A mom recently wrote this about managing twins with different abilities: I have identical boys, but one will never be able to do everything his brother can, due to a brush with Twin-to-Twin Transfusion Syndrome in the womb. Although both are healthy, bright kids, their physical accomplishments will always be at a different pace, and as a result, I’ve had to mull this over many times. Thinking about this mom’s situation led me to learn more about how children with […]
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Happiness Is in the Remembering
Psychologist Daniel Kahneman has coined a few terms to distinguish between the “experiencing self” and the “remembering self.” He believes that what we remember resonates more strongly than what we experience. Jennifer Senior, author of All Joy and No Fun, borrows this perspective to explain the discrepancy between parental discontent about the day-to-day drudgery of taking care of children and the indescribable joy and rewards of raising children. She writes, “It may not be the happiness we live day to […]
Happy Wife: Happy Life
“Women cannot afford the luxury of unambivalent love for their husbands. . . . When couples quarrel it is over the giving and receiving of gratitude.” These sentences, originally written by Arlie Russell Hochschild in her book, The Second Shift: Working Parents and the Revolution at Home, and quoted in Jennifer Senior’s book All Joy and No Fun: The Paradox of Modern Parenthood, caught my attention and piqued my curiosity. I am an adamant “ambivalence” advocate and have written repeatedly […]
I Am Only a Half
Twins who have attended the same college often decide to explore life on their own when it’s time to find that first job. A young man in his early twenties who was searching the Internet for help with this adult twin challenge recently contacted me. Similar to many twin pairs who are just beginning to reflect about the consequences of being without one’s twin, he shared how anxious and depressed he was being on his own for the first time. […]
My Husband’s Twin Brother Moved Next Door
I have written often about how partners of twins have difficulty understanding the depth and pull of twinship. A woman I shall refer to as Mrs. D recently reached out for help to handle her feelings of resentment and helplessness about her husband’s renewed and intensified relationship with his twin brother. She explained that, in the past, she had a terrific relationship with her brother-in-law. However, since his contentious divorce and his move next door to her family, she has felt […]