Children

Mom in a Foreign Land

In May we honor mothers, but many of us living outside our home culture miss the usual Mother’s Day celebrations. That’s a perfect opportunity for homesickness and self pity.

One year we were on a short-term trip to Malaysia. We stayed in the college dormitory and taught courses. As Mother’s Day approached I was feeling a little sorry for myself. Though my sons usually don’t do a great deal for Mother’s Day or Father’s Day, they always remembered the day in some special way. Here I was half a world away from them, and might not even be able to arrange a phone call on the day.

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TCK Friendships

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As you may know, our two sons grew up, for more than half their childhood years, outside their home country. That makes them Third Culture Kids, or TCKs. Recently I have been thinking about how our sons react to their world. I wondered how much their experience as Third Culture Kids actually affects them today, now that they are adults. I was especially interested in how TCKs make friends, and how their experience differs from others in that area.

For a refresher, I looked at David Pollock and Ruth Van Reken’s textbook called, Third Culture Kids. The chapter on Relational Patterns discusses how Third Culture Kids (TCKs) make friendships and how that affects them later in life.

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PWs Sharing and Caring

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My husband and I just returned from a wonderful conference in Budapest designed for educational support for those serving in the Europe, Russia and Central Asia. While there, I led two workshops for the ladies. One was on understanding our roles when working overseas, and the other on helping our children feel at home in their host culture.

I would like to take time to write whole articles on these topics, but for now, I’ll just give you the highlights. Think about these points and if you have some thoughts, please email me and I’ll use your ideas, when I write longer articles sometime later. [Read more…]

The Power of Encouragement

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I was reminded this week of the value of encouragement. I spoke to over 300 people about Learning Disabilities. My husband commented that the number was way above my comfort zone, and it was. But I knew I had something valuable to say and felt it was a great opportunity to be an advocate for children who cannot explain their problem is or tell how to help them. God has done so much in my life and much of it came through the loving encouragement of my husband and family. I wrote the following article in the late ‘80s. It’s as true today as it was then. I hope it blesses you.

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Family Life Survey

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Happy 2003! The beginning of a new year is a good time to take a look at the condition of our marriage and family relationships. As we all know, living cross-culturally does add stresses to the marriage relationship and to rearing children. But it can also afford opportunities we would never have in our home culture.

We did a survey of our members a few months ago to help our organization create an evaluation tool for field directors and families living cross culturally. We want to share some of the insights we gained through the survey.

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