Soon after moving to Caracas, I learned about Third Culture Kids. I was excited to see that there was such an organized group dedicated to bi-cultural kids and it was also refreshing to learn that most of the issues my children would be confronting were already familiar to me. Even though there’s a plethora of information out there for them, there are a few points that I feel are crucial to them becoming happy people.

1) There is no right, wrong or best place to live. Live wherever you want. Wherever gives you warm and fuzzy feelings. Places that terrify you. Or those that make you feel protected.

2) You can have more than one home. While most people think of one place as home, it’s not a rule. It’s perfectly normal to feel attached to several places – even places that you’re visiting for the first time.

3) The quality of your life is strongly linked to your relationships. Living anywhere you want and/or having several homes will most likely mean that you’ll always be living far away from someone about whom you care. That means you’ll have to make an extra effort to maintain those relationships because otherwise you run the risk of turning the road less traveled into a lonely one. So, like plants, water them on a regular basis.

4) Your cultural identity is like your fingerprints. It’s unique to you. Although third-culture kids tend to have a lot in common, how you end up coalescing all the cultures you’ve been exposed to will be like no other. View this difference as you do your fingerprints, it just is. No need to measure it, qualify it or label it.

These four points are pretty broad-based, but I think they offer a good starting point to prevent common frustrations of bi-cultural kids. Can you think of any other advice?

Way back when, I wrote about my struggle with my daughter to get her to give her teeth to the Rat instead of the Tooth Fairy. Last time I updated, the Tooth Fairy was winning big time. She kept up her winning streak until last week when my daughter lost her 8th tooth. This was our conversation:

Her: My friend at school told me that the Rat can bring you more money than the Tooth Fairy.

Me: No, the Rat will bring you a nice tooth and that’s it.

Her: Well then, I want the Tooth Fairy to come get my tooth.

Me: What do you prefer – money that you’ll spend in a day or a nice tooth that will last you a lifetime.

Her: *thinking* Uh, the money.

Me: Does that make sense to you?

Her: Okay, fine! I want the Rat to come.

Hooray! Well, considering that the 7 before have gone to the Tooth Fairy, it’s not a complete win, but I’ll take what I can get at this point.

So, the next day we called the Rat from the window of our apartment and told him that we were sending him a beautiful tooth and in return we wanted an ugly one. As soon as the deed was done, my daughter (who is afraid of her own shadow) turns to me and says, “The Rat better not come to my room tonight.”

Small victories, I say