The traumatizing gift: a global childhood | Saeko Mizuta | TEDxFulbrightTokyo

Saeko Mizuta grew up in two worlds - Japan and the US - and based on her own experience of a multilingual and multicultural childhood, she founded TCK Workshop, an education company that supports children through the social, cultural, and academic challenges involved in international relocation.
This talk is her message to third-culture kids and their parents.

This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at https://www.ted.com/tedx

Do you know of any children

who can speak English
and another language fluently?

These children may have moved
with their families

from or to another country.

Or their parents
may be an international couple.

These children grow up with exposure
to multiple languages and cultures

at the same time.

And while this kind of childhood
is getting very common,

if you actually ask one of these children,

"Hey, are you enjoying the experience?"

he or she might tell you,

"No, it's actually very tough,
and I'm struggling.

And my parents are struggling with me."

Twenty years ago,
I was one of these children,

and as I was being back and forth
between the United States and Japan,

I have to tell you
that, back then, I hated my life.

Each move was traumatizing,

and I fell way, way behind academically.

But today, now that I'm an adult,

the same experiences have become
a gift that helps me in many ways.

So, what is it that makes
an international childhood so hard?

My family gave me their full support
throughout the journey,

and I was very lucky to have them.

But now that I reflect on it,

I kind of think that it was way too hard

for all of us.

So, as soon as I got
to Harvard Business School

as a Fulbright scholar,

I started working on an idea
that later became my startup.

It's an educational service
that supports international children

through their unique challenges,
both academic and psychological.

So what is it that makes
an international childhood so hard,

but later, rewarding?

The first thing is language.

Do you know how they say that,

"Oh, young children,
they can pick up a language so quickly.

He or she will be speaking in no time."

You've heard that before?

Yeah, so that's true if the question is:

"Can they communicate in that language?"

But if the question is:

"Can they think and learn
in that language?"

the answer is that it actually
takes a lot longer.

Research tells us that it can take
five to seven years for a person

to reach this level of proficiency.

Now, one of our students,

he's been in an English
environment for six years.

His English is so fluent,

you won't believe
this is not his native tongue.

And he has straight A's
in all of his English subjects.

But when it comes to math and physics,

he still prefers
that we teach him in Japanese.

According to him,
"Oh, it's just faster that way.

You know, it's easier to learn
these, like, hard conceptual ideas.

They're easier to manipulate in my head

when they are in Japanese."

So, in short, it's easier to think.

So if you are a child
learning in a language

that you are not completely
comfortable with yet,

that can limit your cognition,
your ability to learn.

So, for any multilingual
student growing up,

it's essential that they catch up
with the school language

as fast as possible

so that they can learn
what they should be learning

at that grade level.

Meantime, they also need to maintain
their native tongue at the grade level,

and that is very hard.

It's not something
that just happens on its own either.

It requires commitment
and planning and investment,

not just from the child,
but also from the family.

A child going through this stage
needs help, deserves help.

And it's either the family provides it,

or professionals can help them provide it.

And I remember

that going through the stage,
it was very confusing.

It almost felt as if
that it was a personal problem.

Like, "Maybe I'm not smart enough

because I'm spending so much time working,

but I'm not good enough in either."

Language barriers can also be very hard

on a child's social life
at school as well.

Do you ever feel like
there are aspects of your personality

that you can't really fully express
in your second language?

You know, maybe you can't be as funny,

or seem as intelligent,

or be as interesting as you really are

because language limits you.

Now, imagine you are a teenager,
and you need to do that five days a week.

Yikes!

So, learning a language
is a long and hard journey.

The gift, of course, is access.

Once you've mastered two languages,

you can go to school or work
in two different countries.

You can access information
and knowledge created in two languages.

And you can build relationships
with two very different groups of people.

There's so much richness
in the bilingual world.

It's almost like you're living
two lives at the same time.

The second challenge is culture.

So one day, a little girl in Michigan
walks into her classroom in the morning,

and her teacher welcomes her
with a big warm hug,

just like any other morning.

The next week, she moves to Japan,

where hugging is not really a thing,

and we express affection
through different means.

After one big, awkward social attempt,

she notices that you can't really
hug people in Japan

without making them feel
completely uncomfortable

and also winning the title
of "complete social weirdo."

(Laughter)

So she stops hugging people,

but knowing isn't feeling.

She still wants to hug people,
and she misses it.

But she knows that she needs
to follow the cultural norm

in order to be accepted
as a decent member of the community,

and failure to do so would mean
that she would be the outcast

who can't follow the rules.

And because culture is not
just about the foods we eat

and the holidays we celebrate,

but it's this all-encompassing
thought process

that highlights different
aspects of the world

and attributes different meaning
to these aspects

and hence creates completely
different experiences

from the same world,

this kind of difference can exist
in anything and everything

from, let's say,
how to be popular at school

to how to sound credible
at a job interview,

all the way up to how to tell
somebody that you like them

and how you determine the relationship
after a couple of dates with your crush.

And because there is no convenient
textbook for all these cultural norms,

you basically need to learn
through trying and making

lots and lots of embarrassing mistakes.

The pain is worsened

because you start to take it personally.

You start to think, at one point,

"Hey, oh, I need to watch out
for my behavior.

I need to constantly check
if I'm not being weird,"

just to be accepted.

The gift in being brought up
in two cultures

is this revelation that cultural norms

are a social construct.

You know, people can believe
in wildly different things

based on where they were born
or how they were brought up.

And what seems to be common sense
or even the truth in one culture

may not be that way somewhere else.

And although each culture
is this complete, beautiful,

and functional and different
approach to life,

none of them is universal truth.

Knowing this can give you two freedoms.

The first freedom is to choose
which rules you want to follow

at important junctions of your life.

My choice to go to Harvard Business School

and become a female entrepreneur

does not necessarily fit
the typical female gender role in Japan.

But I can choose
to feel feminine if I want to

because I know that femininity
can mean different things

in different places.

The second freedom is awareness.

The tricky thing about culture
is that when you are part of a culture,

it's very hard to be aware of it.

You know, they say

that it's the air we breathe
and the water we swim in,

but once you are fully immersed
in two or more cultures,

the contrast suddenly
makes it easier for you

to become aware
of how they are influencing you.

And if you are more aware

of the cultural biases
and the stereotypes we have,

that makes you so much better

at connecting with somebody
from a different culture.

You know, in today's world
of divide and borders,

we need more people who are good at this.

The final component is identity.

An American girl, who had been living
in Shanghai for eight years,

moves back to DC.

And her new friends there
jokingly tell her,

"Ah, go back to China
where you came from."

That day, later on, she told me,

"Well, I don't belong
there either, you know?

It looks like I don't belong
anywhere now."

And this sense of being uprooted
and rootless can really eat away at you.

I admit that, even to this day,

I sometimes struggle with the question:

"Wait, who am I really,
and where do I belong?"

because I feel a deep
connection with Japan,

and I feel a deep connection with the US,

but I don't fully belong in either.

I'm a mixture.

And being that makes me
a minority in Japan, where I am from.

And that can be very hard,
especially for a child

because you want to be able
to clearly define who you are

and have this safe place in the world
where you can just be yourself,

and be accepted,

and not have to try so hard all the time.

The gift in all this confusion

is that the confusion
is actually an open invitation

for us to find a time and place
where we can feel belonging.

To define what are
the meaningful relationships

that help you belong in a space,

what is it that we can do

to give our rather complicated lives
purpose and meaning?

Sometimes, all it takes for you
to feel like "Ah, I belong here"

is a couple of really close friends,

friends that just get you,
you know, both sides of you.

Sometimes, it's a mission
or a vision you want to pursue.

It's something that you want
to give back to that environment

that connects you to that place.

And because concepts
like identity and nationality

are actually a lot not as concrete
and as definite as you would think,

there is space for reinterpretation.

There is plasticity

for you to recreate a sense of belonging
that you could have once lost.

So the invitation in this identity crisis

is an invitation to choose
who you want to be

and what you want
to make out of your life.

So if there are any of these
international children around you,

I ask you today, please be kind to them.

Just because they can't speak
intelligently yet,

don't assume they're not intelligent.

Please try not to judge them,

to see them through stereotypes,
to tokenize them.

Instead, please help me encourage them,

to tell them to hang in there,

to aim higher.

And join me in embracing these children

and celebrating the potential they have

and bringing us so much closer together.

And if you are one of these children,
today, oh my God, I have to tell you

that you are doing something
that's extremely hard for anyone.

You are not alone.

You deserve help.

And if you want it,
don't be shy to ask for it.

The world is counting on you
to make it through.

Thank you.

(Applause)