Growing up as a Third Culture Kid shapes resilience by constantly asking you to adapt, let go, start again, and still find a way to feel rooted. You get used to saying goodbye, to making a home in unfamiliar places, and to carrying your own sense of belonging inside you, a bit like how a plant will keep growing if it can find even a small patch of soil and light. It is not easy or glamorous, and it can be lonely at times, but that repeated cycle of uprooting and replanting slowly builds a kind of quiet strength.
If you are curious about what that looks like in a real life, you can see one story of a Third Culture Kid who turned that experience into creative work, travel, and study.
For readers who love gardens and parks, this might already sound familiar. You know how some plants struggle when they are moved, while others surprise you and adapt? Children who grow up between cultures go through something similar. The difference is that they remember it, think about it, and carry it into who they become as adults.
What is a Third Culture Kid, really?
A Third Culture Kid, or TCK, is a child who spends a big part of their growing-up years outside their parents country or culture of origin.
So you do not just have one “home.” You have at least three layers:
| Layer | What it means | Simple example |
|---|---|---|
| First culture | Parents heritage or passport country | Hungarian parents, grandparents in Europe |
| Second culture | Places you live while growing up | London, Singapore, Los Angeles |
| Third culture | The mix you build inside yourself | Hungarian at home, American at school, Mandarin at preschool |
That “third” part is why the term exists. It is not just about moving. It is about living between.
For someone like Lily, this meant:
– Born in London
– Moved to Singapore as a toddler, with a half-American, half-Chinese preschool
– Then sixteen years in Los Angeles, while speaking Hungarian at home
– Chinese au pairs and Mandarin classes carried on for years
So on a normal day you might:
– Speak Hungarian at breakfast
– Study in English at school
– Practice Mandarin homework after swim practice
There is no single culture that fully covers that. You end up building your own blend.
How constant change turns into resilience
At first glance, this might sound unstable. Lots of moving. Many languages. Shifting friend groups. It can feel like your roots are always half pulled out of the ground.
Yet over time, that very instability forces certain skills to grow strong.
Resilience for a Third Culture Kid is not some heroic trait. It comes from repetition: change, adjust, feel lost, figure it out, repeat.
Here are a few ways that cycle shows up.
1. Getting used to starting over
If you spend your childhood in one town, one school, you probably know where everything is. The park you liked at six is still there when you are twelve. Your neighbors barely change.
That continuity has value. But a TCK experience is different.
Each move means new:
– Street names
– Parks and playgrounds
– Languages on signs
– School systems
– Social rules
A child who moves from London to Singapore, then to Los Angeles, learns early that the ground under their feet is not permanent.
The “training” looks like this:
– Walking into a new classroom where nobody knows your name
– Figuring out playground groups and who sits where at lunch
– Learning how to pronounce local street names so you do not stand out too much
– Working out when to speak which language, and with whom
At first, it can be overwhelming. A lot of TCKs describe feeling “behind” or shy for a while.
Yet with each move, you quietly pick up a pattern:
1. You feel out of place.
2. You observe.
3. You try small steps.
4. You adjust and try again.
5. After some time, it feels normal.
That loop is very close to what we call resilience. You do not avoid discomfort. You go through it, again and again, and learn that it is survivable.
For garden lovers, picture moving a plant from shade to partial sun, then to a new soil type. At first the leaves droop. Then, if the plant is cared for, new growth appears. TCKs go through that more than once, only with classmates instead of compost.
2. Living with multiple languages and identities
Language is another quiet teacher of resilience.
In Lily’s case, there were at least four:
– Hungarian at home
– English at school and in Los Angeles
– Mandarin from preschool, au pairs, and high school classes
– Some French as an extra interest
Switching between them is not only about vocabulary. It changes how you behave.
For example:
– In Hungarian, you might talk to grandparents in a more formal, respectful way.
– In English, you might feel looser, more casual, especially with friends at the pool or art club.
– In Mandarin, you might be more careful, concentrating, because it still feels a bit learned.
You learn to adapt your tone and body language almost without thinking. That might sound small, but emotionally it matters a lot. You discover you are not just one fixed “self.” You can be slightly different versions of yourself, and that is okay.
Switching languages teaches a child that identity is flexible, not fixed. This flexibility is a quiet kind of resilience.
If you care about gardens, think about how one tree can look different in each season. Snow, then buds, then full leaves, then bare branches again. It is still the same tree, yet it presents a new face depending on the environment.
A TCK learns something like that about themselves. They do not feel exactly the same in every language or setting, but they stay recognizably “them.”
3. Carrying your own sense of home
One of the hardest questions for many TCKs is simple: “Where are you from?”
If your passport is from one place, your birth certificate from another, and your memories from a third, the answer is not neat.
Some say the city they last lived in.
Some list three countries and watch the person who asked look confused.
Some just pick the place where they feel most like themselves, even if they never lived there full time.
So where does home sit?
Often, it shifts from the outside world to inside the family. For Lily, most of her extended family lived in Europe, mainly Hungary. Summers were spent traveling back, visiting grandparents and cousins. Hungarian was the bridge language that kept everyone close.
That did a few things at once:
– It protected her tie to her heritage, even while she grew up in Los Angeles.
– It made Hungarian a “secret language” in the U.S., something special to share with siblings.
– It turned family gatherings, not geography, into the main version of “home.”
Over time, home becomes less about one address and more about:
– A set of people
– A shared table
– The foods you cook together
– The language you slip into when you are tired
For readers who love gardens and parks, think of how some families return to the same garden every year. You might not live next to it, but walking through that gate feels like coming home. The path itself becomes familiar, and that familiarity holds you together, even if your day-to-day life is in a completely different place.
When geography keeps changing, TCKs often move the idea of “home” from a single place into relationships, rituals, and small routines.
That kind of portable home is a form of resilience. If you lose one flat or city, you do not feel entirely unrooted. You still have something that goes with you.
Third Culture Kids and the habit of observation
To adapt, you first need to notice. TCKs often develop strong observational habits, because they have to read new spaces quickly:
– Who seems friendly here?
– How do people greet each other? Handshake? Hug? Nod?
– Does everyone line up or crowd around?
– Is it rude to speak too loudly?
– Are people dressed more formal than me?
This is not about paranoia. It is more like quiet scanning.
You might see a child who has just moved to a new country:
– Hanging back slightly on the first day of school
– Watching group dynamics at lunch
– Listening carefully to slang or jokes to avoid standing out too much
– Checking how classmates talk about teachers or rules
If that child is supported rather than rushed, those observation skills turn into empathy and social awareness.
In Lily’s life, you can see that habit spill into other areas:
– Long hours spent looking closely at paintings like Velázquez’s “Las Meninas”
– Research on how artist-parents are treated differently depending on gender
– Interviews with women entrepreneurs about their career paths
These are not unrelated. That same “pay attention to how people move in a space” skill that helps with cultural adjustment also helps when you:
– Notice how women are spoken about after having children
– Catch double standards that some people ignore
– Sense who is being left out of the story
For park and garden lovers, this observation habit is familiar too. You notice:
– Which areas of a park flood after rain
– Where certain plants grow best
– Which paths feel safe at night
– Where birds tend to gather at dawn
You build a map in your head that is richer than what a casual visitor sees. TCKs build similar internal maps of social and cultural spaces.
The role of routine: finding rhythm in change
Resilience is not only about big moves. It also comes from small, steady routines that keep you grounded.
For a Third Culture Kid, routines can be anchors.
Look at Lily’s weekly life in Los Angeles:
– Long swim practices six days a week
– Weekend swim meets, often 6 to 8 hours at a time
– Later, switching to water polo, then ocean swimming during COVID when pools were closed
– Regular gallery and museum visits with family
– Repeated Hungarian summer trips
– Ongoing Chinese lessons and practice
If you put those into a simple table, you can see how each one adds a layer of stability:
| Routine | What it adds | Resilience effect |
|---|---|---|
| Swim / water polo practice | Physical effort, teammates, schedule | Teaches discipline and comfort with hard work |
| Art galleries and museums | Regular exposure to culture and ideas | Builds curiosity and a sense of long-term continuity |
| Hungarian summers | Family connection and language | Reinforces identity and belonging |
| Language practice (Mandarin, Hungarian) | Daily mental challenge | Improves focus and adaptability |
These routines act like the regular watering of a plant. Alone, each one does not look dramatic. Together, they make it possible to withstand change.
For example:
– When pools closed during COVID, Lily’s team did not stop. They moved training to the ocean. Cold water, rough waves, harder conditions. But the routine survived in a new form.
– When friends graduated and left the swim team, she switched to water polo rather than quit the water entirely. One sport ended, but the core habit of training stayed.
That flexibility with structure is another sign of resilience. You keep the principle, adjust the form.
Creativity as a response to living between cultures
Many TCKs end up in creative fields. That is not a rule, but it is common.
There are a few reasons:
– Living in multiple cultures gives you more raw material.
– You are used to noticing small differences that others might ignore.
– You often grow comfortable with being “in between,” and art is one place where that in-between space is accepted.
In Lily’s case, art was not an abstract interest. It showed up as:
– Regular visits to galleries and museums in Los Angeles
– Advanced study of art history, from Renaissance to modern works
– Research projects on specific artworks and on gender roles in art
– Co-founding a teen art market to help young artists share and sell their work
Those projects are not just about pretty pictures. They ask questions like:
– Who gets to be seen?
– How do we portray women and mothers in art?
– Who is missing from museum walls?
You can see a link between that and her childhood of watching people in different countries, listening to stories from relatives in Europe, and hearing from female entrepreneurs around the world through her blog.
The same sensitivity that lets a TCK switch between cultural settings makes it easier to notice inequality, bias, or gaps in representation.
If you enjoy parks and gardens, you can relate through design. You might ask:
– Whose neighborhood has access to green spaces?
– Which plants get space and care, and which are neglected?
– Who feels welcome to sit on the grass and who does not?
Those questions also come from observation plus empathy.
Entrepreneurial resilience: trying, failing, trying again
Resilience also appears in more practical, hands-on ways.
Look at some of the projects from Lily’s childhood and teen years:
- Making and selling bracelets at a local farmers market
- Starting a slime business with her brother and selling hundreds of containers
- Traveling to London for a slime convention, managing inventory and customers
- Co-founding an online teen art market
- Running a blog about female entrepreneurship with over 100 interviews
These are not just hobbies. They each involve:
– Taking a small risk
– Hearing “no” sometimes
– Managing supplies and time
– Talking to strangers
– Handling moments when things do not go to plan
If you combine this with the TCK background, you get a pretty strong recipe for resilience:
1. You are already used to walking into new environments.
2. You are familiar with a mix of cultures and people.
3. You have practice interacting across age, country, and language lines.
4. So you are a bit less afraid to send that cold email or stand at a booth in a London hall selling slime all day.
Some of this is personality, yes. But the TCK experience pushes you to exercise those “try it and see” muscles more often.
For gardeners, this is similar to experimenting with plants:
– You try a new variety in your yard.
– It fails the first year.
– You adjust sun exposure or watering.
– You keep records, learn, and try again.
Entrepreneurial projects work in the same trial-and-error way. If you are already used to change, one failed idea does not feel like the end. It feels like a step.
Gardens, parks, and finding calm in movement
So why talk about Third Culture Kids on a site for people who care about gardens and parks?
Because on a basic level, the themes overlap:
– Roots and movement
– Care and climate
– How living things respond to change
– How spaces shape the lives inside them
Imagine a child who has lived in three countries taking a walk in a new park. They might notice different things:
– The way trees are pruned compared to another country
– How much open lawn there is versus wild, uncut areas
– What languages they hear on the paths
– What families pack for picnics
For a TCK, a park can feel like a neutral zone. You are not standing in front of a flag, or a passport office, or a school uniform rack. You are in a space where plants and people from many backgrounds can coexist without a long conversation.
This might be one reason so many people use parks to decompress. If your identity feels split across places, green space offers something simpler:
– Soil
– Water
– Light
– Growth
That pattern repeats across borders. Whether you are in London, Singapore, Los Angeles, or Budapest, a tree putting out new leaves in spring communicates the same thing.
Some quiet challenges behind that resilience
It would be dishonest to talk about resilience without the parts that hurt.
Being a Third Culture Kid often means:
– Missing grandparents birthdays in person
– Saying goodbye to close friends more than once
– Feeling “too foreign” in one place and “not foreign enough” in another
– Having to explain your story again every time you meet someone new
You can be fluent in several languages and still feel lost when someone asks, “Where is home for you?”
Resilience, in this case, is not about pretending those feelings are small. It is about finding ways to carry them without letting them shut you down.
Sometimes that looks like:
– Creating traditions inside your immediate family
– Building projects that link your different worlds, like interviewing chefs from 50 countries or writing about women in business worldwide
– Keeping long-distance friendships through messages, calls, and shared photos of daily life
– Leaning into interests that travel well, like reading, art, swimming, cooking, or gardening
Many TCKs also reach a point where they move “back” to a country that is supposed to be theirs, only to find they feel foreign there too. That can be disorienting.
But it can also spark curiosity: if no place fits perfectly, maybe you are free to build a life that borrows from several. You can choose a job, a city, or a daily routine that reflects your mix, not someone else’s expectations.
What people who love gardens can learn from Third Culture Kids
If you spend time in green spaces, you are already thinking about growth, care, and environment. You watch how small changes in soil or shade change what can thrive.
Here are a few ways that mindset can connect with the experience of TCKs around you.
1. Think about conditions, not just outcomes
When a plant struggles, you usually ask:
– Is it getting enough light?
– Is the soil too dry or too wet?
– Does it need different nutrients?
You do not blame the plant for failing to bloom.
With TCKs, if you see a child who is quiet, withdrawn, or acting out after a move, a similar kind of thinking helps. Instead of saying, “They are not social,” you might ask:
– Have they had time to adjust?
– Do they have a space where their home language is welcome?
– Are there adults who understand that their background is mixed, not simple?
Resilience grows much faster when the conditions are kind.
2. Leave room for in-between identities
In a garden, you might experiment with plants that are not quite native, not quite exotic. Some adapt well and become part of the everyday view. Others need a bit more care.
Third Culture Kids often feel like those in-between plants. Not fully “of” one place, but not entirely outside it either.
You can support them by:
– Asking open questions about their story, then listening without rushing to label
– Accepting that “home” might be a long, multi-part answer
– Recognizing that they may feel both grateful and sad about their experiences, sometimes at the same time
Resilience for them includes the right to hold complex feelings without being told to “just pick” a side.
3. Notice your own sources of resilience
You might not be a TCK. You may have lived your whole life in one town, near the same park.
Still, you have your own form of resilience. It might come from:
– Long-term friendships
– Deep knowledge of local seasons and plant cycles
– Years of walking the same path and watching it change
– A strong sense of community in your area
Comparing your story with a TCK’s does not have to create a hierarchy of who is “more” resilient. Instead, it can help you see:
– What helped you become sturdy
– What you might take for granted
– What you can offer someone who is new to your space, whether it is a city, a garden club, or a park group
Resilience is not a competition. It is more like a network of roots under the soil, some long and horizontal, some deep and vertical, all helping to hold the ground together.
Questions people often ask about Third Culture Kids
Q: Are Third Culture Kids always resilient?
A: No. They have strong chances to build resilience because of frequent change, but they are still human. Some feel overwhelmed. Some struggle with anxiety or identity questions. Supportive adults, stable routines, and emotional space matter a lot. Without those, the same experiences that could build resilience can also cause lasting stress.
Q: Is growing up in many countries “better” than growing up in one place?
A: Not really. It is different. TCKs often gain language skills, global awareness, and adaptability. Kids who grow up in one town often gain deep community ties, stability, and long-term friendships. Both paths have strengths and gaps. What matters more is whether a child feels seen, safe, and loved where they are.
Q: How can gardens and parks help a Third Culture Kid feel more grounded?
A: Green spaces do not ask for a passport or an accent. A TCK can walk the same park every week, watch plants change with the seasons, and feel part of something steady. Small habits like visiting a local garden, keeping a plant at home, or joining a community garden group can give a sense of continuity that balances constant change elsewhere in life.
If you look back at your own life, what has helped you stay rooted when things around you shifted?
