Where are you from?

I was nervous about how my son would answer this question, and I didn’t even realize it.

We were at the park near my son’s school one afternoon last week. My son was playing on a hillside in the park where kids like to climb like little mountain goats. They swing from one small tree to the next as they sort of slide around the steep dirt hill.

Anyway, my son was playing by himself when two slightly older kids joined him on the hill. I was standing a bit away from them, but I could hear my son yell, “Hallo!” to them as they approached.

I don’t know where he gets it from, but my son has been really outgoing and friendly recently. He will stop on the street and greet just about anyone who might be walking or biking by.

In this instance, the two kids, a brother and sister probably, climbed up the hill, and my son kind of played parallel to them. The boy slipped a bit on the steep hill and exclaimed, “Shit!”

To which his sister replied, “Be careful! Hold on over here.”

This is all rather normal, I suppose, but since we live in Germany, most kids at the park speak German. I could see my son’s ears perk up. And he immediately started telling the boy who slipped on the dirt about the best routes to navigate the slippy hillside.

Then I heard the boy ask my son, “Where are you from?”

I didn’t really know it until that moment, but I had been waiting for this question to come up for my son. He was born in the United States, but he has only visited a couple of times in the last two years. Being four years old, he’s spent most of his life outside his passport country.

So, where is he from?

This is a simple enough question, but it can be difficult for Third Culture Kids (TCKs) to answer. Is it their passport country? Is it where they’ve spent the greatest amount of time?

I’ve written about how my son is being raised a Third Culture Kid (TCK) before. If this term is new to you, I recommend checking out my first couple of pieces…

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