How many cups of coffee have warmed my hands as I hold space for chilling stories?
A montage of cups in a myriad of settings flicks through my mind. A couch in Mexico, a church office Keurig in America, a to-go coffee and a walk in South Africa, my patio in Papua New Guinea, a hotel lobby in Egypt, my own mug in front of countless Zoom calls. Story after story from Third Culture Kids (TCKs), adult TCKs, TCK parents, TCK caregivers, and member care. The same story told a hundred different ways.
A story of broken trust.
Earlier this year, TCK Training closed our survey on Developmental Trauma in TCKs and we began analyzing the data. While the results weren’t surprising, they were chilling. I held my coffee closer.
Of the 1,904 adult TCKs surveyed, 39% said that they didn’t feel loved or special to their parents. When we look at kids born after 1990, that number goes up to 42%. The other numbers of staggeringly high rates of abuse, neglect, and other trauma swirl around me, but this one stands out.
It chills me to the bone.
Because I’ve talked to a lot of TCK parents, and not a single one of them didn’t love their children. Not a single one.
And yet, nearly half of TCKs are saying that didn’t feel true for them.
I imagine the faces of their parents if they were to hear this. What if my TCKs said this? What if your TCKs said this? And I imagine anguish and despair.
What causes the disconnect where parents love their children and children don’t feel that?
It’s a story of broken trust. And I’ve heard it 100 times.
It’s a story where parents wonder why their TCKs didn’t tell them. It’s a story where TCKs said their parents wouldn’t listen anyway. It’s a story about TCKs reaching out for emotionally safe spaces and their parents unaware of that need or how to fill it.
But the beautiful thing about trust is that it’s more like a bone than a dish. Even if it’s broken, trust can be reset and trust can heal.
How to be an Emotionally Safe Space
One of the hardest things for parents to swallow is that their kids gauge the safety of their home by the small things before big things are ever a thing. Parents will wonder why abuse wasn’t reported to them. Kids will say that, when they were scared of the dark, their parents said there wasn’t anything to be afraid of.
How we respond to our children when they’re dysregulated over anything teaches children what they can expect from us in the future. When we tell a child grieving over the wrong color cup that “sometimes they just need to learn to go with the flow,” we dismiss their emotions and tell them to accept life however it has been dealt. Five years later, they may not mention being emotionally abused by their teacher, because they expect we’ll just dismiss their emotions and tell them to accept life however it has been dealt. Five years later, they may not mention being sexually abused by a trusted adult, because they expect we’ll just dismiss their emotions and tell them to accept life however it has been dealt.
Trust is built in low-stakes situations, so we have to faithfully honor their emotions even when it seems silly. I think about how God comforted Elijah when the prophet just wanted to curl up and die. It’s a popular meme that God gave him a snack and a nap. But then God did something even more amazing: He showed up.
God himself showed up and asked what was wrong.
We can do that, too.
Acknowledge – Affirm – Comfort
- Acknowledge – We want to acknowledge when our children trust us with something. This can be as simple as saying, “Thank you for telling me that!”
- Affirm – We want to validate their emotions, even if we don’t agree with their perspective. Empathizing with our kids can radically change our parenting.
- Comfort – We want our children to become emotionally regulated. That rarely involves solving their problem. More often, it means holding space for their emotions and helping them co-regulate.
So in the case of the wrong colored cup, being emotionally safe looks like saying, “Thank you for telling me how important that green cup is to you! It makes sense that you’re feeling disappointed. I have a favorite cup too, and I feel disappointed when it’s dirty. Can I hold you? You look like you could use a cuddle.”
In the case of being afraid of the dark, being emotionally safe looks like saying, “Thank you for telling me you were scared. I always want to know when you don’t feel safe. I would feel scared too if there was a monster under my bed! But I have a rule against monsters under the bed, so let’s go look under the bed together and I’ll tell him to get out!”
In the case of having a hard time at school, being emotionally safe looks like saying, “Thank you for telling me you were upset. I always want to know when people are being unkind to you. I would feel hurt too if someone said that to me! I want to talk about this more, but right now I see you’re still really upset. Can I get you a smoothie and we can figure this out when you’re ready?”
In the case of sexual abuse, being emotionally safe looks like saying, “Thank you for telling me this. I always want to know when something like this happens. It makes sense that you would feel nervous about telling me. I need you to know, first and foremost, I believe you and I’m on your side.”
So often, parents don’t know how to be emotionally safe because emotional safety wasn’t modeled to them. But that’s not how this story needs to end. Acknowledge, affirm, and comfort is an easy model that parents can use to restore trust in their homes.
TCK Training is committed to helping TCK families through this journey, through family debriefs, family care packages, and Unstacking Sessions for Minors. Our research has directed the conversation, and we’ll be sharing more about these topics in our 2023 workshops.
