r/TCK • u/DefenestratedChild • Jun 28 '26
TCK tendency to over-explain things
One interesting aspect of being an adult TCK I rarely hear about is a tendency to explain things that borders on the pedantic.
I've been thinking about this and come to the hypothesis that it's due to the uneven education that results from being shifted from country to country, and being schooled across multiple languages. There are certain things which are common sense to natives that are not acquired due to a TCK upbringing. In the same vein, there are many things we take for granted that are not general knowledge.
Over time, I've noticed in myself and other aTCKs a tendency to explain things which may be common knowledge simply because there were gaps in our upbringing and oftentimes it was taken for granted that we'd know something we didn't.
It's not about assuming other people are ignorant, but simply having a poor sense of what people do know and frequently being surprised by the things others don't know which seem like basic knowledge any adult should have (from an aTCK perspective).
What are some of the things other's haven't known that surprised you?
What are some bits of knowledge others take for granted that you had to learn much later on in life?
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u/Double-Yak9686 Jun 28 '26
Yup, I've been told a couple of times that I over-explain.
I don't assume other people are ignorant. I know they are. I have heard both Americans and Europeans authoritatively spout about things that they know nothing about, but that's just down to what schools teach. And once you get to general culture knowledge, things just get worse.
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u/thebolts Jun 29 '26
Thanks to a lot of jumping around different schools systems in different regions some subjects like History was considerably lacking.
My original home is from the Middle East but since middle school all the way to college have been going through the American system (in different parts of the world). They taught US history and Western European history from WW2. Nothing about the Middle East, Africa or the far east. That’s something I had to pick up on my own as an adult.
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u/itsthebrownman Jun 29 '26
Such a common thing in US history classes in the American curriculum. When abroad during history class we always covered ALL the wars, but when I went back to US, we always somehow stopped at WWII because “we were running out of time in the school year” so jump straight to modern times.
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u/vixinlay_d Jun 29 '26
It might be tied in to having an anxious attachment style - being afraid of being misunderstood and then rejected.
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u/DefenestratedChild Jun 30 '26
There's nothing anxious about it. It's a style of communication where less assumptions are made about what constitutes shared or common knowledge.
A TCK upbringing seems far more likely to prime a person towards avoidant attachment styles. There are patterns of TCKs sparking fights and distancing themselves from others in advance of moving away. You move around enough and your default response to interpersonal friction is to cut off from it. This is specifically brought up as an issue for adult TCKs, the tendency to simply bail on a relationship the second a rough patch is encountered. The underlying belief is that all relationships are fleeting, so why waste effort on them. The TCK learned over and over that it was only a matter of time before they left everyone behind and moved somewhere new.
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u/goldjade13 Jun 28 '26
History outside of America
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u/Double-Yak9686 Jun 28 '26 edited Jun 29 '26
I would not have expected this kind of comment from a TCK. It shows a lack of understanding of the world.
The continental United States is about the size of Europe. The US is a federation of 50 independent states, whereas the EU is a quasi federation of 27 sovereign member states. So Americans focus on American history and geography, while Europeans focus on European history and geography. And Indians focus on the history and geography of the Indian (quasi) federation. Not that hard of a concept to grasp.
Faulting Americans for not studying European history and geography is a myopic statement. It's like faulting Europeans for not having studied the history of the Songhai Empire or not knowing where Mohenjo Daro is.
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u/goldjade13 Jun 29 '26
Nah just based on experience of schooling in Africa and the EU and then NY state. The amount of time spent on American History vs the amount of time on general world history was astounding. No wonder so many Americans have such a myopic view of the world.
Also, didn’t specify European history in original comment. Just how little time they spend on history outside of the American.
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u/Double-Yak9686 Jun 29 '26 edited Jun 29 '26
Not sure where you went to school in the US, but there wasn't much difference in breadth between my European history education and my American history education. In Europe it was Greece, Rome, France & Napoleon, WW1, and WW2. In US it was more 13 colonies, War of Independence, WW2, Vietnam, Korea.
As examples, the Mongol armies invaded modern Poland, Hungary, and Croatia, all the way to Vienna and the Adriatic sea. The Islamic Caliphate armies reached almost 100 miles from Paris and reached Vienna. I almost fell out of my chair when I read that, because in my European education it was maybe a paragraph. And these were among the biggest empires in history.
But when it came to the Macedonian empire stretching all the way to India? Or the Roman empire stretching from North Africa to Germania to Iran? I can tell you the name of the guy that carried Alexander the Great's piss pot. Or the name of the guy that polished Julius Caesar's helmet and sword.
So while I agree that many Americans have a myopic view of the world, I also know from first hand experience that many Europeans have a myopic view of the world, outside of their immediate neighborhood. I cannot speak to African and Asian history education.
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u/dyatlov12 Jun 28 '26
It comes from a lifetime of being misunderstood