Most parents are captivated by their twins’ connection to each other. In fact, this twin bond often helps to compensate for the many difficulties and challenges that parents face when raising twins—the constant fighting, the ongoing competition for time and attention, the never-ending complaints about who has what. The wonderful aspects of the twin bond can be seen often while watching twins play. Seeing the creative and imaginative content that emerges out of their twin synchrony can be impressive and […]
Category Archives: Conflict
Adolescence and Stories
I mentioned Meg Jay’s book in my last post and want to focus on it again here. In her book The Defining Decade: Why Your Twenties Matter—And How to Make the Most of Them Now she touches upon many issues that have relevance to twins’ emotional development. Since our most self-defining memories begin in adolescence, Dr. Jay contends that this developmental stage represents our first attempt to formulate life stories. She asked many of her patients to recall memories or stories […]
The Czech Quintuplets
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. […]
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 […]