I am quoting a line from a wonderful article written by Meredith Bland for Time.com entitled “When One Twin is More Academically Gifted.” Bland is a well-known and well-respected freelance writer and blogger at pileofbabies.com. She is a fraternal twin herself and the mother of first-grade boy/girl twins. The conundrum she discusses in her article mirrors the dilemma faced by countless parents of twins: how do parents handle school placements when their twins have very different skill sets? Bland shares […]
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The Scrooge of Twindom
My short presentation at the Budapest conference for the International Twin Society for Twin Studies and the World Congress of Twin Pregnancies conveyed my habitual passionate views about what twins require to become healthy individuals. I talked a bit about how parents struggle to differentiate and bond with two babies. Despite our best efforts, we default to labeling rather than describing each child. I am as guilty as the next person of labeling as it provides a shorthand communication that […]
Stories and Statistics
Being an “outlier” has its advantages and disadvantages. When I delivered my short presentation at the Budapest conference for the International Twin Society for Twin Studies and the World Congress of Twin Pregnancies, I was the only speaker who did not have a statistic-based PowerPoint presentation. My sole PowerPoint slide highlighted the primary issues I feel passionate about: Triadic connection of a twin pregnancy Ultrasound examinations/labeling The twin mystique Deconstructing the twin connection Life is not fair, and twins are […]
Reflections on the Budapest Conference
The conference I attended last month in Budapest was a joint meeting of the International Twin Society for Twin Studies and the World Congress of Twin Pregnancies. As one might expect, the primary emphasis was on the reporting of genetic studies that use monozygotic (identical) and dizygotic (fraternal) twins as the control groups to determine the heritability of various illnesses, personality traits, and well-being. The members of the World Congress of Twin Pregnancies focused primarily on the diagnosis and treatment […]
Identity Capital
I just finished reading a fascinating book called The Defining Decade: Why Your Twenties Matter—And How to Make the Most of Them Now. I was drawn to the subject matter because of my work with adult twins. The twenties can be particularly challenging for some twin pairs because they are facing separation struggles and the impact of romantic attachments on their twin connection. Author Meg Jay, a clinical psychologist specializing in adult development, defines what she calls “identity capital.” She […]