We started our global adventure before my oldest son’s first birthday and we’ve lived abroad ever since. It’s been 10 years of world travels as a family of four, visiting 27 different countries and counting. But 5 years ago I started working at TCK Training who specializes in training parents to cultivate resilience in their globally-mobile kids. The past 5 years have been a lot better. Our company specializes in grief processing, but only because we know this lifestyle is well worth it.

There are many life skills that traveling kids learn faster than those who stay at home, because our kids have a ton of practice dealing with emotionally charged situations. The constant hello & goodbye means that mobile kids are well-practiced at goodbyes. Being constantly dropped in new contexts means that mobile kids are well-practiced at being adaptable. But the biggest myth is that kids are resilient. Without parental support and emotional safety at home, the grief of constant goodbyes and the anxiety of constant changes can create mental health crises for kids. In our research, we’ve found that 42% of adults who were long-term travelers as kids said they “experienced a serious mental health crisis” during childhood. Luckily, while children aren’t born resilient, we can parent intentionally to build resilience in them.

When routines disappear and jet lag appears, parents can help kids feel safe and regulated - even while in constant motion - by coaching kids through their emotions instead of using Shut Down Responses. We’ve got a free resource for Safe Spaces Responses, but in a nutshell: when we downplay or dismiss our kids' emotions, it may end the conversation, but it doesn’t end the emotions. Instead it teaches kids to keep quiet about their feelings. Our research shows that 55% of adults who were long-term travelers as kids have difficulty understanding their own feelings. Our kids need our support in this and, when parents coach their kids through these emotions, it teaches kids empathy through modeling.

I appreciate this can be especially hard when our kids are having meltdowns in inconvenient and awkwardly public locations. In those moments, it’s important to remember that kids are doing the best they can. They love to make their parents happy. So if they’re breaking down, they are having a really hard time. The most effective response is figuring out how to quickly reduce the pressure they’re under. I always recommend that families have some co-regulation strategies that work well for the whole family. I used to read books and the moment I said “Chapter 9” my kids would come running (and silent) to listen to the story. Playing copy-the-beat drumming games are another fun way to distract from the crisis issue and regulate the nervous system. After our kids return to calm, then we can circle back to the good work of parenting, but while our kids are in crisis - pushing them to behave better increases pressure and makes their dysregulation worse. 44% of adults who were long-term travelers as kids struggle with emotional regulation. Our kids need our support in this.

One reason parents can dismiss emotions is because they want their kids to be happy and enjoy this amazing lifestyle they have. But we’re forgetting that learning to deal with discomfort is one of the ways we build resilient kids. They’re not going to be happy all the time when facing discomfort (and neither are we) but they need to be coached through what to do with that distress. When kids go through hard things and their parents support them, they quickly regulate and learn: “Hard things and then it gets better again,” which is a much better lesson to learn than “Hard things happen and no one seems to care.”

But caring all the time can be exhausting, especially for globally mobile parents. Many parents struggle to meet the emotional needs of their globally mobile kids. In fact, research found that 34% of adults who did long-term traveling as children experienced emotional neglect in childhood. We can presume this is because travel is so stressful. When the parents are stressed it’s so hard to meet the heightened needs of our kids at that same moment. We need to make sure we’re taking time to reset from daily stress and plugging into community, so we have the capacity to support the emotional needs of our children.

The one emotional habit I recommend traveling families practice daily, no matter where in the world they wake up, is connecting as a family. Don’t fall into a housemates scenario where you and the kids just live together, but have moments of connection, whether that's cuddles, or games, or screen-free talking. Those heart-to-heart connections keep families strong.

Long-term travel is not without risks, but most things worth doing are risky; the key is to mitigate risks, and that’s what TCK Training helps families do.

Hope-filled Stats for the Journey

Around 200 survey respondents described their childhood global experience as long-term traveling. Of those, here are the strengths they reported in adulthood:

Strengths (self-assessed)

• 95% Broad worldview
• 92% Global perspectives
• 90% Bridge between cultures
• 89% Comfortable traveling
• 88% Compassion
• 87% Adaptability
• 83% Empathy
• 82% Open-mindedness
• 79% Problem solving
• 76% Resilience
• 71% Fast learner
• 70% Active Listening
• 70% Creative, out of the box thinking
• 61% Hope in adversity
• 59% Self-motivated
• 54% Goals and aspirations
• 54% Team management
• 53% Language learning (slightly higher than TCKs overall, at 48%)