Tag: mks

Neurodiversity in the World of TCKs

You might be wondering why addressing neurodivergence in the context of ministry is an important endeavor. I get it — I’ve wondered too! The best answer I can offer is this: because neurodivergent children and adults live among us. Because they are cherished by God and worthy of our investment of time and effort. And because ignorance is not bliss — it can fracture God’s Kingdom with misunderstandings, conflict, and the withholding of empathy.

If only because it grows us into loving better and more thoughtfully, I believe that learning more about the humans around us is a spiritual practice and God-given privilege. 

NEURODIVERSITY IN THE WORLD OF TCKs

There is a particular kind of exhaustion many globally mobile families experience. The kind that feels linked—sometimes in obscure ways—to that third airport security line, that calendar-busting conference, that language-learning plateau, that brutal goodbye to friends we may not see again, that moment your child dissolves into tears because the cereal tastes different in this country, or that weather pattern that sucks the life out of everyday activities.

In the cross-cultural community, we tend to tell ourselves that it’s transition stress. Culture shock. Jet lag. Grief. And often, it is—or a combination of them all.

But there can also be something more complex happening beneath the surface. Something quieter, more deeply wired into the way a child experiences the world—or, in the case of MKs, multiple worlds.

What is neurodivergence?

In recent years, conversations around neurodiversity have become far more common. Current estimates suggest that between 15% and 20% of the population may be neurodivergent, so it’s no wonder that efforts to deepen our understanding are expanding.

At its simplest, neurodivergence means that a brain functions differently from what is considered usual or “typical.” Neurodiversity embraces the idea that everybody’s brain works uniquely and that neurodivergence is a normal variation.

ADHD, autism, OCD, dyslexia, sensory processing differences, dyscalculia, traumatic brain injury, and other neurological differences can all fall under this broad umbrella. Neurodivergence can show up in countless ways—from sensory overwhelm and learning differences to intense creativity, diminished executive function, or information processing that differs from that of brains considered more “typical.”

The Strengths of Neurodivergence

Though neurological differences were formerly viewed simply as deficits, researchers and clinicians now understand neurodivergence as part of the natural variation of human brains—producing unique strengths as well as unique challenges.

It’s important to remember that these same TCKs wrestling with layers of difference often possess extraordinary gifts.

In her article At the Intersection: Navigating Neurodivergence and Third Culture Kids, Dr. Kristen Williamson highlights the creativity, innovation, empathy, deep focus, and problem-solving abilities that frequently accompany neurodivergence. The child who notices details everyone else misses. The teenager who learns languages through patterns and rhythms. The young adult whose emotional sensitivity allows them to connect deeply across cultures.

Sometimes the very wiring that makes life more complicated also allows a child to experience beauty, excel academically, analyze complex data, and respond with empathy more naturally than the rest of us do.

The Relief of Diagnosis

Of the adult TCKs interviewed for this article and its accompanying video, most weren’t diagnosed until adulthood. Sometimes diagnosis came after burnout. After reentry. After struggles in higher education. Or after years of wondering why ordinary life seemed to require extraordinary effort.

For many neurodivergent people and their families, diagnosis itself is not the devastating moment they feared. Often, it brings relief—because there is finally language for their strengths and challenges. There is an explanation for why transitions feel catastrophic rather than merely difficult. Why noise feels physically painful. Why social interaction requires marathon-level energy. Why someone can appear perfectly composed in public and completely unravel at home.

Neurodivergence in Cross-Cultural Spaces

For Third Culture Kids, neurodivergence can create a particularly layered experience because so much of TCK life already requires constant adaptation. New schools. New languages. New social rules. New expectations. New relationships. New losses.

Indian writer and advocate Nanyadiri, who is autistic and has ADHD (AuDHD), describes the autistic TCK life as “a difference inside a difference.” The phrase captures something globally mobile families recognize in their children with neurodivergence: some are not merely learning to adapt across cultures; they are trying to navigate a world that may already have been unpredictable, confusing, or painfully loud—and now it is exponentially more overwhelming.

Transition is one of the greatest challenges for neurodivergent TCKs. Airports. Temporary housing. Shifting routines. New foods. Unfamiliar smells. Different classroom expectations. New cultural customs. All the unpredictability that globally mobile families eventually normalize can feel deeply dysregulating.

For some children, the adventure of it all feels exhilarating. But for others, it might feel more like being forced to stand in the chaos of Times Square at rush hour—with strangers yelling questions, street vendors selling unfamiliar things, friends pushing new foods at their faces, and a thunderous storm assailing them with rain and wind—all while realizing that everything familiar (people, places, routines, their own bed) is no longer within reach.

Now imagine trying to manage that 24/7—without protective filters, escape routes, or loved ones who understand how exhausting it is.

The Tangled Strands of TCKness and Neurodivergence

The challenges don’t end with transition. For those who love TCKs with autism, OCD, ADHD, and other forms of neurodivergence, distinguishing brain differences from cross-cultural traits can be difficult.

The impact of neurodivergence, trauma, and chronic stress can sometimes look remarkably similar. Frequent moves, unresolved grief, political instability, educational disruption, repeated upheaval, and abuse can all affect a child’s nervous system. Meanwhile, globally mobile life itself already looks unconventional.

A child who struggles socially may be assumed to be adjusting to a new culture. A child overwhelmed in crowds may be labeled sensitive. Executive-functioning difficulties may be blamed on transition stress rather than recognized as part of ADHD or autism.

Jenilee Goodwin, a fellow A Life Overseas writer, notes in How to Notice Neurodiversity in Third Culture Kids that neurodivergent TCKs often slip under the radar for precisely this reason. Sometimes what we’re seeing really is TCK struggle. Sometimes it is an expression of an underlying brain difference. Quite frequently, it is a combination of both.

This is why untangling the strands of TCKness and neurodivergence is so complicated. It takes time, learning, wisdom, and often an investment of effort and funds in professional evaluation. Understanding the “why” behind a child’s behavior is essential to providing support that addresses their actual needs rather than applying strategies that may exacerbate their struggles.

Knowing more can change the entire conversation from frustration to compassion—and then to appropriate action.

The Realities of Masking

Another reason neurodivergence gets missed in cross-cultural communities is that so many children become exceptionally good at masking. Especially TCKs. Especially bright, capable, adaptable children who are praised for maturity and flexibility.

Girls, in particular, are often missed because their struggles don’t match traditional stereotypes of neurodivergence. Rather than appearing disruptive or hyperactive, many become experts at people-pleasing, perfectionism, emotional caretaking, or quiet overachievement. They may look socially successful while privately rehearsing conversations, analyzing interactions, and becoming chronically exhausted from trying to make coping appear effortless.

In missionary and ministry environments, children who mask well may be celebrated as adaptable, mature, helpful, and selfless while carrying extraordinary levels of internal stress.

And boys can mask too—especially thoughtful, sensitive boys who learn early that emotional overwhelm or social confusion feels unsafe to reveal. But because many people still picture neurodivergence primarily as a loud little boy bouncing off classroom walls, quieter presentations are frequently overlooked altogether.  

So many neurodivergent TCKs are working tirelessly behind the scenes to appear “fine.” They study social expectations. They rehearse conversations. They observe peers and imitate what seems socially acceptable. They hold themselves together all day and then collapse emotionally once they reach home.

Psychologist Laura Mannucci captures this beautifully in Belonging in Translation: Autism, ADHD, and the Hidden Labor of Adapting Across Cultures: “When you have learned to mirror others to belong, the authentic self becomes hard to locate.”

The immense mental effort required to constantly decode cultural expectations while also navigating neurodivergence becomes, as Mannucci describes it, “an ongoing negotiation between worlds.” For many TCKs, that hidden hypervigilance becomes a way of life—and an exhausting drain on their energy.

What Neurodivergent TCKs Need from All of Us

According to the TCKs I interviewed, one of the gentlest shifts parents can make is moving from disciplining difference to approaching it with curiosity. Instead of asking, “Why is my child overreacting?” ask, “What might this situation feel like inside my child’s nervous system? What could be the reason for that?” Instead of rewarding the masking that allows children to appear more “typical,” invest time, effort, and funding into the kind of research and testing that might uncover liberating answers.

And then extend love—because there are far too many neurodivergent TCKs who believe their brain difference is failure, weakness, or even sin. We as a community need to speak—and be—the antidote to those destructive lies.

So what can we actually do?

Throughout ministry life, small changes can foster stability and safety: limiting social commitments, building in respite, creating quiet spaces and predictable routines, reducing toxic stress where possible, educating siblings and community members, and supporting activities that allow for regulation and expression—art, movement, writing, creating, organizing, inventing, or analyzing.

Even adjusting family menus to accommodate intolerable textures and tastes can matter. For some autistic children, this isn’t simply a food preference; it is a visceral inability to get past the texture or taste.

Jenilee Goodwin encourages families in transition to build predictability wherever possible: visual schedules, familiar foods, comfort objects, advance warning before changes, recovery time after overstimulation, and small rituals carried from country to country.

These things may sound insignificant to people who function more typically, but to a neurodivergent child, they can feel like safety in the swirling center of threatening chaos.

Parents may also need to reevaluate expectations around pace and productivity. Many neurodivergent TCKs can technically endure crowded schedules, rapid travel, stimulating ministry environments, and constant social interaction—while paying an invisible emotional cost.

A child may be coping remarkably well on the outside while quietly unraveling internally. 

But there’s a huge difference between surviving and flourishing.

The Beauty in the Difference

Goodwin’s articles emphasize the importance of helping children understand their own brains with dignity and compassion. Neurodivergent children need language that frames their differences not as personal failures, but as part of their unique wiring. Dr. Williamson argues that when neurodivergent TCKs receive understanding and support, many develop exceptional resilience, intercultural awareness, empathy, and creativity.

When I speak with adult TCKs who received a diagnosis about what they wish someone had told them sooner, they point to the crucial importance of parents and loved ones affirming who they are—and rejecting the lies the world and their own inner voice might inflict on them.

Perhaps one of the most hopeful truths emerging from these conversations is that many neurodivergent TCK adults—with affirmation, care, support, and therapy—eventually come to see their differences not merely as obstacles, but as part of the very wiring that shaped their strengths. The sensitivity that once led to overwhelm becomes empathy. Hyper-awareness becomes emotional intelligence. The lifelong practice of observing cultures and decoding people becomes insight and wisdom.

The traits that complicated childhood can become part of what allows these adults to move through the world with unusual compassion, creativity, and depth.

Not despite their wiring—because of it.

And perhaps that is the invitation here—not to pathologize difference, nor to romanticize struggle, but to notice children more carefully. To listen more curiously. To create environments where they do not have to spend their lives pretending to be less sensitive, less intense, less observant, or less themselves in order to belong.

Because some of the children who experience the world most deeply may also be the ones most capable of helping the rest of us see it more clearly.

They are not broken.

They are not burdens.

They are unique, precious, created by God, and so very loved by Him.

 

Further learning:

— This version of the article does not include the profound and fascinating quotes collected from eleven neurodivergent adult TCKs. You can find the full article here.

— My entire three-part series on TCKs and Neurodiversity (including an interview with Jenilee Goodwin, an extended version of this article, and a videoed collection of personal stories from adult TCKs) is here.  

— Additional reading:

Belonging in Translation — Laura Mannucci
Different, Not Less — Chloé Hayden
Divergent Mind: Thriving in a World That Wasn’t Designed for You — Jenara Nerenberg
Driven to Distraction — Hallowell & Ratey
Embracing the Autism Spectrum — Dr. Stephanie Holmes
Lost in Translation: The Social Language Theory of Neurodivergence — Janae Elisabeth
Neurodiversity for Dummies — John Marble, Khushboo Chabria, and Ranga Jayaraman
Uniquely Human — Barry Prizant
Uniquely Us — Dr. Stephanie Holmes
Unmasking Autism — Devon Price

The Challenges of MK Re-entry

by Elina Placentino

“Look, it’s snowing!” I cried. 

“That’s not snow, it’s sleet.”

The reply from the front seat of our family car was enough to dampen my enthusiasm. I was eight, and we had just moved back to Finland for the first time. And although I didn’t realise it at the time, that was when I discovered that I was a foreigner in my parents’ home country. Although my passport was Finnish, my perspective on the world around me was not.

For my parents it was a return to something familiar, but not for me. For me it meant moving to a new world where winters were white, children were independent, and the general culture was reserved.

Unsurprisingly, the move took a toll on me. It played out in various ways, including causing anxiety and disruption in sleep patterns. In fact, one night my parents caught me almost walking out of the house in my sleep!                              

Re-entry is a process that may look simple on paper, but there are multiple issues that complicate it. If a child has spent a lengthy period of time abroad and has no memories of living in the passport country, the stress of transition can be considerable. It can further be heightened by the degree of difference between the countries in question, due to very practical changes connected to climate, food, language, and cultural norms.

Re-entry is also a demanding process for missionary kids, since they are commonly expected to adjust to their passport country, to appreciate it, and to sense a heart connection to it. After all, they often grow up hearing their parents speak of their passport country with affection and even nostalgia. Thus, when returning to their country of origin, parents may experience a sense of delight and even relief, whereas a child is likely to experience enormous stress and even dread.

And there is plenty to be stressed about. Nothing is familiar. There is the question of schooling, with its new subjects, systems, and requirements. There is the issue of friendships, with a very real risk of becoming a social misfit or a social chameleon (ready to change one’s behaviour in a desperate effort just to fit in). What was once seen as perfectly normal and polite behaviour (e.g., avoiding looking an adult in the eyes) is sometimes seen as bizarre. 

And, as I realised in my early adulthood, unlearning deeply engrained cultural reflexes is a time-consuming process, particularly for children who return to their passport country in their teens. It requires a high degree of self-awareness that can cause teens to live with constant self-evaluation and criticism, further contributing to heightened stress levels.

Missionary kids returning to their passport country frequently feel like foreigners while not looking physically different. This creates its own set of difficulties, as people around them expect culturally appropriate behaviour and fluent language from them. Thus there is simply less margin for mistakes.

And yet, no matter how much missionary kids try to adjust, it is unlikely that they will fit into their passport country after spending extensive time abroad. Accepting this may be challenging, particularly for parents or relatives — and these experiences can even create conflicts within the family.

These conflicts can, in turn, be further aggravated if missionary kids begin to drift away from their faith. After all, missionary kids returning to their passport country are often challenged by the different worldviews that they face around them.

This is where parents need to be aware of their children’s needs and strive to meet them ahead of time, where possible. Although missionary kids need to have space to ask questions and explore different worldviews, they also need biblically solid support, pointers, and encouragement in the process.

In an attempt to help missionary kids navigate the great questions in life, I recently published a lighthearted romcom about a seventeen-year-old missionary kid returning to her mother’s country, Finland. The Diary of…Who Am I Again? explores re-entry, apologetics, and questions of identity with humour. My hope is that it will provide young people with pointers for their own journey — and someone to laugh with. For, as most of us know, there is a good deal to laugh at in the blunders that missionary kids experience! 

Re-entry guarantees a time of turmoil, and our children need to know that they are not alone, that there is space for their emotions, and that there are answers to their questions. 

~~~~~~~~

Elina Placentino is an adult missionary kid, author, and homeschooling mother. She creates Christian worldview content for children and teens. In her free time, she enjoys being outdoors or snuggling up in an armchair with a book and a cup of tea. Her book, The Diary of…Who Am I Again? is now available on Amazon.

TCKs and the Balancing Act of Achievement

On a Wednesday afternoon we drove into the campsite and settled on a hill overlooking a beautiful river in central Taiwan. The slopes were covered with greenery — trees, bamboo, flowers — and various birdcalls echoed around us. 

Three buses disgorged nearly a hundred grade 12 students from three campuses around the island. I was the guest speaker for their Senior Retreat — a time to consider the big upcoming transition as they prepared to complete high school and (in most cases) begin military service and/or leave the country for university studies.

In my sessions, we discussed practical preparations before leaving, how to process our emotions on either side of the Big Change, even how different it can be to build relationships (and date!) in a new culture. There was one topic which held their attention more than any other. So much eye contact, intensity, and notetaking. And it was first thing on Friday morning, when many of them were tired!

The topic? Failure.

“I Have to be Perfect”

Over the past twenty years of working with TCKs, this topic has come up repeatedly. Fear of failure showed up even among those with parents and teachers who were very loving and supportive, who did not put high expectations on them. 

In conversation and interviews TCKs said, “I have to be perfect!” I would ask them, “Who told you that?” 

In most cases, what followed was several moments of silence, perhaps a cocked head, as they reached through memory and often responded, “Actually, I can’t remember anyone saying that exactly”

In some cases there was a verbally expressed expectation for their behaviour. People knew them, knew their parents, knew about their parents’ work. The way they acted in public reflected on others. It mattered.

In my book Misunderstood I described it this way:

Many TCKs I interviewed felt they had no space to fail, internalising a pressure to live up to the standards of their parents’ occupations. Foreign service and MKs were most likely to make these comments; several had been told outright, often in a serious sit-down talk, that their actions had repercussions for others — reflecting negatively or positively on their parents, their country, or even their God.

Many TCKs, whether this is said directly to them or not, carry a weight of responsibility to be good representatives of their parents’ cause. 

Many MKs feel this both while living abroad, among a people their family desires to witness to, and while visiting their passport country, as they are presented to sponsoring churches — and feel the pressure to perform for the people who pay for their family’s way of life.

In TCK Training’s 2024 survey of over 1,000 missionary kids,

  • 54% of missionary kids felt “pressure to be perfect” while living abroad
  • 69% of missionary kids felt “pressure to perform” while visiting their passport country

Warped Sense of Normal

The other big issue is that most TCKs grow up with a warped sense of normal. That is, they compare themselves to elite achievement — then decide they must be failing, or at least falling behind. 

80% of MKs grew up with at least one parent who held an advanced degree. Compare that to how many adults in the world hold any degree at all! (That’s about 20-30% in the Western world.)

About 95% of TCKs take at least some university classes. The highest numbers I could find worldwide for university entrance were in the USA, pre-covid, where 60% of high school graduates did at least some university study. And that’s just those who completed high school. It doesn’t count those who previously dropped out.

I’ve been to many international school graduations, and typically about one third of students have a cord/sash or other indicator to publicly display that they attained a straight A average. 

None of this is ‘normal’ anywhere in the world. But this is the ‘normal’ our MKs grow up with. This is the set of expectations they assume they must live up to. When they excel, they see that as expected — not something to celebrate.

Instead of celebrating their successes, many TCKs instead breathe a sigh of relief. They didn’t fail. This time. But soon enough, there’s another potential future failure to fear. 

Lessons about Failure

All this explains why, on that warm pre-storm morning in central Taiwan, nearly one hundred students watched me intently as I began to explain that the way so many of them felt inside — that pressure to excel, that fear of failure — was a common experience. That it was not a personal failing. And most important, that there was a way through it.

I shared two important lessons with them.

1) Failure is a stepping stone to success.

Ask anyone who has succeeded in their field, and they’ll tell you about the litany of failures on the way to their eventual success. No one gets it right the first time. And even if they did, that’s not how you learn. We learn far more from failure than we do from success.

Perhaps this seems obvious to you. But I guarantee, for most young TCKs this concept is a revelation!

2) Failure shows you who cares.

So many TCKs spend their lives trying to be good enough, trying to live up to something, with the unspoken belief that when they get it wrong, relationship will be negatively impacted.

And so I tell them. It is when we fail, when we get things wrong, when we show our human weakness — those are the times we see the depth of genuine relationship in our lives. That’s when we see who loves us for who we are, not for our performance. 

How Can Adults Help?

TCKs need to hear us talk about our mistakes, our failures, and our weaknesses. They need to know that we don’t have it all together — and that we never did.

They need models of getting it wrong, picking yourself up and trying again, and learning through the process. They need to know that they are loved and cared for even when everything goes wrong. We can’t assume they know these things. We need to say it out loud. 

We need to say, “You are more important to me than your grades.” 

We need to say, “I’ve failed so many times. It’s hard, but I got through it.”

We need to say, “I’m not perfect, and I don’t expect you to be.”

Many of the solutions I propose in this article seem simple, especially considering the magnitude of the problem. But that’s the point! There are lots of little things we can do that make a big difference for the TCKs in our lives. And now that we know how much these things matter, it’s time to start being intentional about doing them.

Crossing Cultures for Love

by Ruth Potinu

“Where you go I will go,” our pastor read on our wedding day. “Where you stay, I will stay. Your people will be my people, and your God my God.”

I hadn’t yet been to my husband’s homeland. We’d met while both doing cross-cultural work outside of our passport countries. I was excited to meet his family and start the work that we felt God calling us to. Once my visa came through, two months after our wedding, we left for a two-year commitment that has since turned into living in my husband’s home country for the last eleven years.

The honeymoon stage got me through language learning, adjusting to cultural differences, and being the only expat living in his village. It can be isolating at times, and yet I am so grateful for my husband’s family who are now my family. The gift of being accepted and protected through marriage is something I don’t take for granted, especially in a country that is not my own. We ended up settling in the capital city, and my husband’s church accepted and welcomed me there as well, becoming family away from family.

As an MK who never knows how to answer the question, “Where are you from?” I love that my kids can say that they are from the country where we serve. They have cousins and a grandmother here. I love that my husband’s village has now become my village, and while that can come with its own pressures and expectations at times, it also comes with so much support and a safety net that allows me to live in this beautiful, but often complicated country.

But while cross-cultural marriage comes with so many blessings, it can also hold heaviness. There was a moment when covid-19 was ravishing the globe that travel restrictions became so intense that I wondered if we would ever be able to travel again, as a family, to my home country.

I watched many cross-cultural workers boarding planes arranged by the US government to get them out of a country known for a having a weak medical infrastructure. For me, getting on one of those planes wasn’t really an option as it would mean leaving my husband behind. In fact, even our scheduled furlough didn’t happen that year when the airline contacted us to say the flight we had already booked would now not be happening.

I cried ugly tears one day as restriction after restriction made it harder and harder for non-citizens to enter the US. Would normal travel ever open up again? Was I really ready to give up the opportunity to see my biological family? That felt like too big of an ask.

I love the work that we are able to be a part of. I love my family in country, but I also love my family who live oceans away. Jesus words in Luke 14:26 suddenly held so much more weight: “If anyone comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters—yes, even their own life—such a person cannot by my disciple.”

It’s easy to say you’re willing to give up your family in theory, but a much different feeling to actually come to a place when you might actually have to live that out. “Help, me. I don’t think I am strong enough” was and often is my silent prayer.

Eventually doors for normal travel did open again. Relief comes, and you savor every minute that you can with those who live far way. There is sacrifice as grandparents on one side of the planet get to spend quality time in person with their grandchildren while those on a different side of the globe do not get that as often. Missed milestones like baptisms, school programs, and birthdays hold such a mix of joy and hard. I’m thankful for technology, but only so much can be experienced through a screen.

Covid is in the rearview mirror now, but just last month our host country was added to a list requiring high bond fees for non-citizens to travel to the US on a visitor visa. I already heard of one friend in a cross-cultural marriage whose visa application was denied after this new requirement, and their planned furlough is now in jeopardy. Constantly changing visa rules and restrictions have a way of adding stress to so many cross-cultural marriages.

And yet, here we are thankful for the love we have that reached across borders. I am thankful for a love that gives our children identity in some areas even though it can give confusion in other areas. We have a love that comes from opposites attracting, and now we must daily figure out how to live a life together. I’m thankful, and it tests me. I’m grateful, and it’s hard. I love getting to live such a culturally rich life, and I pray often for God to give me the strength to live it well in spite of the heaviness that it can hold.

~~~~~~~

Ruth Potinu works alongside her husband in his homeland of Papua New Guinea. There they seek to minister to the vulnerable, especially widows and their children. She is the author of Permission to Mourn: Engaging with Culture, Story and Scripture in a Quest for Healing with Hope. Ruth loves watching her four kids grow up, connecting with friends (preferably over a good cup of chai), and writing whenever she can carve out the time.

 

How do I help a missionary kid who is hurting herself?

I sat in an empty classroom at a Christian international school. A tenth-grade girl perched on a desk, head lowered, hair covering her face, heels kicking back and forth.

Her parents were missionaries. Her mother taught at the school to cover tuition. Earlier in the day, another teacher noticed fresh cuts high on her thigh. It wasn’t the first time. 

She said she was okay. She said she’d stop. They didn’t believe her. They knew she needed to talk to someone. She refused to see the guidance counsellor – but said she’d talk to me.

She didn’t look at me as she explained her perspective, trusting me to understand. She didn’t want anyone to worry. She really was okay. She had no intention to actually hurt herself. 

Cutting gave her clarity. It quieted the chaos of her emotions long enough for her to focus on schoolwork. It wasn’t the first time a teenage TCK had told me that.

Missionary Kids and Self-harm

Mental health challenges are common among missionary kids. Naming this does not mean we need to panic – and there is good news. Before we discuss the good news, let’s look at the stats.

According to TCK Training’s 2024 survey of 1,643 TCKs, 83% of missionary kids experienced symptoms of at least one mental health concern during their lifetime. Among Gen Z missionary kids, 79% experienced symptoms during childhood (before age 18).

Self-harm is defined as intentionally causing harm to oneself, whether or not there is suicidal intent. A large portion of self-harm falls under non-suicidal self-injury (NSSI), which includes behaviours such as cutting or burning.

A 2019 study spanning 41 countries found that around 22% of children and adolescents globally had engaged in self-harm, with onset most commonly around age 13. Cutting was the most frequent method (Lim et al., 2019).

When we compare this to what missionary kids report, we see:

  • 22% of children globally self-harmed before age 18.
  • 18% of missionary kids overall self-harmed before age 18.
  • 29% of Gen Z missionary kids self-harmed before age 18.

While these are different studies with different parameters, the message is clear: The missionary lifestyle does not provide immunity from self-harm or other mental health challenges.

Effective Prevention of Self-harm

These numbers are sobering, but they are not the end of the story. There are things we can do now to lower the risk of self-harm in our missionary kids.

TCK Training’s research consistently shows that Positive Childhood Experiences (PCEs) are strongly associated with lower rates of self-harm among TCKs, including missionary kids.

  • Missionary kids with 5-7 PCEs were 59% less likely to self-harm in childhood than those with 0-4.
  • Only 7% of missionary kids with all 7 PCEs self-harmed during childhood.
  • Gen Z missionary kids with all 7 PCEs were 82% less likely to self-harm than those with 0-2 PCEs.

PCEs have a huge impact, but they are not magic nor are they overly complicated. They are just indicators of emotionally safe homes, supportive friendships, and connected communities.

From a TCK’s point of view, the seven PCEs are:

  • I receive emotional support at home (my feelings are heard and accepted).
  • My family stands by me in difficult times.
  • An adult in my home makes me feel safe and protected.
  • There are two non-parent adults in my life who take a genuine interest in me.
  • I enjoy participating in community traditions.
  • I feel supported by friends.
  • I feel a sense of belonging during my teen years.

Each one of these matters. They aren’t difficult, but they require intentionality – especially when global mobility and cross-cultural living is involved. (Learn more about PCEs with this free course on Implementing PCEs.)

Responding to Self-harm

How adults respond to a struggling child matters, both before and after a child discloses. The way we talk about emotions, stress, faith, and struggle teaches children whether we are ‘safe’ people with whom to share their inner struggles. Many young people ‘test’ potential helpers by sharing smaller concerns first. If those are brushed off, the larger problems stay hidden. 

Most TCKs I’ve worked with who self-harmed fell into the non-suicidal self-injury (NSSI) category. They knew it wasn’t exactly healthy, but believed it was the least harmful way they knew to cope. That means our first response should not be panic or control, but curiosity. (That’s one of the four Safe Space Responses – access a free course on them here.)

Trying to stop behaviour without understanding why it developed rarely leads to lasting change. Non-judgmental listening allows us to uncover the emotions underneath and opens the door to healthier coping strategies. Next we connect the young person and their family with professional support, a crucial tool for long-term wellbeing. 

That’s what I did in that classroom. I listened. I asked questions. I helped her imagine a life where the stress didn’t pile so high she felt she needed a blade to get through it.

Together, we created a plan: mentoring, regular counselling, and a mediated meeting with the school to reduce academic pressure. Then we shared that plan with her mother.

Anyone Can Learn to Support an MK in Need

For anyone who regularly spends time with missionary kids – whether pastors, teachers, mentors, family friends, and even parents themselves – training matters. You don’t need to become a therapist, but you do need tools. I highly recommend both Youth Mental Health First Aid for TCKs and Suicide Intervention for TCKs.

To go deeper, there is Groundwork for anyone who interacts with TCKs regularly, which includes both the YMHFA and Suicide Intervention certifications, and TCK Crisis Care Training. 

Because missionary kids don’t need us to be perfect. They need us to be prepared when they are ready to reach out.

 

Note: If your family or a family you care about is in crisis, don’t wait. You are not alone, and support is available. Finding a licensed therapist your child feels comfortable with is critical for long-term wellbeing. Here is a great list of TCK-informed therapists you can refer to for assistance. The Season of Crisis Toolbox is also a great starting point for working out how to support your family as a whole while navigating difficult seasons together.

Sparking an Interest in Missions in MKs

As a global worker and parent, I want my children to love God and to love missions. Although being raised in cross-cultural missions sometimes presents a pandora’s box of hardship and challenges for our children, it is also a precious gift we give our MKs. We have an opportunity to spark their interest in missions by inviting them to hear missionary stories and also to participate in mission alongside us. In this article I offer some ideas on how to thoughtfully do that.

Start with Storytelling

Stories and chats about stories are some of the best ways to learn. Jesus knew this. The Gospels tell us that He barely said anything to the crowds unless it was in the form of a parable (Matthew 13:34). British children’s author and poet, Michael Rosen, put it well when he said, ‘A child, a book, a read, a chat. This is the way the mind grows.’ For Missionary Kids it could be rephrased to ‘An MK, a missions story, a read, a chat. This is the way a child grows to love missions.’ The reflection and chat afterwards are so important to growing and learning.

God calls and uses Missionary Kids, so they need stories to equip and empower them to share the gospel in their schools and homes, in their everyday lives, as well as alongside their parents in cross-cultural missions, when appropriate.

Begin with Scripture: The Story of All Stories

Firstly, let’s point our children to our missionary God in Scripture: the call of Abram in Genesis 12; the books of Jonah, Ruth, and Daniel; Jesus’ mission statement (Luke 4:16-21) and miracles; the lost coin, sheep, and son parables in Luke 15; the Great Commission (Matthew 28:18-20); the Holy Spirit’s coming and empowering to share the good news (Acts 2); Philip and the Ethiopian (Acts 8:26-40); Paul’s missionary journeys (Acts 13-28); God’s heart for the nations (Revelations 7:9-10). These are just a few of the inspiring Scripture stories to share with MKs about God using ordinary people to reach the lost and broken with the gospel message.

Perhaps for older MKs, or those who have grown up in church, it is not about sparking an interest, but stoking it: adding the wood of a fresh perspective to a well-known story, or directing them to a lesser-known one, to fuel a mission flame and make it burn brighter. Consider Ebed-Melech, the Ethiopian who helped save Jeremiah from the cistern and interceded for the king (Jeremiah 38-39); the women who supported Jesus (Luke 8:1-3); Paul’s colleagues, church hosts/supporters (some of whom are mentioned in Colossians 4:10-15); and the freed Gerasene demoniac (Mark 5:1-20) — an unlikely gospel-bearer sent by Jesus to his home and people.

Remember the pattern: a story, a read, a chat.

The Power of Hearing Someone Else’s Story

God put missions to Brazil on my heart when I was sixteen years old; stories of past and present missionaries inspired and set a precedent.

Although they didn’t know it at the time, my parents’ gifting in hospitality played a large part in drawing me to missions. They regularly hosted 20+ church friends for a meal and then huddled around a screen looking at photos from Peru, or Central Asia, or Tanzania, listening to a recently-returned cross-cultural mission worker share about their ministry and how God was at work in a particular place. Throughout my childhood and teenage years, hearing mission partners share their stories and passion for bringing the good news to other people groups happened regularly enough that I considered it normal to serve in missions.

One of the best ways to spark a love of missions in children and teens is for them to hear, in person if possible, mission partners sharing their stories. Churches can inspire their children and young people by making space for mission partners to share. 

Read Mission Stories

Whilst seeing and hearing mission partners in person is impactful, reading mission biographies can be too.

I recently read Steve Richardson’s Perfect Peace Child with my six- and eight-year-old MKs. They were captivated by the colourful and vibrant illustrations of the New Guinean jungle swamps, bugs, and descriptions of the Sawi people’s lives. We had a good conversation about the joys and challenges for a young MK and his family of contextualising and sharing the gospel with the unreached Sawi during times of intertribal conflict. We chatted about how that meant living alongside them and learning from them as ‘experts in jungle living’ and how much we all need a deep-down, forever peace that can only come from having Jesus in our hearts.

For those who are familiar with Don Richardson’s well-known story or film, what struck me about this child-friendly retelling by their MK son was less of the Sawi’s identity as head-hunters and cannibals and more of God’s presence and provision — often unexpectedly using their MK family, despite the challenges of limited language and cultural understanding.

God’s Child: A True Story of Brave Faith in Ethiopia is an engaging story for parents to introduce their middle graders (eight- to twelve-year-olds) to the realities of the persecuted church. There are not enough mission biographies about Black Africans, especially ones so well-researched and written. It tells the true story of Negussie, a boy who grows up near a missions base in rural, communist Ethiopia during the 1970s. He joins an underground church during the Red Terror, is persecuted and jailed for his faith, but finds ways to share the gospel and hold onto hope in dark times.

Some children will be greatly impacted to learn about the persecution and suffering many Christians face in their daily lives. I was glad to have read it cover-to-cover before introducing it to my eight-year-old so that I could be prepared for the questions which came. For us it was a prompt to look again and pray for the persecuted church and to encourage our MK that God is at work even in the darkest times and places.

The stories of God at work through mission workers can be powerful and faith-fueling for little ones. As well as the pioneering missionaries I grew up reading about — Amy Carmichael, William Carey, Jim Elliot, Gladys Aylward, and Hudson Taylor (see the Heroes for Young Readers series or Irene Howat’s Lightkeepers series) — there are now more mission biographies of Black missionaries for younger readers, including the Do Good for God series which includes Maria Fearing and Betsey Stockton. We look to Global South authors to write biographies of your mission workers, of whom far too little is known or written.

Lead Conversations about Missionary Stories

The chat about the book could be as simple as, ‘Are there any ideas that are new to you in what you are reading?’ or ‘How did they handle challenges?’ or ‘Has anything like that ever happened to you?’ Take time to actively listen to understand, rather than just to teach. 

In Third Culture Kids: A Gift to Care For, Ulrika Ernvik suggests offering children ‘bubbles,’ especially for harder conversations: floating a comment, often connected to a deeper feeling, and allowing the child to engage or let it drift by if they do not feel ready to reply. 

For example: ‘Imagine growing up, like Steve Richardson, in a place where none of your friends have heard of Jesus.’ Or, ‘Negussie must have felt a bit lonely when his friend John left Ethiopia. It’s hard to say goodbye to friends.’ In essence, we wonder out loud with our kids present. Sometimes the reply comes days later. Reading, listening, and wondering together are the goals: sparking an interest and curiosity in missions and connecting over it.

Create a Mission-Oriented Home

While stories are important, the most impactful introduction to worldwide mission for MKs is their parents’ lives and ministries.

Partnering without Pressure

We don’t assume that just because our kids are growing up in a missions environment that they will one day be missionaries. Neither do we assume or impose on them the weight of the title ‘little missionaries.’ 

However, we know that our children are already learning missional living through watching us. We now step beyond watching, to participating and doing. We hope to engage them and invite them in; not forcing participation, but finding appropriate and optional ways to be involved in our ministry, according to their ages, interests, and giftings. 

As young MKs, for now, my children’s involvement means occasionally praying or singing in services in the church plant we lead in Brazil, as well as their favourite way to help — as Daddy’s assistants at weekly chess club. As they grow and continue to be open to this, we plan to increase their engagement and responsibility. It is important to us that they don’t feel the pressure to perform or be perfect, either in the places we serve or when visiting our sending churches.

Prioritizing MKs

Missionaries often, though unintentionally, put our children off missions and even God. Sadly, many adult MKs feel their childhood bore the brunt of their parent’s calling in lack of quality time with their missionary parents, feeling that their needs were always second to those of the people their parents served, feeling they were always on display and needed to be perfect, seeing profound suffering and hardship around them, and experiencing trauma, stress, and financial instability, to name a few. 

My husband and I read up on those pitfalls and work to avoid them, although we are mindful of our limitations and make plenty of mistakes of our own. We have come to understand the importance of listening and apologising when we get it wrong. Equally, as our children move towards adulthood, we expect them to take ownership of their lives and choices, irrespective of the childhood they had.

Missionary parents can be the most influential advocates for their calling to their children. By prioritizing quality family time and holidays, practising self-care, inviting their children to serve alongside them without pressure, including them in decision-making processes, and explaining the ‘why’ motivating their actions and choices, missionary parents can model missional living as a privilege rather than a burden — even amidst sacrifices and difficulties. In prioritizing family as our primary mission and maintaining a balanced life, we model a lifestyle that can attract them to missions.

The Gift of a Cross-Cultural Childhood

Despite growing up in a small, rural village at the foot of the North Downs, England, I lived near an agricultural college in a neighbouring village that drew in PhD students and their families from all over the world. It was only as a young adult that I began to appreciate how blessed I was to have had such an ethnically diverse group of childhood friends. 

When I was a very young child, one of these families became close family friends. They are Brazilian, and this must have been when God started to ignite in me a love for Brazil, which led me here as a teenager and to twenty years of serving in missions in Brazil. A childhood surrounded by a diversity of cultures is a good training ground for learning skills for missions like flexibility, open-mindedness, and even other languages.

The Gift of Growing Up in a Missionary Home

Missionary parents can invite their MKs into a conversation with a missionary who drops round or ask for their opinion on a mission-related subject that comes up. Kids overhear parents discussing how to respond to a challenge in ministry. We can see it as an opportunity to involve them, including asking their opinion during chats over the dinner table. 

Discuss the family’s missional giving with them. Ask them to contribute to newsletters. Attend and serve in a mission-hearted church. Our everyday interactions and conversations are their training ground. Parents know best the depth to go into challenging topics and the sensitivity of their child. Whilst even young children can contribute to decision making, the parents make the decision, bearing everything in mind.

Inviting and Involving Your Children

Many MKs have an interest in global affairs. My husband and I take prayer points from the global news to bring to our family intercession time. Creative prayer ideas like prayer chains, drawing, or prayer calendars can make prayer more interactive. 

My husband makes annual visits to South Sudan, and my six-year-old, who is the only member of the family yet to visit, has begun to learn a few Dinka phrases. We cook South Sudanese recipes and pray for friends, pastors, and communities we know. The kids chat to those friends on video calls. My eight-year-old loves Japan. And because she is interested, we order in sushi and learn origami, and she learns Japanese on a language learning app. We attend some missions fairs, conferences, and events with them. 

Children can tithe to missions by setting aside a portion of their monthly pocket money specifically for a mission worker or mission project of their choice. Once, after leading children’s activities on missions at one of our sending churches, the kids surprised us with an offering and gathered around to pray for us and our MKs.

How about connecting with another MK and finding out about their host country’s culture and parent’s ministry through emails and photo journalling? Or re-gifting toys and books they have grown out of to the children of a local mission worker? Or simply inviting your MK to interview you during some sending church visits? There are so many creative ways to engage their interest, to invite them in and involve them deeper in missional living.

An MK’s childhood is a crucial moment to support and train them in godly, missional living. Like arrows, sharpened and released into a broken world (Psalm 127:4), we direct them to carry the transforming gospel message and make a lasting impact on the nations. Nurturing an MK’s love for missions requires the same intentionality as any other area of their discipleship. They are our inheritance and gift: a blessing to us and to the world. We pray that their lives — shaped by our stories and the stories we tell them — would become the next story that inspires others to love God and to love missions.

 

Use the discount code MISSIONKIDS25 to receive 25% off the paperback, hardback, and ebook editions of Perfect Peace Child and God’s Child at Mission Kids. Offer valid through February 28, 2026.

Finally, Proof That Kids Can Thrive While Growing Up Overseas

Last month marked twenty years since I started working with TCKs and globally mobile families. I have always believed that international life is a great experience and that we all gain so much from it — no matter how young (or old) we are.

Yet through the years I have met a lot of young people who experienced a lot of pain during and following their international years. I have spent a lot of time listening to them and their stories, too. I joined TCK Training because I believe so much in the mission of preventive care: that there are practical things we can do to help families thrive through international transitions. 

Now, we have the research to prove it.

Preventive Care That Works

The field of preventive science is relatively new. While research into Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) has been going on for nearly 30 years, research into Positive Childhood Experiences (PCEs) isn’t even 10 years old.

Last year, TCK Training surveyed over 1,600 Adult TCKs about their childhood experiences — both the hard things and the resilience-building factors. In September, we released findings on how both ACEs and PCEs impact long-term wellness for TCKs. The biggest takeaway was that 5-7 PCEs dramatically improve long-term outcomes for TCKs, whether or not they experienced childhood trauma.

There are several different studies measuring different protective factors. We modeled our research after Bethell et al’s 2019 study with seven Positive Childhood Experiences. We asked TCKs seven questions, and each time they answered ‘true’ or ‘mostly true’ they received a score of 1, leading to a total score of 0-7. 

  1. I felt safe/accepted when talking about my feelings with my family.
  2. I felt my family stood by me during difficult times.
  3. An adult in my home made me feel safe and protected.
  4. I felt supported by friends.
  5. I felt a sense of belonging during my high school years (around age 14-18).
  6. I engaged in community traditions I enjoyed. (These might include religious festivals, national holidays, school events, or annual gatherings.)
  7. I always had at least two adults in my life who genuinely cared about me (not including my parents).

The difference in long-term outcomes for TCKs with all seven PCEs vs TCKs with no PCEs was astounding. For example, TCKs with all 7 PCEs were:

  • 63% less likely to be diagnosed with anxiety
  • 72% less likely to abuse alcohol or use illicit drugs
  • 86% less likely to be diagnosed with PTSD
  • 2.1x more likely to say being a TCK was “the best way to grow up”
  • 5.4x more likely to say the TCK life was “wonderful, no regrets”

Yet this is only part of the story. High PCEs often come with low trauma. In order to really test whether PCEs were responsible for better outcomes, we divided our survey respondents into four groups. First we divided them into those with 0-4 PCEs and those with 5-7 PCEs; then we divided each of those groups by high/low trauma scores.

This meant we could look just at TCKs with high trauma, or just with low trauma, and see whether PCE scores made a difference within each group. Over and over, through dozens of different factors, high PCE scores made a difference for TCKs.

Even When Life Is Hard, Preventive Care Matters

We repeatedly saw that even when TCKs experienced trauma during childhood, those with higher PCE scores had better long term outcomes. For a TCK with 3 or more ACEs, also having 5-7 PCEs meant they were:

  • 38% less likely to smoke
  • 67% less likely to abuse prescription medication
  • 46% more likely to say that the TCK life was a good experience overall
  • 2x more likely to say living abroad made their family closer
  • 2.3x more likely to say the TCK life was “wonderful, no regrets”

Sometimes, the traumas that form an ACE score are hard for parents and caregivers to prevent. Bad things happen, even to good people, good families, and when everyone tries their best. For example, parents struggling with their own emotional or mental health during difficult international transitions are not always capable of parenting at their best, especially when solid support is in short supply. 

The good news is that protective factors are powerful — and many occur outside the home. Every family needs a village to provide additional support for their children, to create this protective shield against the difficulties of life.

Preventive Care Is for ALL Families

Yet preventive care is not just for those kids and families having a difficult time. Preventive care helps everyone! TCKs with 0-2 Adverse Childhood Experiences also benefited from the presence of Positive Childhood Experiences! Those with 5-7 PCEs were:

  • 38% less likely to abuse alcohol
  • 43% less likely to be diagnosed with a chronic illness
  • 44% less likely to experience suicidal ideation
  • 52% less likely to self harm
  • 63% less likely to have 25 or more sexual partners

The good news is that these protective factors make a difference in the lives of all TCKs, even when they are not experiencing childhood trauma. 

We Can All Make a Difference

Something that was clear across each group was the impact of PCEs on TCKs’ perception of their parents’ work abroad. If you’re anything like me, you’ve heard stories and read articles about missionary kids who felt let down by their parents’ work, by the missionary organisation they worked for, and even by God for sending their family to do such a hard thing. 

I think it is therefore really important to know that in our research, a TCK with all 7 PCEs was 2.2x more likely to be proud of their parents’ work abroad than a TCK with no PCEs. And whether they had low or high trauma scores, TCKs with 5 or more PCEs were 44% more likely to be proud of their parents’ work abroad. 

Part of caring for missionary families well is being the village they need to provide emotional support through life. Being the friends who form their community — sharing friendship, being ‘aunties’ and ‘uncles’ to their children, and celebrating traditions together. These things make a big difference in the lives of children growing up globally.

Learn more about the Protective Factors:

Free course on implementing PCEs

Read the free research report

Read the full research report

Watch the workshop explaining the research

Photo by Ryan Stefan on Unsplash

 

Fighting for Awe and Wonder – And Why It Matters

It was her question that I couldn’t shake. The type of question where harsh reality clashes with idealism. And I couldn’t ignore the drive to chase an answer, even if it took months to unpack. Or in this case, twelve months. 

“How do we maintain awe and wonder?” 

She wasn’t asking because I knew the answer. She’s way smarter than I am. She was asking because she sensed that our souls earnestly wanted to discover some answers together—or at least start trying as we meandered the whimsical neighborhoods of Portland. Her poodle sniffed a statue of Ramona Quimby at the Beverly Cleary Park. 

Speaking of awe and wonder while exploring my favorite childhood author’s hometown and secretly snapping selfies outside her childhood home was the backdrop to her inspired question. Standing where Beverly Cleary would have sipped lemonade and chased playmates in Mary Jane shoes felt surreal. Ramona, Beezus, Henry, Ribsy, and even Scooter, and their white-picket-fence lives were friends who flooded my imagination as a child. I devoured their stories—where the biggest challenge is the neighbor’s complaint of your scruffy dog—over and over by the flicker of a kerosene lantern in a village in Africa. 

The spark of our awe and wonder conversation felt magical, and everything in me was alive. The fact that I was having this exchange with a brilliant children’s book illustrator made it all the more invigorating.

Until I found out the hard truths about Beverly Cleary’s dingy childhood. There wasn’t much sipping of lemonade and chasing of friends along idyllic streets like I’d always imagined. It seems like her writing was less of a memoir and more of an escape to places deeply longed for. 

It hurt to shatter the romantic lens. It was also inspiring. Because there was no better place for me to begin to wrestle with the question of how to maintain awe and wonder in a dark world than outside the childhood home of an author who lived this tension. 

How do I maintain awe and wonder in a world that’s bent on crushing it? 

And why does it matter? In a world where the bodies of children are swept away by swirling waters in Texas, the children in warring strips of lands are paying for centuries of conflict, and the minority children in Cameroon have been prohibited from attending school for fear of their lives, why does it matter to the beating of my very soul if I fight for a sense of awe and wonder? These things feel secondary when I can’t even ensure the protection of the least of these. 

Twelve months later, I still don’t have a clean answer, but I’d like to share what I’ve learned so far and open the conversation to learn from you. I’m pretty sure if you’re reading this, you’ve lived a hard journey across global borders, raised children in hard places, served the unseen, lost a lot, been hurt a lot, wrestled with God a lot, and maybe, just maybe, have lost some awe and wonder in the process. So I think this community has something to teach me.

Why does any of this matter? Why did this question resonate with me and all of humanity?

Because the opposite of awe and wonder is everything that tears us apart from each other and from God. They are the things that disconnect us, suck our souls dry, separate us from empathy for our neighbor, and drive us away from praise. In stark contrast to awe is cynicism, indifference, disenchantment, boredom. On the farthest end of the spectrum of the human experience from wonder is jadedness, apathy, detachment, contempt, and dread. 

A dreary worldview leads us to disconnection, comparison, and inaction. It leads us to seeing others as less than fully human and a growing disdain for the many forms of the goodness of God. We lose our ability to love selflessly and take on pride, gossip, narcissistic tendencies, and even war.

I do not want to be accustomed to these things taking up space in my heart. They are diametrically opposed to awe and wonder. I can hardly think of a closer description of hell. Or things that take my mind further from the heart of God.

Against a landscape of evil, hardness, hyper-self-preservation, disconnection, ingratitude, and danger, I must engage awe and wonder because it leads me to 

praise God better,
which leads me to softness,
which leads me to share,
which leads me to connect,
which leads me to appreciate,
which leads me to protect. 

As a teen full of imagination and wonder, someone informed me that my rose-colored glasses were evidence of a head buried in sand and that my wonder insulted the pain of others. More than anything, I didn’t want to participate in disregarding the pain of others. 

So, instead of learning to better balance the pain of the world with my bursting curiosity, I tried to be mature like them. Bury liveliness. Embrace cynicism. Because jaded people seemed super informed, albeit crippled by inaction. 

As someone who has lived and worked overseas for decades, I’m painfully aware that the pursuit and expression of beauty may be interpreted as disloyalty and abandonment of those in hard seasons. 

But the abandonment of wonder left me hollow. So, I’m back at this question again. 

Practically speaking, how do we do this? For starters, we need to name the things that deoxygenate our awe and loot us of joy. Screens. Inauthentic experiences. Passivity. Pride. Hypervigilant self-focus. Reading comments online—where criticism is acutely trained to detect imperfection and is blind to the bravery it took someone to produce art or work.  

But simply avoiding thieves of joy isn’t what makes us connected and full. Our beings were made to actively seek the beautiful things that make us fully aware of God and in tune with each other. Here are a few fertile places I’ve found.  

  1. Good theology matters. Perhaps there was some level of truth that my childlike awe and wonder neglected to acknowledge the hard things of life, a TCK phenomenon I am only now grasping in my line of work with TCK research. Perhaps a better worldview and a deeper theology would have me explore the complex and uncomfortable truths—learning to hold in tension the beautiful and the hard—and that sometimes the hard is beautiful and the beautiful is hard. Perhaps my heart was meant for deeper worship without reservation when I am called to build a more solid theology of God’s goodness, suffering, sin, and to honor the feeling of paradox of things I don’t fully understand now, but will someday. Perhaps the greatest way to honor the good with awe and wonder is to acknowledge the hard and whisper an invitation for the Holy Spirit to be my teacher (John 14:26).
  2. Cultivate tenderness. Tenderness sees the brokenhearted, turns the throat-lump into sea water running down cheeks, delights in the petal formation of a rose, pauses to ponder the markings of a toad, rebels against the overloaded schedule, believes the best in disquieting misunderstandings, and makes creamy chai for the neighbor. If tenderness is a soft landing place missing from our ability to breathe, stop, praise, notice, engage, maybe it’s time to go back to the root of love—the type that bears, believes, hopes, and endures the things trying to break us (1 Cor. 13:7). 
  3. Throw off the things holding me back. With haste. A good, hard look in the mirror paired with the sacred work of the Holy Spirit burns the secrets holding me back from the Father’s innocence, joy, awe, and empathy. Hebrews 12:1 is a much sweeter bid to freedom than a list of shoulds and condemnation. It is the invitation to drink deep of the things that make me alive and release the things that threaten to sink me. It is a call to marinate in Shalom peace, receive it, root in it, fruit it, and share it. 
  4. Train my eyes upon the unnoticed things. God delights in the song of the sparrow, Leviathan’s froth from playing in the sea, and he even cares about the sorrow of the tax collector. It’s pausing to admire delicate forest fungi while hiking among towering redwoods or listening to the layers of music in a song you’ve heard a hundred times. Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God. The innocent delight in the little things. To be easily awed is an enviable art these days. 

For the past twelve months and twenty-one days, I’ve been sitting on the question I bring to you today: “How do we maintain awe and wonder. And why does it matter?” 

Perhaps the steps of Beverly Cleary’s childhood house was the perfect place to begin wrestling with this question. The gift of her whimsical stories didn’t stem from an idyllic childhood but from a place of longing. Joy and wonder didn’t erase the scarcity but became an intentional step out of the dreariness. 

So what about you? How do you fight for awe and wonder? 

 

Photo by Chris G. Pexels.

Introducing a New Middle Grade Fiction Novel for TCKs

Sam’s Roommate Disaster released today on Amazon as the newest TCK book on the market. 

Have you ever read a story and felt like you were reading your life? Growing up as a kid in Cameroon, I never had that experience – even though I poured over the books in our extensive homeschool library. My new book, Sam’s Roommate Disaster, is my attempt to change that for young TCKs. 

TCKs can get exhausted from frequent change and loss. While there’s a lot of loss in the globally mobile experience, there is also precious gain, and that is the beauty of the TCK experience. I want third culture kids to have relatable stories where, even in the pain of unexpected change, they see that it is worth leaning into new experiences and new people to see what is on the other side.

I wrote this book for the kids whose backgrounds are underrepresented in children’s literature. I wrote it for the kid who doesn’t like school and who struggles with reading. I wrote it for the one who daydreams during class, the one who wants to be outside exploring. I wrote it for the kid who does something without thinking and then wonders, “Why in the world did I just do that?” 

I wrote it for the kid whose friend moved away and they’re pretty they’ll never make a friend like that again. I wrote it for the kid who is misunderstood and doesn’t want anyone to know why. 

I wrote it for third culture kids who live behind cement walls, the ones sitting in metros, and the ones running barefoot through jungles. I wrote it for their monocultural cousins who need a sneak peek at childhood overseas. I wrote it for the kid who needs an imaginative escape into a world of friends and adventures. 

I wrote it for the moms who have to send their kids to boarding school. I wrote it for the dorm staff who became like second parents for TCKs during formative years. I wrote it for international school teachers who want a fresh book with settings that don’t have white picket fences and characters who make all the right choices. But mostly, I wrote it for your kid.  

I wrote Sam’s Roommate Disaster right in the thick of an incredibly difficult season in my own journey as a global worker. It was a time when I needed to come up for air. And that meant revisiting the awe and wonder of childhood stories, both mine and my husband’s. It meant sharing stories with my kids around the dinner table. 

It meant listening to the giggles of old friends as they told stories from their perspective. It meant opening doors to hear fresh adventures from my in-laws about their wild child, Sam, who did all the things, took all the risks, made some mistakes, and picked himself back up again. And it meant fanning a spark of creative writing which soon became a flame that brought me great joy. 

Disappearing into these stories transported me back to steamy jungle rains, clunky old bikes with tales that could fill libraries of books, tight sibling bonds, and small schools where your youth group leader is also your math teacher. It took me back to the feeling of dread after doing something dumb and realizing you made a mistake. It awakened the feeling of hot tears on freckled cheeks, the rush of wind through hair on a runaway horse, that first crush. It made me remember small class sizes where even the tattletale belonged and the unforgettable innocence of childhood BFFs.  

As your kids read this book, I hope it solidifies their belief that the world of third cultures is one in which they belong. This is their tribe and TCKs are their people, whether they’re in Thailand, Hungary, or Uganda.

If you grew up overseas and you read this to your kids, I hope it transports you back to a time of jungle rains, small schools, and BFFs. Mostly, I hope it unlocks your ability to share your own story with your kids, because that’s what they really need to hear. 

Book Teaser:

“Sam’s heart pounded like a hot basketball in his ears. If he heard one more snore from his roommate, his anger might just spill out, and there was nothing more embarrassing than crying in fifth grade. Scrunching the covers tighter around his head didn’t do anything to muffle the noise rumbling from the bottom bunk. Being eleven at boarding school was hard enough, let alone sharing a room with Jordan, the only kid at boarding school who snored like a freight train.”

Buckle up for adventures in the jungles of Congo with boarding school kid, Sam! Hold on tight, because 5th grade for Sam includes a run-in with a highly venomous green mamba, a runaway horse, a heart-pounding close call on his dirt bike, and an angry mama pig. His biggest challenge, however, has nothing to do with snakes or pigs. Sam’s greatest challenge is his new roommate, Jordan.

Jordan is making 5th grade impossible. He’s loud and messy, and he ignores Sam. When Sam realizes there may be more to the story, will he decide to keep his distance or give his roommate a chance?

What kids are saying:

“I like the suspense, the love, and disliking feelings.” –Sam, age 11 (Indonesia)

“Readers beware: full of motorcycle chases, green mambas, flying lizards, and the

dreaded banana bread.” – Michael, 8th grade  (Cameroon)

“I really loved how the descriptions made me feel like I was with them throughout their adventures! After reading this book I would really like to learn how to ride a dirt bike!” – Eliana, age 11 (El Salvador)

“It was really fun and exciting, and it was encouraging at the perfect time when I needed it.” – Charlie, age 9 (Hungary and Mongolia)

“This book was really great! I could really relate to my own life as a missionary kid and all the adventures I’ve had!” – Kora, age 10 (Colombia)

“It was cool to see what missionary life is like in other countries. Just watch out for banana bread and lizards with parachutes!” – Andrew, age 12 (Indonesia)

“I liked this book because there are a lot of different adventures, and it’s based on real life. It’s an exciting book, and there’s never a dull moment!” – Asher, age 9 (South Africa)

Fun Facts to share with your kids AFTER they’ve read the book:

Yes, the stories are based on true events from either Sam’s childhood or mine. 

Yes, I’m one of the characters. 

No, I didn’t meet Sam until high school. 

Yes, Sam hates bananas that much. 

Yes, soccer really was that big of a big deal. Jordan went on to co-found Petrichor Football Association. 

Yes, Josh and his red-headed crush ended up together. They live on a happy little farm in Indiana. 

Yes, the lizards were fine.

No, I’m not done writing kids’ books. I’m working on Book 2 of the Barefoot Around the World series.

Where to find it:

Head to Amazon now and grab your copy of Sam’s Roommate Disaster! Dive into exciting new tales that resonate with TCKs around the world. For a limited time, enjoy special discounts on b ebooks ($3.99) and paperbacks ($8.99) through August 23rd. Let’s revive storytime and make it an adventure your kids will love!


Follow Raising a Family Overseas on Instagram and Facebook for practical tips and conversations about doing global family life.

A Chat About TCKs, Faith, and Missions with Marilyn Gardner and Elizabeth Trotter

It was a joy to record this conversation with my dear friend and fellow expat writer, Marilyn Gardner. We talked about so many things that we had to split it into two parts!

In the first video, I introduce Marilyn, who wrote regularly at A Life Overseas for many years and has published two books on the TCK experience — Between Worlds and Worlds Apart. (She also raised her five children overseas.) We talk about writing, about her TCK childhood, and then begin talking about pitfalls in missions.

In the second video, we go deeper into some current and historical trends Marilyn has observed over the years, before pivoting to MKs and faith struggles. Marilyn knows what it is to struggle with faith, and her heart is so compassionate to those who are struggling.

I hope you will watch both videos when you have time!

Heaven’s Embrace

Pictured above: Mami Banla meets my daughter, Elaina, for the first time.

Eight Cameroonian mamas adjusted their head coverings and stopped their chatter to watch the colorless foreign family spill out of a truck and into their lives one day in the remote mountain village of Lassin. Father, mother, and four kids poured out of the vehicle, all with gecko-pale skin that the sun threatened to slice right through. Their hair looked unmanageably “slimy.” That’s the only word one chuckling mama could use to describe it.  

The women had heard from the leader of their large, extended family that this foreign family was to come live many years among their nest of eight clay huts and two block houses. The mamas respectfully greeted the strangers and then got back to work making cornmeal mush and spicy spinach to share with them that night.

That was my introduction as a seven-year-old to the eight ebony women who would spend the next 13 years sharing life with me on the Kinyang compound.

We shared space. Bamboo stools in small, smokey clay kitchens, cooking in the dark over open fire, waiting hours for beans to cook to fill rumbling tummies.

We shared life. Gathering minty eucalyptus branches for firewood, pounding clothes clean at the waterfall, hunting for bats in a land void of light pollution, tugging goats home to safety at dusk.

We shared family. Papas, mamas, and babies eating spinach and corn out of shared bowls, hauling heavy baskets of vegetables and dried fish home from the market, working together to save a roost of dying chickens, even a formal adoption ceremony of the six white foreigners into the Kinyang compound, complete with food and traditional clothes. 

We shared comedy. Listening to my best friend’s deep belly laugh as they told traditional folklore around the night fire, discovering sugar cubes together for the first time, playing hide and seek in thatched kitchens, and three kids piled high on my bike as we raced down dirt roads. 

We shared healing. Watching a mama boil eucalyptus and citrus leaves in a cast iron pot to “chase” my fever, praying life into a baby slipping into death, later naming that baby Kembonen or “Blessing,” driving friends on death’s door to the mission hospital two bumpy hours away, and mourning, nay, screaming grief out the healing and healthy way when loved ones died.

We shared education. Making a sprawling dollhouse fantasyland out of braided grass on the soccer field, twisting horse hair snares to catch live birds for pets (and secretly collecting the horse hair to begin with), quickly escaping the wrong side of a green mamba.  

We shared tragedy. My mom fishing two Fulani boys out of the bottom of a swirling river using only a rope and a hoe, visiting and praying over a deeply mentally disturbed woman, praying for the salvation of a boy whose body was being hollowed out by HIV/AIDS (the first case I witnessed), a baby falling into a fire.

We shared death. Losing one of my new best friends to traditional medicine malpractice, quietly staring at another best friend’s tear-stained cheeks as he stood over his father’s grave, two family friends being poisoned in a Salem-style witch hunt.

We shared new life. The most beautiful baby girl I’d ever seen with piercing ink eyes named Sheyen (“Stay and See”), a sweet nonverbal soul born into our compound family and named Peter, a young mama working in her cornfields up until the day of delivery, my mamas holding my own baby girl for the first time.

We shared love. Sharing meager amounts of corn, chickens, and firewood, being hugged tight by eight mamas when I went off to boarding school, and many years later, those same eight mamas washing my body with a bucket of water and dressing me for my traditional wedding to a very white husband who had to pay my bride price through a translator.

Love has a heavenly manifestation in Lassin. It is a literal physical embrace called “Ngocè,” specific to the region and used when someone has been away so long, you’re not sure if you’ll ever see them again. Short life spans, limited transportation, and no media communication at the time all contributed to the very real threat that you may never see someone again if they go off to the big city for college, boarding school, or a job. 

If and when they do return, you drop everything right out of your hands, run to them, grab them with every fiber in your body, pat their back, and squeeze their arms almost in disbelief that they are standing in front of you. It is a symbol of astonishment, of amazement, of deep understanding of shared experiences, and of intense joy at reunification. It’s recognizing the gift of a moment you don’t deserve but are so glad to have. Ngocè is endowed through blood lines or adoption into a family, as we were.  

I first experienced the Ngocè embrace from my mamas at age 12, after coming back from our first year-long furlough in America. I was back home, and I knew it. I experienced it again after coming home from boarding school in the capital city and when I brought my man home to negotiate a bride price of goats and rice with my mamas as a respectful (and fun) gesture. And again, years later from my dad, when I stepped off the plane from America to celebrate the 20-year project of the Nooni New Testament translation in Lassin.

A visiting friend happened to record the Ngocè heavenly embrace when I returned to Lassin that final visit for the New Testament dedication celebration. I hadn’t seen the video in years and pulled it up on youtube last night. Tears stung my eyes and a lump formed in my throat when I watched my dad, my mom, and my mamas Ngocè me back home. Just watching it felt intensely like coming home, and it broke open a piece of my heart that comes alive when I’m really, really home.

I can’t help but wonder if that’s exactly how I will meet Jesus in heaven. Running, arms flung open, in disbelief at the beauty of the moment and amazement at a new but long-awaited reunification, accepting a grace I know I don’t deserve but am so glad to have. We’ve shared space, life, family, comedy, healing, education, tragedy, death, new life, and love even longer and even more intimately than my Lassin family, he and I. The Ngocè embrace is the only way I can picture my first moments there with the one who so loves me. 

A Letter to My Missionary Grandsons

by Oma Joy

Twelve and a half years ago, when our eldest child and only daughter left home for a mission assignment in Asia, my husband and I both shed tears. But we were undergirded by a sense of being part of a purpose greater than ourselves.

I remember my co-workers frequently saying things like, “How can you let her move so far away?” or “I could never do what you are doing.” And my response was that I loved and supported my daughter and wanted to bless her to pursue the calling she was made for. I would say, “I didn’t have children so that they could live down the street just to make me happy.”

But 12 years ago, I had no idea how long a life-time calling would be: how many birthdays and Christmases, Easter dinners and graduations, funerals and weddings we would miss sharing together. And I could not have anticipated what it would be like to miss watching my grandchildren grow up.

Yesterday we said goodbye once again. We know the routine well. The flurry in the days prior to leaving, the “last” trip to the library, the “last” walk to the park, the “last” hug with a grandparent who likely won’t be living when you return, the steady stream of family and friends who come for final goodbyes the day before departure, the banter and photos at the airport, the anxiety over the mountain of luggage and wondering if it will clear the final weight check, the tearful hugs that avoid any total breakdown, the final waves as you slowly disappear down the escalator, and then some real sobs when you are out of sight, and finally the several-hour drive home where we talk about anything other than the departure.

But then we return to the house. The home that we have shared for six months: three generations, two cultures speaking two languages, with very little privacy or sound barrier. A home that has been filled with so much life and laughter and noise. And the silence is deafening. What can I do but put some of your things away and count the ways that I find you?

So I wrote an ode to my grandsons, ages 7 and 9.

How do I miss you? Let me count the ways.

I miss you in the 23 paper airplanes, paper boats and paper rockets that I find upstairs and downstairs. I pick ten to keep on my dining room table for a while.

I miss you in the color yellow (Samuel’s favorite) which seems to be everywhere: yellow dishes, yellow towels, yellow Legos, yellow pillows, a favorite yellow cup. For the rest of my  life I will always think of you when I see yellow.

I miss you in the leftover bottles of shampoo in your shower, whose smell is exactly how you smelled in the mornings when you were freshly dressed for school and gave me wonderful hugs.

I miss you in the children’s health insurance card that I no longer need to carry in my wallet.

I miss you in the bags of library books waiting to be returned. I miss you when I find the note, on yellow paper, which showed the authors or titles we were supposed to look for at the library. Bill Peet, Robert Munsch, Shel Silverstein, and Hopper the Rabbit.

I miss you as I pack away the winter hats and gloves (reminders of a freezing day in our town), which I store for perhaps another winter furlough. But who knows what size you might be then?

I miss you in the kites that were left in our junk room, the ones from a birthday party that have your names on them.

I miss you in the box taped shut, guarding your tin-can telephones and string. I wonder if they will reach all the way to Asia.

I miss you in the tiny silver chain that you found on our trip to Silver Lake, a chain that became Samuel’s focus of the outing and which now hangs by my window.

I miss you at the breakfast table when I watch the momma bird sit on her nest and think about how excited you would have been to see these eggs hatch.

I miss you when I find the special Asia ketchup sauce that you needed for every meal, and I miss you when I overeat your curly cheese snacks, trying to bring you back to my table.

I miss you when I find the car booster seat and think of all the places we went together, and I am happy when I share it with your mother’s friend to use for transporting children to church.

I miss you when I find the white container in the shower that served as your adapted Asian water bathing barrel.

I miss you when I find the box from Jeffery’s friend, delivered the night before you left with a note saying, “I wish I could go with you.” You took the toy, but I’m saving the note from the box. I agree with your friend.

I miss you when I smell microwave popcorn, which you ate every day after school, and when I wash your favorite bowls and cups, and when I look at all your art on my refrigerator.

I miss you every time I sign on to my computer or use numerous apps that need passwords, because clearly that is what grandsons’ birthdays are made for: passwords. (Shh, don’t tell.)

I miss you when your “go to sleep” song is stuck in my head on an endless loop, reminding me of the times that I got to do bedtime with you.

I miss you as I wash your sheets and towels and pillowcases and store your blankets. It is a sacred task. It was not long ago that I had so much fun picking out fuzzy flannel sheets for your winter furlough, a furlough which included the first Christmas here at home together in 12 years. A furlough which included celebrating three of the four birthdays in your family, and a wonderful wedding for your beloved uncle and new aunt. A furlough which included a friend-filled semester at the local elementary school, as well as Sunday school, kid’s club, and children’s choir at our church, a special time at the cabin in the woods, and so much more.

I miss you, and so I promise to keep doing the things I know how to do: reading online children’s books, sending you books through Book Depository, communicating through What’s App and Messenger, playing online Rummikub, sending Christmas care packages in early November, praying day and night, and renting our basement apartment to make money for tickets to come to see you.

As your adaptable minds and hearts have shown us, it is possible to love people on both sides of the world. So we will all keep growing and loving wherever we are planted, until the next time we are planted in the same place for a season. But I will never stop seeing you and hearing you here with me, because you lived in my house, and you always live in my heart. I love you.

Oma

~~~~~~~~~~

Oma Joy is a pastor living in the Southern United States. She and her husband worked with a church development agency in Honduras from 1986-1989 and in the Philippines from 2002-2005. They are the proud parents of three adult TCKs and the grandparents of two TCK grandsons.