Thoughts on raising twins

(warning – long and sometimes rambling post ahead!)

For those who are interested in this as a craft blog you might want to switch off now as this post is quite a departure from the norm for me.

I’ve contemplated committing my thoughts on being a twin mum to 'paper' for some time now and decided to do it and share them via my blog as I know there are a number of mums, with twins both older and younger than our girls, who are regular blog readers and so might have further ideas/thoughts to add to mine.

Before my girls arrived I will confess I was someone who looked at twin babies as they passed by and thought how sweet it was to see two small beings together. There is an innate fascination with multiple children, one which I openly admit I shared.

I guess I had never thought any further than that though about what decisions and parenting information I would need to manage the two little lives I was being entrusted with.

OK – what do I mean?
The man-of-the-house and I decided that we wanted to concentrate very much on our children being treated as individuals. They are after all two very distinct people who could have been born as siblings as easily as they were born twins.

We never refer to them as ‘the twins’ and heaven forbid anyone should call them ‘the twinnies’! Generally we use their names, or, in the case of online chat they were always ‘the girls’ and now that their little sister has arrived ‘the big girls’.

Yet there are times that I find I am doing things which mean they are not being treated individually and I wonder how, or if this will affect them as they grow older.

I notice in looking through photos that while there are many of their sister alone they are most often photographed together. Not so much now – but pretty much all the time as babies.
This was just a convenience thing – they were always side-by-side, but how will they feel about this?

In order for people to tell them apart (even though no they are not identical!) I’ve always made an effort to dress them ‘the same but different’ – same style but two colour, same colours but different styles. Again a convenience thing – it was always easier to think of dressing them in ‘that’ outfit rather than look for two completely different outfits.

That said I was very firm (to the man-of-the-house’s often complete clothing confusion!) about each child having her ‘own’ clothes. The outfits were not interchangeable, one belonged to each girl and she would wear that same item each time.

As they grew older dressing like this became necessity, as they wanted to wear the ‘same but different’ things.
Now I find that they want to wear the same. Exactly the same if they can.
They also want to swap outfits, which confuses people immensely, and leads to name confusion.

In order to avoid them being called the wrong name when they were babies I always dressed the same girl in pink and went to great lengths to point out physical features that people could use to tell them apart.
(did I mention that they are fraternal!!)

On their birthday we always make a special effort to ‘make it their own’. Two cakes is a must for us and we sing happy birthday twice –once to each of them (I even alternate who we sing to first each year!).
As the girls are getting older I encourage each to think about a card/gift for the other, to remember it’s someone else’s birthday too.

I worry endlessly about the days where I seem to discipline one more than the other, I take care not to praise one more than the other, I attempt to always speak of their individual strengths and foster these, not to assume they will both be good at the same things.

As the kinder/school years approach I think about how to manage this.
Should they be in the same class or in different classes?
We often reflect that if they had a friend going to the same school we’d probably like them to be in the same class – why not assume the same for a sister, for their first year at least?

We often get people who have children with a small age gap saying that it’s just like having twins. But really, it’s not. It’s not the same at all.

I’m sure there are many times that having two children of exactly the same age is easier (they both slept at the same time as babies, ate the same etc). But I am talking about more than the logistics of having two (or three) small children.

Having two children of the same sex at exactly the same age leads to endless comparisons; oh that one’s walking but the other one’s not, who’s the leader, which one is the quiet one, that one is tall isn’t she, so she’s heavier than her sister, oh I can tell that she’s the musical one; ad infinitum.

I wonder what they will be like as teens and adults – how will they view their relationship with each other and their sense of who they are.
Will they be angry at me for the way I have encouraged their independence, or will they be too dependent on one another, will they wish I had reinforced their ‘twinship’ more strongly in some ways?

I don’t want to over-think it – but I am interested to know what others think/believe/do/encourage.

So what do you do?
To make your children individual’s but twins all the same.
What has made your life easier when it comes to managing two people of the same age, at whatever age that might be?

If you’re a twin, what advice would you give to other mum’s of twins.
And if you don’t have or are not a twin – what do you make of all this?

Please share your thoughts and feelings, I’d love to know more.

If you’ve made it this far – thank you for reading!

(PHOTO CREDIT: tounge-firmly-planted-in-cheek photo's by John and Charles Robinson from the annual Twinsburg, Ohio Twins Days festival)