Interview with Tanya Crossman, author of Misunderstood, the impact of growing up overseas in the 21st century.
When and where did you first hear of the term “Third Culture Kid” (TCK)? How did you hear of it and in which way did it help you?
When I first started working with TCKs I didn’t know that there was such a thing as a TCK! I quickly realised there was something different about these kids due to their unique situations, but it was still two or three years before I started reading literature on the topic. David Pollock and Ruth Van Reken’s classic Third Culture Kids was eye-opening. What really struck me was the section on repatriation – I kept thinking “that’s me!” For the first time I realised my time in the US was a TCK experience. It helped me understand why it had been so hard to “go home”.