By Heather Long Vandevoorde, Ph.D./ @hvdvoorde
The question, “so, where are you from?” is my kids’ least favourite. It is a harmless, and normal sounding question, yet one that is complex to answer. Inevitably my children roll their eyes and answer, “we’re from everywhere.” The person asking the question then smiles, bewildered, and looks at me for further explanation.
My children sound American enough. But my children have never lived in the USA. I am American, my husband is French and my girls, Lolita (11) and Jania (10), were born in the Dominican Republic. They thus hold three nationalities. And that’s not all. During their tenure on this planet they have lived in the Dominican Republic, France, Luxembourg, South Africa, Saudi Arabia and now, the UAE. Often children living outside their home country are referred to as “third culture children,” and mine, people say, are very well-adjusted considering they’ve moved so often. Thankfully, yes, they are. But that is not entirely by accident. My husband and I have worked hard to be consistent in our parenting routines, regardless of where we are living. Our technique boils down to a few main ideas:
- Keep family members alive in their minds – we keep photos of family throughout our house and I update them after every visit so they can always see the family as they look now. Through photos and stories, our kids feel close to those people and understand that they have a larger family who loves them on a couple of continents. And when they do see family, they hit the ground running and jump right back into their relationships. There is no awkward time of re-acquainting themselves with their relatives.
- Keep the core family together – for us this also involves three dogs that have already lived with us in three countries. When we enter the new house, it becomes a home only when they are with us.
- Jump into the new community – I always grab the first guide I can find to immerse us in local culture. We do the museums, attraction parks and sporting events immediately. We always get comments from locals that in the first six months we do more than they have done in a lifetime of living in the same place. Guide books and community magazines help, as do “friendships” with businesses on Facebook and other social media. It makes us better tour guides when people come to visit too.
- Speak the lingo – My children speak a little bit of several languages and we try to incorporate the local lingo at home. My husband is especially talented with languages and always gets us caught up in local sayings. We call people we don’t know “China” according to the South African approach, we say “arret” when we want someone to stop, and we say “khallas” when we’ve had enough. The people we meet when we are out are always pleasantly surprised to hear my very All-American looking girls rattling off a few lines in Arabic.
Kids adapt quickly and they follow the parents’ attitudes. If you yourself are excited about the move and can help them see some benefits of the new hometown, they will accept it quickly.
We are extremely happy here. We hope to stay for a long time, but if things change and we end up moving to a new country, we will accept it with open arms. We will jump headfirst into the new culture, drawing from places we have lived in as references, and looking forward to discovering more new and different aspects of the world we live in.
