292: Adverse Childhood Experiences with Lauren Wells & Tanya Crossman
Description
I’m about to say the quiet parts out loud. You probably suspected it, but now, you’ll know for sure, and you might not like what you hear.
What if I told you that exposing your kids to a few specific experiences could… DOUBLE their chances of heart disease or cancer, create a 7X higher likelihood of alcoholism, and increased their risk of attempting suicide by a staggering 1200%?
A long, long time ago, I started this podcast because I wanted somewhere for the globally mobile community to transparently discuss expat life. And that meant shining a light on the hard stuff, including the consequences that come with choosing a life abroad.
Parents have a duty of care. We know this, yet regardless of our GPS coordinates, we worry about screwing up our children. What’s often ignored? Organizations who send families abroad also have a duty of care.
So today, I’m joined by two childhood trauma researchers who’ve studied this exact impact. For the conclusion of our Untold Stories Bean Pod, it’s my honor to welcome Lauren Wells and Tanya Crossman to reveal their results about adverse childhood experiences for globally mobile kids.
Many of us who raise our children abroad do so because we know it enriches their lives. Still, much of what Lauren and Tanya will share may surprise or even concern you. Don’t worry, we got your back. Because they’ll also provide preventative remedies to help us support our children, anywhere and everywhere.
What You’ll Learn in this Episode:
- Calming the imagined “what ifs”
- Understanding secondary trauma
- The provision of physical & emotional safety
- Self-deprecating internal message replay
- An ambition to maintain
Listen to the Full Episode
Featured on the Show:
Not all transitions are created equal. For both parents and kids, the level of support should match the level of challenge. Go from fragility-increasing to resilience-building. Partner with a trusted global coach who gets you right here.
- Sundae’s Website
- Sundae’s Facebook Business Page – Sundae Schneider-Bean LLC
- Sundae Bean – YouTube
- Wisdom Fusion Project
- Misunderstood: The Impact of Growing Up Overseas in the 21st Century by Tanya Crossman54 Lights Podcast
- Raising Up a Generation of Healthy Third Culture Kids, The Grief Tower, and Unstacking Your Grief Tower by Lauren Wells
- TCK Training
Catch These Podcasts / Articles:
- Adverse Childhood Experiences – Harvard
We’re delighted to be in the Top 5 of the global Best 30 Expat Podcasts!
Full Episode Transcript:
Hello, it is 7:00 am in New York, 1:00 pm in Johannesburg, and 6:00 pm in Bangkok. Welcome to IN TRANSIT with Sundae Bean being recorded live from my childhood womb home in Williston, North Dakota. I am an intercultural strategist, transformation facilitator, and solution-oriented coach, and I am on a mission to help you adapt & succeed through ANY life transition.
What if I told you that exposing your kids to a few specific experiences could result in a two times higher likelihood of developing heart disease or cancer, seven times higher likelihood of becoming an alcoholic, and an increased risk of attempted suicide by 1200%? If you were like me, you would run away from these experiences as fast as you could. But the thing is when we are living complex lives, when our lives are IN TRANSIT, some of those things we can control, some of those things are out of our control.
These experiences might impact our lives and today. I’ve invited two guests to help us understand what kind of experiences we’re talking about. And how we don’t have to shy away from even hard things because there are things within our power, how we can support ourselves and our kids. So it is my heartfelt joy to welcome Lauren Wells and Tanya Crossman today on IN TRANSIT. Welcome.
Lauren: Thank you so much. So good to be here.
Sundae: So happy to have you. Thank you. I’ll give a quick introduction. For those of you who don’t know your work, I’ll start with Lauren. Lauren Wells is the founder and CEO of TCK training and author of three books:
1. Raising up a Generation of Healthy Third Culture Kids
2. The Grief Tower
3. Unstacking Your Grief Tower
Lauren spearheaded the methodology of Prevented TCK Care that TCK training was founded on. She also uses personal experience as a TCK in her education and childhood development to support TCKs. By the way, for people who don’t know what a TCK is, it’s a third culture kid, someone living outside of their parents’ passport cultures and for those who serve them. She’s worked with over 1,000 parents and TCK caregivers, and has trained staff from over 80 organizations. Lauren grew up in Tanzania, East Africa and now lives in the USA with her husband and two daughters.
We’re also joined by Tanya. Tanya Crossman is a director of research and education at TCK Training and the author of Missunderstood: The impact of Growing Up Overseas in the 21st Century. Tanya has 17 years of experience and counting working with international families and has worked with groups from over five continents. Conducting research to learn about the experiences of children growing up globally is part of her work. Tanya grew up in Australia and the US, and has lived in China and Cambodia. As an adult she’s fluent in written and spoken Mandarin and she currently lives with her parents in Australia while waiting for papers to join her husband in the USA. I feel like you’ve been waiting forever, Tanya.
Tanya: Yeah, it does feel like forever.
Sundae: All right, both of you do know what it means. As you can see, from your bios to live life IN TRANSIT. Both of you have experienced as a child growing up, where your lives were defined by being IN TRANSIT. And now, in your adult life, you are supporting others. Thank you for the work that you have done your contributions in your writing and in your training, you are doing a service to so many families around the world. So I’m just want to say that to start off.
Lauren: It is our pleasure.
Sundae: So let’s dive in here, I want to talk about what you call Aces or ACEs. These are childhood adverse experiences. And can you help us understand what does that mean? And why is that important for people who are living highly mobile lives?
Lauren: Yeah. So ACE stands for Adverse Childhood Experience and this is a framework that people have used for years and years. There have been over 80 studies done on ACE scores. So it’s a really well-known framework that’s been used worldwide and it looks at three different categories, abuse, neglect, and household dysfunction. And within these categories, there are specific factors and all totaled up, they equal 10. And so when we About an ACE score, it’s the number of those out of 10 expe
United States
