Third Culture Kids

They are sometimes called TCKs, which means Third Culture Kids. They are children who grow up in a different country than the place of their citizenship…fully, though not complete Americans, but certainly not the place of their residence, though they identify strongly to that cultural environment. Placed in “no-mans-land,” they create a type of third culture, their own, among their peers.

I have been reminded these past two months of this unique group of kids as my grandchildren and daughter from Senegal have been staying with us this summer. It’s been deja vu as I see the 6 and 3-year-old play and my mind goes back in time to our two daughters who grew up in Kenya. TCK’s now raising TCKs. What goes around comes around, as the old saying goes.



Missions is so much more than just unreached people groups, the study of culture, national leadership, raising support – the “X’s” and “O’s” or scorecard of ministry. Missions is also about having a decent place to live, how best to educate your kids, staying in touch with family back home; attached but not obsessed with parents, friends and siblings we leave behind. Living overseas for an extended period of time is not like short-term missions where the most crucial thing in their lives is do they have enough snack food to carry them through their 14 day excursion. Missions is about being uprooted, displaced and forever a “foreigner.” Even twenty years after the kids grow up and no longer under the protection of their parents, TCKs, in some ways, continue to define their identity.

As my TCK and her TCKs get ready to return to Africa I have a better appreciation for my parents who had to go through the emotional rollercoaster of the high’s of seeing your children get off the airplane to the low’s of saying goodbye to them at the gate. What’s unique about missionaries is that, though separation is still difficult, it is a part of our lives – it comes with the territory of serving Christ overseas. And, in the broader sense, aren’t all of God’s kids TCKs? Not really a citizen here, not yet a citizen there. Our existence is merely a pilgrimage until time is no more. Then, finally, we will be home, all His TCKs.