The bags are packed and the itinerary carved in stone for our annual pilgrimage back to the UK. In ten days, we are taking in the Natural History Museum, a train journey, tea with Great-Grandma, the bluebell woods, a fish and chips supper on a cold, blustery beach, the farmyard petting zoo, and a family wedding.
It sounds more stressful than relaxing. I know my children would be just as happy running around the closest park, rather than this whirlwind tour of experiences. It's like an abridged British childhood - ten years of memories crammed into ten hectic days.
But I feel this obligation to give them roots in a culture that is theirs, but that they are strangers to. So they have a sense of cultural identity, know who they are and where they are from. With the bulging itinerary looming, I start to wonder if this is definitely the right course of action. Do our children really need crash courses in the cultures of our motherlands?
Carmen Benton is a parenting educator and educational consultant at LifeWorks Counselling and Development on Al Wasl Road. She has a particular interest in Third Culture Kids (TCKs), meaning expat children who grow up outside of their parents' culture, and on the fringes of the culture of their ‘host' country. She says it is not that TCKs are culture-less, but that their culture is one that is shared between other global nomads. Rather than being geographically anchored, it is a culture born out of similar experiences.
As a TCK myself, I can buy into this theory. I recall feeling unnerved by childhood trips to the UK, which I was told was my home, but where I didn't feel I belonged. At the same time, I never felt like the cultures of the countries we lived in had become instinctively my own. I was part of the global expat community and now, as an adult, many of my friends are TCKs. Even with different backgrounds, as expat brats we have something in common.
I ask Carmen if forcing a cultural identity on my children is going to make them feel alienated when they don't feel ‘instinctively' English? She says, "If you refer to the UK as home, they might find it confusing. Help them see themselves as culturally nomadic." OK. So, I should say, "Grandpa lives in England. Nanna lives in Bahrain. Aunty Tess lives in Holland. But our home is here in the UAE, where we live now." This is head-spinning even for me. Carmen says, "It can be confusing, but it's silly to try to squeeze them in to a cultural mold that is foreign to them. If they have grown up here, they're from the Third Culture. We're just being fake if we don't teach them about themselves."
This is a topic to address on the aeroplane, I think. In preparation, I put the feelers out to my five-year-old's cultural identity. After she had confirmed she is ‘from' England, but ‘lives in' the UAE, I asked her what she likes about England. She answers, "I like Inger-land because it snows. And I want to make a snowman." Fair enough. To a child who has only experienced snow from a silver ceiling, making a bona fide snowman would be an easy sell. It makes me wonder if that's why I like England, too. Because it has forests, bluebells, and blustery beaches - things that aren't part of my everyday life. In a way, it's exotic.
I ask my daughter what she likes about the UAE. She stops for a minute and says, "My friends are here. And my bunk bed. And my clothes." I would answer the same - minus the word ‘bunk'. When I ask her where she wants to live when she is older, she answers, "Maybe Sri Lanka." Would she not miss the UAE? "No," she says, matter-of-factly. "It's too hot." And that was that. The country of her birth and her childhood dismissed without a second thought.
So she sees the UAE as her home, but not a permanent residence; not where her culture is grounded. Even without my planned intervention she is well aware of her motherland, country of residence and of her Third Culture citizenship. It seems, instinctively so.
To sign up for Carmen Benton's TCK workshops this month, visit www.lifeworksdubai.com
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