TCKs and Public Education (Ruth Van Reken)

I think it's a great thing to do when you're in a situation like you can do it. I think we go back to a very fundamental place, which is when God gave you your children, they were already His workmanship created in Christ Jesus for what He's preparing them to do. God will also use you as their parent to help shape them and only time will tell what that shaping was for. I'm confident it was a good shaping and it was a shaping that has perfected them and created them and shaped them exactly for who they are meant to me in the kingdom of God. So I love that picture you're talking about because I think when that can happen, it is absolutely wonderful because there are many, many gifts. At the same time, one of the things that has always been a problem in our organizations, in our system, is anybody saying there is one way to do it. In the days that I was a child, basically the one way was to send them to boarding school. There were some kids who absolutely loved it, thrived, everything was fine. There were other kids who that wasn't the right place for them. I happen to like my home and when I went away for 2 years I missed my parents a lot. I didn't understand fully how much I did, but you know to be 6 and 7, that was tough. I'm not saying I couldn't make it but it was hard. Then my parents were kind of radical and they home schooled us for 4 years, which noone was doing in that generation. They got a lot of criticism for it, but I look at that and say those were incredibly valuable years for me because I was home with them, I had time with my family but I also played with a lot of Africans. When I look back I probably could have just sat in class with my parents, who were teachers, but they didn't want me to be in the British system because they thought I had to come back to the States. I did have much interaction with Nigerians, my parents and the family. That was a gift that was great for me and when I think of what I do now, to think that I went to boarding school, I was home schooled, I was away from my parents with my grandmother, it was like God gave me all these different experiences for what I work with.

What troubles me now, there are some people saying everybody has to send their kids to a national school and there are some places where that just isn't a good fit. It sounds to me like your kid thrived on that and I love it that you were home and able to be guiding them as they went through it. I think that is one thing when the parents protects all the way through to college and when the kid gets out, have they had any chance to be shaped in that challenging part? Some kids in a situation where parents are – it's just not going to work. They can't feel guilty. There are other parents who have been told they can't even be missionaries if they don't home school. Somehow that's the standard. Every family should not home school. I don't think I could have home schooled. I'm not very organized. I think it would have been a dreadful mess. So with our kids we had them in a local, international school right where we were and then when we came to the States we put them in public school because I wanted them to be exposed while they were still with me so we could discuss.

I think the biggest thing is, 1) it's not a mistake for your child to be a TCK. When God called you to what He's called you to do, He knew those kids were part of the package. God has a way for you as a parent to be instructed in the way your child should go and I think all options are possible and all options can be good and all can be bad if they are being done because somebody else says this is how it has to happen. You will go around thinking, What am I doing wrong? I love what you did and I think if we give each other freedom, we're going to have a great time.

We should use the gifts we have. When you're in another place, use that time to indulge. It's a sad thing when parents are so protective the child never gets to experience anything about where they are. You might as well take them to some other place. I'm from Chicago in the States and so you never go to museums unless you have company and it's the same kind of thing when you're living overseas. Make sure that you are taking them and letting them experience these things that are so much part of your world you almost don't think to point them out. I think giving them opportunity for language, giving them all this adds richness. If you learn 2 languages, 3 languages, you can also learn other languages, they say. The one thing, by the way, on that though is that the child needs to learn one language well enough to think it because they can only think using words and a few times there are kids that got so many languages so early they never got deep enough in one. Those are rare situations, but once a child can really think well in any language they can learn other ones, they say, much more expeditiously.

I think the point is, God gave you your kids and He knows who your kid is going to be and what He has shaped them for. He will guide you in using the riches of what He's given you to raise them. Use it. Celebrate and let them experience everything they can experience, only making their lives richer.