Our parenting roles with our adult children and their families can at times be complicated and conflictual. The ever-present vestiges of sibling rivalry live long in most of us. Often I talk with my therapist about ongoing issues with my five children. She smiles sympathetically and replies, “Joan, you have too many children.” Thankfully, my clinical training has prepared me well for my lifelong occupation as the resident complaint department. I have developed and refined the art of empathic listening […]
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A Unique Look at the Twin Bond
This terrific piece popped up a few months ago in my Google Alerts page. The author is Isabel Sakarin, a lovely young woman who just finished her freshman year at Vassar College. With her permission, I am sharing this beautiful homage to her twinship. She and her twin brother, Ben, attend different colleges. This article integrates her love for her brother and for science. I trust you will be enlightened and entertained by Ms. Sakarin’s keen sense of humor and […]
The Other Side of Fear Is Freedom
Jennifer Senior’s book All Joy and No Fun: The Paradox of Modern Parenthood touches upon the many stressors of present-day parenting. The fear about giving our children more freedom to be outside the home is high on the list of parental conundrums. She writes, “By the time children get big enough to venture out on their own—to the grocery store, to a friend’s house down the street—their parents feel strange about letting them go, believing the world to be a […]
Tired of Being a Twin Referee?
My identical twin sister and I frequently reminisce about our worst fight. Although we both remember the incident with slightly divergent perspectives, the upshot of the argument was that my sister ended up with a few broken fingers after I pushed her and she fell down onto the pavement. I believe we were about seven years old at the time. When parents seem surprised and dismayed about their twins’ incessant bickering, I wonder if they are under the spell of […]
Prepare to be Dazzled
“Prepare to be dazzled. . . . Multiples Illuminated will guide you through multiple madness with mindfulness, humor, and joy. Stories about real-life parenting experiences combined with sage expert advice will help you recalibrate the emotional equilibrium between the yin and yang of raising multiples—heroics and heartache, antics and agony, bliss and burdens.” This is a blurb that I wrote for a wonderful new book titled Multiples Illuminated by Megan Woolsey and Alison Lee. It is a collection of personal […]