All stories have a beginning, middle, and end. All good stories have exciting parts and difficult ones. All great stories are still being told. Just like the best stories of all time, your third culture kids’ lives have joyful chapters about friendship and love and hard chapters that are filled with heartache and loss. It is just as important to share the fun parts as well as the hard ones. The best ways to tell your TCKs that their stories matter include:

1. Listening + sharing alike! Letting people in to hear your story and taking the time to listen to theirs builds feelings of trust, connection, compassion, empathy, and of course, resilience. 

2. Acknowledging that all experiences are different. Even if they have grown up in the same family with the same background, everyone has a different perspective and has experienced situations through their own lens. This means that each of your TCK’s stories will be different than those of their parents, siblings, friends, and classmates. It is extremely important that in personal storytelling everyone feels safe and known. You can reinforce this by reminding siblings to not contradict their siblings’ stories, even if they get some details wrong! Everyone processes their own experiences—and even their shared ones—a little differently.

3. Respecting each other with confidentiality. One of the best ways to create safe spaces is by practicing not telling other people’s stories for them. The only times that it’s OK to break confidentiality is if you feel that someone is at risk of harming themselves or others.

READ

Ralph Tells a Story by Abby Hanlon

Every day in writing class his teacher tells him to write a story, but Ralphie can’t find one to tell.  His classmate, Daisy, claims that there are stories everywhere. This is a great book about how we all have good stories to tell, even if we don’t realize it!