“It’s not cheaper in bulk”: features of raising twins

One day there was a meeting that changed my attitude to raising twins forever. It was a twin psychologist colleague. She shared her personal experience of interacting with her sister. It turned out that she would change a lot. Most of her trips to a psychologist were not connected with her parents, as is often the case, but with her sister.

After this conversation, I realized how much the psychology of raising twins is different from single-born children. Their development dictates that parents take on more responsibility and apply different approaches to parenting.

Many have heard the expression: «We all come from childhood.» The basic models of behavior, the nature of interaction with the world are laid down in childhood and are transferred to adulthood. The task of parents is to know and take into account the peculiarities in education in order to create a favorable environment for the full personality of each child. What approach is chosen depends on how happy and successful the future will be for children.

As a psychologist and mother of twins, I can highlight five main points that are worth paying special attention to.

1. Rivalry or competition

The competition among twins is many times higher than that of ordinary brothers and sisters. It starts already in the womb. They constantly compete among themselves for the attention of parents, friends, relatives and even each other. They have a need to stand out and be different. This can happen not only because these children perceive themselves as absolutely equal, but also because of the constant equalization and comparison by others: parents, relatives, society. We may not remember what and how another child did at this age, but the temptation to compare is every minute. Therefore, twins are often perceived as a single entity.

In our family, organizing the life of children at home helped reduce rivalry: different clothes from birth, different toys, their own beds. We never compared them, emphasized the individuality of each, and trained ourselves and others to perceive twins as separate individuals.

There was a funny case when a grandmother (who lives far away and rarely visits) bought three identical soft toys for the girls. Only one of the girls was delighted with the gift, while the others were upset. Then the grandmother realized that it was not necessary to give the same, and began to ask about the preferences of each.

There were also cases when daughters chose the same dolls, but then they quickly lost interest in them. When they realized that they could buy three different ones and play with everyone, it became impossible to persuade them to buy the same toys.

2. Increased physical and psychological stress

The physical and psychological burden of parents, especially mothers, increases in proportion to the number of twins. We have to learn to satisfy the same and simultaneously emerging needs, to distribute attention to each child. Increased time for childcare: feed, change a diaper, bathe, get a massage, schedule doctor visits. Especially stressful in the first years of life. It requires the ability to calculate the time, quickly navigate and react. Emotional costs also grow proportionally: you need to talk to everyone, smile to everyone, or just look into their eyes. But the time in the day is not added.

All parents find their own ways to optimize. My husband and I decided that we would be the only ones raising children. Of course, there were assistants, but they were present about 20% of the time. We were saved by the regime that they helped me establish in the hospital after the birth. The mode when you have more than one child is not hard labor, but freedom. You can plan time for sleep, rest, leisure, visits to doctors. At the same time, children feel better and are more often in a good mood.

3. The need to see the personality in everyone and show it to the twins themselves

As mentioned above, parents are very tempted to perceive children born together as a whole. It seems that if everything is done the same way, then there will be less quarrels and misunderstandings between them. But this is the surface behind which the «pitfalls» are hiding. They will emerge as adults.

There is not a single identical person in the world. Even twins with 100% identical genes have differences in addictions and behavior. The task is to reveal individuality. Behind these seemingly simple words lies a huge work: to take the time and see the interests of everyone, learn to perceive as “he” or “she” instead of “they”. This will help the development of leadership in each, eliminate the co-dependence of one on the other.

It is not easy for my husband and I to do this, even after eight years, but the basis of individuality is laid in our children. Girls are more guided by their own interests and understand that each has its own path.

4. Ability to interact with a group

Gemini is already a group of children with whom you need to learn how to interact and negotiate. This is more difficult than with single-born children, since a particularly close-knit group appears in which a brother or sister is sometimes more related to mother and father. And this is a fact. Geminis spend more time with each other than with anyone else. Therefore, it costs nothing for them to unite to achieve a common goal. Parents have a hard time keeping boundaries.

5. Increased attention from others

The appearance of twins, due to its rarity, immediately translates the status of the family into the category of «special». At first, this brings joy to many parents, but there is a downside. The views are not always desirable, the questions are annoying: “Are they the same for you?”, “Who is the eldest?”, “Did you have twins in your family?”, “You yourself or IVF?”, “How do you cope with them?”. Questioning takes the resource and attention of parents.

When you unexpectedly become a “star”, you understand that popularity has its drawbacks. You need to be aware of this and be ready to become «bad» for someone. Especially on a walk or in the hospital, when you need to keep track of several children at the same time, and questions from outside are still pouring in. At such moments, I realized how curiosity blocks the sense of tact even among the most intelligent people.

The appearance of twins in the family is a joyful event that not everyone can experience. But their upbringing and development dictates special approaches. It is better to approach this issue consciously from birth, so that in adult life it would be easy for children to adapt and socialize separately. According to statistics, cases when one twin obeys the other occur in 75-80% of pairs of children. This behavior is established in early childhood and continues throughout life or until adolescence.

If children, up to adulthood, were not separated, brought up in an atmosphere of “twinship” (lived together, sat at the same desk, entered the same university), they will have to experience the stress of separation. In some cases, to avoid stress, such children get a job together, continue to live together or nearby, spend time in the same company. They can live their whole lives together without separating: «Together we are strong, but separately we are not.»

There may be a diametrically different situation when the twins stop communicating from a certain age or are in a state of «cannot be together and separately too.» The happiest twins are those who can live fulfilling lives, act and make decisions independently of their siblings. Feel like an independent person, but at the same time maintain warm, friendly relations.

When children are happy and self-sufficient, parents feel fulfilled and fulfilled rather than frustrated, depressed, and guilty. But the foundation for this is laid in early childhood and very much depends on how consciously mother and father approached upbringing. Remember, yesterday cannot be turned into today.