Are you ready for eight minutes of cuteness overload that comes with both deep reflection on expat life and a few laugh-out-loud-moments?
It all started when Jerry Jones, from The Culture Blend, offered a challenge to expat parents in his blog post Ten Questions That EVERY Expat (or Repat) Parent Should Ask About Their Kids.
Sunday evening, on a total whim, I pulled my four and eight-year-old boys into my office to show them how I work (i.e. to keep them out of the kitchen for twenty minutes so my husband could cook in peace). My 4-year-old loves putting on my headphones, is fascinated by my 50s-style microphone, plus I had been promised him that we could record something one day.
I grabbed the Ten Questions list from Jerry and told the kids we were going to “make a podcast.” Totally unplanned, unprepared, and unprompted, I asked the kids to respond to these ten questions and hit record, just for fun.
I honestly never intended to share this on Expat Happy Hour. I thought it was going to be a trainwreck of fake burping and general silliness, but I was wrong.
Their candid answers will make you take pause, laugh out loud, and even touch your heart.
Life as a Third Culture Kid has its advantages, and these kids know it. They also know that there are some things that are less than ideal. The good news is that our strategies as parents to work with this is what matters most.
Listen here for the cutest, most heartfelt eight minutes you will spend all week.
I learned a lot from my kids in less than ten minutes, including:
- My 4-year-old, who calls Burkina Faso “home,” longs for snow.
- My eight-year-old yearns to be next door to his grandparents.
Ask your own loved ones these questions, you may be surprised at what you learn.
If you are in the mood for a good laugh, make sure to listen to the end where my four-year-old surprises me by loudly disclosing what we “bribed” our kids with to make the move to South Africa more appealing.
Here is to being candid about the realities of expat life!
p.s. Share this with your expat friends who would love to discover their own children´s answers to these important questions.
This couldn’t be more cute <3 So interesting what first comes to these little minds in relation to their international lives and how normal it is for them.
And even though I'm not a third culture kid, I kind of wish adults had these conversations with me and recorded them when I was younger. would be so interesting to see how I saw the world back then! 🙂
Warmest regards to you and your lovely family!
What I love is that as I grew up as a non-TCK, I am consistently impressed by what they know ALREADY that I didn´t discover till my 20s or later. Such wise souls.