Many cultural and emotional impacts of being a third-culture kid, a child who was raised in a culture other than their parents or the culture of their country of nationality during a significant part of their child development years, are yet to be researched. I, myself, am a third-culture kid, getting raised in Japan, my passport country until the age of 8, and moving to The Netherlands without knowing a single word of English or Dutch. After surviving bullying, acquiring English, and making myself at home in an international community, I returned to Japan at the age of 13. Luckily, I was admitted to a private school with other third-culture kids, but I watched many of my friends and family suffer from the culture shock of returning to a relatively homogeneous and structured country. 
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When families travel, adults mainly see the linguistic side of growing up. Parents and teachers tell children how lucky they are to be learning to speak another language fluently and that it is important to keep your language level. However, for children, growing up in another country has a greater effect. Our whole world changes to embrace the complexity of different histories, cultures, and communities, and we are never quite the same after that. 
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As our friends are scattered all over the world and not knowing if we will ever see each other again, third-culture kids may feel like they are misfits everywhere. But what if we can change our thinking around so that we can build our own community of third-culture kids and make the whole world our home? If you are an adult third-culture kid or attempting to join a community in Japan from a foreign country, I am happy to support you in any way that I can with my own struggles as a third-culture kid and my adventurous pursuit at Harvard Graduate School of Education to understand what children experience in their significant developmental years. Together, we will discover ways to learn and grow.