About a quarter of a century ago, as our children began turning into adolescents, I became interested in how our culture had created adolescence. Only as Bonnie (my wife) and I studied how the concept of adolescence had developed were we able to understand it. We also discovered things we could do to help our teenagers, techniques that have worked for thousands of years. I want to express my appreciation to Bonnie as well as to Keith, Cheryl, and Kent for the joy of those years as we lived out their adolescence together.
About a decade ago after our own adolescents left home, Bonnie and I became personally involved with missionaries and their children. We have spent much time with the Third Culture Kids who were students at Asbury College during their frequent Sunday dinners with us. Our conversations around the table were not only enjoyable but also very enlightening. I want to express my appreciation to those TCKs as well as to those TCKs who came to us to talk personally. I also wish to express my appreciation to Jean, Keturah, and Naomi Kingery (two TCKs and their mother), Bob Moore and Dave Rightmire (two Bible professors), Art and Kathy Nonneman (psychologist and nurse), and Yvonne Moulton (editor), all who made invaluable comments about the manuscript. Of course, I take full responsibility for any omissions or errors.
Third Culture Kids and Adolescence: Cultural Creations is written specifically for adolescent TCKs. Of course, the information in it is applicable to other adolescents as well. Each chapter ends with a section, “What can adolescent TCKs do?” The chapters are short so that each one takes only a few minutes to read. They are written in non-technical language, meant to be an “easy read.” The chapters present basic facts simply and include practical applications for adolescent TCKs.
Much of my professional life has been devoted to working with and studying adolescents and TCKs. Although this book is not highly documented with numerous scholarly journal references and Scripture references, I have tried to present the best knowledge about human development within an evangelical Christian perspective. From time to time I have cited specific passages of Scripture to support particular points. As often as possible I have illustrated concepts by using examples of TCKs from the Bible, such as Daniel, Joseph, and Esther.
This book is meant to be a handbook for adolescent TCKs, a book with short chapters on particular relevant topics pertaining to adolescence. The chapters are not intended as in-depth treatments of the topics but as brief overviews including practical suggestions. The book is written with a unified theme gradually developed from one chapter to the next. For readers who insist on jumping directly into a particular topic in the middle of the book, let me warn you that those chapters will not make sense unless you already know the material presented in Parts 1 and 2 (Chapters 1-6). This information was not available until about a quarter of a century ago, and it is vital to an understanding of adolescence.
Some parents may believe that specific material is not suitable for their own adolescents, at least at their current ages. If that is the case, those parents can easily censor whatever material (even entire chapters) they find objectionable by simply deleting it if they have downloaded the book in a Microsoft Word (.doc) format. If you delete ANYTHING, please remember that adolescents need to be warned about the great danger of some activities. If you delete anything, I would ask that you not further distribute the document you have censored to anyone else—but please do tell others that the book is available on www.missionarycare.com. Please let them be the judge of what they and their children read.
The best book available about TCKs is Third Culture Kids: The Experience of Growing Up Among Worlds by David Pollock and Ruth Van Reken, published in 2001 jointly by Intercultural Press (www.interculturalpress.com) and Nicholas Brealey Publishing (www.nbrealey-books.com), and it can found in many bookstores as well as online at www.amazon.com or other sites. I highly recommend this book for TCKs.
A much fuller treatment of adolescence itself is my book, Understanding Adolescence, published by Victor Books in 1987. That book, written for parents, has been out of print for more than 15 years. I obtained the publication rights for that book, updated it in 2005, and posted it online at www.missionarycare.com. You may download it free of charge there. If you prefer an original bound copy (without the 2005 updates), used copies are often available online. Book distributors, such as amazon.com, usually list used books (26 copies of Understanding Adolescence available at amazon.com as I write this, usually ship in 1-2 days ). Also copies can usually be found in used book stores online by using search engines, such as Google (17 sources found as I write this). If you would like a fuller discussion about adolescence, try one of these routes.