The Incredible Power of Positive Childhood Experiences

 

If you’ve followed my writing for a while, you may remember my article on Adverse Childhood Experiences or ACEs. In that piece, we explored new research by TCK Training that measured the amount of toxic stress MKs and TCKs experience, and how it matches up with the stress of young people in other communities.

Further exploration of the topic for my upcoming book, Pieces of Purple, pointed me to Positive Childhood Experiences (or PCEs), a powerful balancing tool that might mitigate the impact of ACEs in global nomads’ early years, while lessening the imprint of ACEs in their adult years.

MKs and TCKs whose PCEs are powerful enough to retain their brightness despite the darkness of any Adverse Childhood Experiences will be able to acknowledge the Hard without losing sight of the Wonderful.

In my work with families, I’ve found it helpful to categorize Positive Childhood Experiences as either Bright-Impact PCEs or Profound-Impact PCEs—two terms I coined to help define their differences. They can help MKs to more easily identify the positive events and environments that have supported their wellness and help parents to craft a plan that blesses their children with both.

BRIGHT-IMPACT PCEs

Bright Impact PCEs are significant and important. They’re more short-lived experiences that temporarily bring joy and comfort to children. Just as an accumulation of small-T trauma can have a powerful negative influence on young minds and spirits, an accumulation of Bright-Impact PCEs can have a powerful beneficial influence on the minds and spirits of MKs.

For global nomads, those Bright-Impact PCEs will vary with the details that make our stories unique—with each home country, each family dynamic, each glowing memory, each story of personal suffering, overcoming, and thriving. We might joyfully remember:

• • • • The sound of monsoon rains on our home’s tin roof
      • Providing food and shelter for thousands of refugees
      • Bringing sustainable farming to war-ravaged places
      • Spending entire days with our friends on public transit in bustling, safe cities
      • Seeing a baby who had hours to live being nursed back to life in a tent hospital
      • Witnessing nationals graduate with degrees in theology, music, or ancient languages, to take the reins of ministries in their own countries
      • Riding motocross bikes over a sea of sand dunes
      • Digging life-saving wells where water is scarce
      • Cutting the ribbon on a new school building
      • Eating a meal cooked over smoldering manure
      • Creating lodging and paving roads and extending bridges in Jesus’ name across gaping divides between countries, people, and faiths
      • Learning to cook a traditional meal from a best friend’s abuela
      • Watching the northern lights reflect on a nearly-still ocean

PROFOUND-IMPACT PCEs

While Bright-Impact Positive Childhood Experiences might be compared to the chimes and piccolos in a TCK’s symphony, Profound-Impact PCEs are more like the timpani and contrabass. They are foundational family practices and external systems that will influence Global Nomads on a deeper level, fostering a sense of safety and a capacity for hope that are indispensable for resilience and emotional stability.

Research into this phenomenon has shown that survivors of trauma who can identify 6 to 7 Positive Childhood Experiences (the Profound-Impact variety) in their formative years will be 72% less likely to experience depression or mental health challenges later in life.

This data positions PCEs as essential counterweights to the detrimental impact of Adverse Childhood Experiences. They can actually protect against some of the negative future outcomes ACEs have wrought in the lives of TCKs.

There are seven Profound-Impact PCEs parents can cultivate—both in the family culture and in the broader environment—to multiply joy-giving influences in their children’s lives. The more of these positive experiences TCKs are offered, the better their chances will be of avoiding trauma-triggered mental health challenges in the future.

1. 1. 1. 1. Being able to talk with their parents about their feelings—having Mom and Dad validate emotions, ask follow-up questions, and offer comfort.
         2. Experiencing the support of parents during difficult times—Mom and Dad being physically present, engaged in the situation, and ready to go to bat for their children as needed.
         3. Enjoying family traditions in which they regularly participate—finding predictability and stability in celebrating milestones and special occasions together.
         4. Feeling a sense of belonging in a high school setting—having a place among their peers, being involved in extracurricular activities, and feeling socially connected in this critical phase of development. (This obviously would have to be adapted for home-schooling children.)
         5. Being supported by friends—finding inclusion and self-esteem-boosting relationships with peers who aren’t related to them.
         6. Being genuinely cared for by at least two adults (coaches, mentors, teachers, or friends of the family)—their value and worthiness being validated by adults who invest time and love in them.
         7. Feeling safe and protected by a parent in the home—knowing that at least one parent is there to shield them, meet their needs, and empower them, while striving to maintain emotional security inside the home.

Some of these Profound-Impact PCEs can be cultivated by parents wherever the family serves—with open communication, intentional action, right priorities, and child-focused wisdom.

But life doesn’t happen in a vacuum. The temperaments of individual children, past trauma they’re carrying, family dynamics, and the social and geographical environment they’re living in will also play a role in the availability of Positive Childhood Experiences.

In some cases, making sure a son or daughter receives sufficient PCEs will require parents to increase their intentionality in areas that need attention.

In others, it may force them to make heart-wrenching sacrifices for the best of reasons—the kind of changes that protect the current and future wellness of global nomads at the cost of changing locations or communities, and sometimes even leaving the ministry.

Given the gentle care and focus Jesus showed to children—as well as his admonishments to love them well—making hard and heartful decisions for the sake of a suffering child may be the most Christlike of PCEs those who love MKs can offer them.

FINDING ONE’S FOOTING BETWEEN ACEs AND PCEs

There’s no doubt that we’ve been gifted so much good by growing up as TCKs. What we’ve accomplished and seen, what we’ve learned and assimilated. All priceless.

We wouldn’t trade it for the world.

Some MKs have also been confronted with realities beyond our capacity to handle. We’ve witnessed atrocities or shouldered excessive stress or survived dangerous events or lived with unhealthy alienation and uncertainty.

Yet we still wouldn’t trade the good parts for the world.

I personally experienced family dysfunction, sexual abuse, severe depression, suicidal ideation, and an anxiety disorder during my growing-up years.

Yet I too wouldn’t trade the rest of it for the world.

Grief and joy.

Floundering and flourishing.

ACEs and PCEs.

They exist in tandem in the lives of so many TCKs.

And parents can help their children to find their footing at the intersection of the Wonderful and the Hard. Permission to express struggles, relationships capable of receiving the truth, resources to help process with a knowledgeable guide, and faith in a God who understands and cares—all of those can shine stability, true resilience, and a healthy outlook on self and on God into the complicated existence of children who grow up cross-culturally in the often-challenging world of ministry.

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Pieces of Purple—the Greatness, Grit, and Grace of Growing Up MK will be available for purchase in April, 2025! To be informed of the exact release date and pre-order your copy, please subscribe to my blog using the form on the right side of this page.