I recently watched a film produced by the Czech department of social services about the birth of quintuplets to a twenty-year-old woman and her husband. Czech family-planning policy allows supplemental help from the state for one child. Since this couple already had a four-year-old son, the family would normally be excluded from any state benefits. This is the only case of quintuplets in the Czech Republic, and many people became involved to help the family care for these five children. […]
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Caretaking: Comforting or Controlling?
Many individuals who enter helping professions have assumed caretaking roles from a very young age. As children, they may have found themselves in a role reversal with no other recourse but to parent their parents. These children unknowingly give up their own needs to be nurtured, attended to, and soothed because they feel their job is to meet those needs for their parents. Because they lack healthy and secure parent attachments, many children in this predicament grow up without being […]
Movie Twins and “Real Life” Twins
I have been thinking about the connection between guilt and anger in twin relationships. A young woman I work with feels tremendous compassion and love for her twin sister. She also has unbearable feelings of guilt about her sister’s difficulties that, in her mind, make it impossible for her to feel separate and fulfilled. My patient worries that her sister’s tendencies toward depression and self-loathing will deepen if she moves away from her sister—either emotionally or physically. Reflecting on the […]
“A Package Deal”
A few days ago I read a blog post written by a mother of six-year-old identical twin girls. She was upset that her daughters were having difficulty managing separate relationships with some of their classmates. The girls had been in separate preschool classes, and the mother explained that this separation had worked out beautifully because one daughter had previously become too controlling and bossy. Since she felt that the girls had “individualized enough,” she put them back together for kindergarten […]
Q & A about Twins
Parents of twins often experience unique situations and are left with questions not usually addressed by parenting books or advice columns. Here are some questions I’ve been asked recently about raising multiples, as well as some advice for these sometimes difficult-to-navigate situations. Question: Shall I correct my two-and-a-half-year-old identical twin girls when they argue with me about who is who in a photo? Answer: Yes, I would definitely tell them that you feel differently. The confusion about who is […]