Cover Story: Raising Third Culture Kids
Thani Talk ~ February 2013
Expert Advice for Expat Families Helpful Tips on Nurturing Children and Family Successful Transitions to an Overseas Life Global family, 3rd Culture Kids, International Nomads — these are some of the monikers for the expatriates in our community. Juggling all the demands of overseas living is not easy, so Thani Talk has invited counselor Julia Simens, author of Emotional Resilience and the Expat Child, to share her expert advice on nurturing and supporting your family members when living as expats in Thailand. Editors My goal is to help parents connect with their own child or children and build an emotional vocabulary to help them enrich their lives. My passion for helping families thrive as they move around the world is the main driving force behind my work because my family has lived this lifestyle. Many branches of psychology embrace inherently optimistic views and have helped not only individuals, but also informal and formal groups, to get better at, and derive greater fulfilment from what they do. I wanted to give this ability to families. I wanted to do what I can do to improve a child’s functioning within the context of his family and school. Helping parents create a family life conducive to learning, sharing and “mattering” to each other is one of my top priorities. If a family is able to communicate about their emotions they have less mix ups. Psychological maltreatments and miscommunications destroy marriages, friendships and parent-child relationships. Interactions between parents and young children are full of disruptions, miscommunication, and misunderstandings. We need to connect so we can repair. As a counsellor, I operate behind the scenes, but often make the difference, for a child or a family, between a good transition or one gone awry. I assess problems that run the gamut from academic issues, socialization issues, general transition issues, isolation, to family break ups. I believe in the counselling connection and I believe in storytelling about your own life and situations to help your child understand. The global family has three challenges to overcome today. They are filtering, connecting, and choosing. 1. Understanding Your Filtering – The filtering processes are key and often very hard to do. It takes a real knack to be able to zero in on what’s most important. I ask families to focus on the stuff that success is made of: emotions, confidence, interaction skills, thinking and articulation, attacking and defending arguments, analysing and problem solving and cultural knowledge. I feel clients will have a real challenge deciding on what to focus on for real growth in their family. Filtering will be paramount. For example, a family might come in with the overlying concern about their child’s lack of friends. But the family is missing the larger picture of their own connection time with each other. A family must connect while the kids are young because it gets harder and harder to make authentic connections as children get older. Yes, they do have a concern about the child’s friend but they need to filter out things that are surface level concerns and not the real issues. (continued on p. 5)
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