. “I’m having a hard time learning this new language. I miss hearing our first language on the streets,” or “I miss our friends and the tree in our old backyard,” can become openings to help your child feel safe talking about what they have lost.
“I was a young child and not able to fully understand the full depth of loss, so my parents’ reactions helped me gauge the meaning of it.”
“The fact that it wasn’t talked about made me feel that I couldn’t talk about or process those things.”
“I wish it could have been a ‘together’ experience instead of my having to do it on my own.”
Welcome the big emotions.
“Bad” emotions can be scary. It makes sense that we would want to shut them down, especially if we come from a background where these emotions—anger, confusion, anxiety, grief—were looked down on or ignored. You want the best for your child and may hate to see them sad. But that doesn’t mean that the difficult emotions are unimportant.
If you’ve created a safe environment for your child to express their losses, they may come to you with grief or anger. Don’t dismiss their emotions or jump straight to potential solutions. It may seem intimidating, but you can learn to sit with your child when they are experiencing big emotions and help them to regulate and process well.
“I wish I had been given a bit more space to feel what I needed to feel, and I wish my family had not viewed emotions as something needing to be pushed down.”
“My parents are willing to listen to me, but when I do talk to them, they just want to fix me or find solutions to all my problems. And they can’t.”
“I just want someone who will listen to me and let me cry with them. And for them to tell me that yes, it sucks, but ultimately it will be okay.”
Value the things that give your child stability.
Every kid is different. Some kids find journaling helpful, some make art, and some find comfort in the stories they read. Others need to talk about their feelings, listen to music, or throw themselves into sports or other hobbies. Many TCKs mentioned that years of therapy had given them tools to process well.
Your child might not process like you, your other children, or the kids in their school. Any of these methods might help them, but none of them are fully guaranteed. Here’s the good news: you don’t have to do everything! Just help your kid find what works for them and encourage them to keep at it. We underestimate how much some time with a beloved pet or a walk outside can help make our worries feel more manageable.
“My parents encourage me to speak my feelings about losses; however, I prefer to write them in a journal or to paint and do art.”
“I don’t do well having to write things down, and I’m not a good artist, so talking and processing audibly is best for me.”
“Often, conversations with [my parents], while out of love and worry/care for me, do not always allow me to process properly. Last spring, I began counseling, and since then, things have been much easier to handle.”
Get help for yourself so that you can model healthy behavior.
This is a critical one that came up time and time again throughout the survey. To help your child, you have to help yourself.
If you as a parent are too overwhelmed, if you don’t know how to grieve well, regulate yourself, or rest, how will you help your child? If you are too busy or exhausted to handle your own emotions, your child won’t feel able to rely on you, much less learn from you.
Your TCK looks to you to learn how to handle cross-cultural life, so you need to learn how to do it well. That way, you can teach them in the most effective way: modeling healthy processing and resilience.
“Only when my parents learned how to go through the process of grief did our family begin to talk about it. Before that, I didn’t feel like my parents had the tools or knowledge to ask and listen.”
“Originally, I felt the loss shouldn’t matter to me, because my parents didn’t give us a space for that, nor did they give themselves a space for their own feelings . . . I want to see them heal. I want them to give themselves the same value they place on others. I want them to see how they are doing emotionally matters just as much as what they are accomplishing, if not more.”
If losses aren’t addressed well along the way, they can build up through the years into a tower of grief and hurt. When that tower comes crashing down, it can be devastating. You can help your child avoid that by taking some of these lessons and applying them to your situation. I hope these bits of advice can help the next generation of TCK parents support and engage their kids well.
Remember, you don’t have to get it “right” all the time. There is so much grace, and many TCKs expressed understanding of their parents’ situations and healed relationships later in life. It’s never too late to start doing what you can.
Other helpful articles to read:
See Beyond guest author, Marci, has released a children’s picture book based on Lauren Wells’ Unstacking Your Grief Tower. Click here to find her book my Tower is Tumbling! A Conversation story to help children process grief and loss (also available in a faith-based version)