You Know You're the Parent of Third Culture Kids When ...

I've seen a lot of lists of "you know you're a third culture kid when..."  Some apply to my kids and some do not -- at least not yet.  But I've come up with my own little list of how you know that you're the parent of a third culture kid in Hungary, based on my own experiences.  Here's what I came up with:

You know you are a parent of third culture kids (in Hungary) when:

1. You see a sign on the autobahn that reads "Ausfahrt" and nobody laughs.

2. If you do manage to get a giggle from the "Ausfahrt" sign, it's only after a discussion that includes three different languages.

3. Your toddler plays "border crossing" more frequently than playing "house"

4. Your kids use construction paper and old pictures to make play passports.

5. Your five year old thinks it would be really cool if the American Santa Claus and Hungarian Mikulas someday met each other at OUR HOUSE!

6. Your six year old only speaks to children in any country in Hungarian because in her experience that's the language of children. Only adults speak English.

7. Your child sees an American ad selling 100 ft boat and says, "Wow, in America you can buy a boat for only 100 forint!" (about 50 cents)

8. You use your children as translators from about age 5.

9. You need your kids to check your grammar/spelling when you post on facebook.

What Time is It?

You'd think time would be a simple thing. All kids learn how to tell time either at home or at school at some point in their elementary years. But in a house full of third culture kids, time is not such a simple thing.

If the clock reads 3:30. Niki, our daughter who is homeschooled according to the American system, would tell you, "It's three-thirty."  However, Andi whose first language is American English would not give you the same answer. Andi has gone to Hungarian school since kindergarten. When they studied telling time in school, she never quite got it (which is understandable, considering how Hungarians tell time, I must admit). Recently she learned how to tell time in her English class at school, but that's British English. As a result, she would tell you the time is: "half past three."

Levi, our son, would give you yet a different answer to the simple question of time.  He has only been speaking English for a little over a year. As a result, even when he speaks English now he often falls back to mirror translations. Therefore, his answer to "What time is it?" would be something like: "It's half of four."

Things grow increasingly complicated when we are dealing with a time of day like 3:40.  Here, Niki would tell you, "It's three-forty."  Andi would say, "It's twenty minutes to four."  And Levi, giving the mirror translation of the Hungarian would say something like, "In five minutes it will be three-quarters of the fourth hour." (Now you see why Andi never quite got telling time in Hungarian. One needs a higher degree in mathematics to be able to do it properly.)

Three kids.Third Culture. Three times the complications. Three times the confusion. It all makes life three times more interesting and worth chronicling our third culture kid's lives.