Rooted To Nowhere

Whether their parents are missionaries or managing directors, almost all expat kids have a moment when they realize that their adopted home means at least as much to them as their country of origin. For Daniel Welch, now a senior at the American School in Japan, it came when his family temporarily returned to Utah after 31/2 years in Tokyo. His new classmates never asked about his life abroad: "I would say I was from Japan and they wouldn't care." Welch had become — to use a phrase popularized by consultant David Pollock — a Third Culture Kid, one who inherited the culture of neither parent but instead formed his own international outlook.

It's a growing demographic. According to the European Council of International Schools, some 350,000 children attend international schools across the globe. These are kids who fly before they walk and sort their friends by continent but can't answer the question "Where are you from?" without a pause. It's not just Western kids in Asia who feel the tug: Asians in Europe face the same sense of internal conflict. Lili Sin Hidge is a Malaysian-raised Hong Kong Chinese living in London. She has two teenage daughters with her husband, a Eurasian who grew up in South Africa. "They're much more free to do what they want," she says of kids in England. "But I want my children to be at home with me until they go to university or get married."

Often, all is well until the fateful day when the parents decide they want to go home — but the children don't. Pollock, who explores this parent-child divide in Third Culture Kids: the Experience of Growing Up Among Worlds, explains that there can be a deep fissure between the country on someone's passport and the place he or she considers home: "Your passport tells you what country you are allowed to reside in. Your heart tells you what is home. Sometimes parents don't realize the depth of connection their children feel to the country they are living in." The key is to be honest with your kids. The children who have the hardest time adjusting are those whose parents have made false promises about the possibility of moving back abroad. Kids won't bother to fit in "back home," he explains, if they think there is a chance they might leave again.