I had the pleasure of spending a few hours with a psychologist who specializes in teaching parents and children essential social skills. She mentioned that she has a number of twins who attend her groups, and I was intrigued to hear about how she helps identical twins learn to socialize with their peers. From the outside looking in, many people watch twins play effortlessly with one another and wish that their children were able to get along so well. While a twin […]
Category Archives: Independence
“I Saw Her from the Outside”
The struggle to feel like a separate person after years of being a twin involves hard work, motivation, and insight. A young woman in her midtwenties has been working diligently in therapy to feel distinct and differentiated. The other day in our session, she was describing an epiphany she had while she was helping her sister move into a new office. Understandably, her sister was stressed and overwhelmed in view of her situation; characteristically, she snapped at my patient and […]
Adult Twins: Identity, Rivalry, and Intimacy
Some twin pairs, not all, become disillusioned about their twinship because they struggle to be “known,” not just “noticed.” Since outsiders habitually relate to them as a unit or a fixed dyad, they expectedly have conflicts with their twin in an attempt to define or declare their individual selves. While twins fight just like different-aged siblings, their tensions have much more to do with establishing separateness and uniqueness, traits afforded naturally to siblings born at different times. Twins, especially identical […]
All Parents Make Mistakes
Christina Baglivi Tinglof is a mother of fraternal twin sons and an accomplished author of two books on the subject—Double Duty and Parenting School-Age Twins and Multiples. She wrote a terrific blog on June 3, 2016, that she is permitting me to share with my readers. It touches upon the parenting mishaps that we all make because we are unaware and unsure about what to do in certain circumstances. Young Twins Who Hit and Bite: Are We To Blame? […]
One Twin’s Opinion
The following provocative essay was written by Maranda Elizabeth, who is an identical twin. It was originally published on a site called The Establishment on January 19, 2016. It is reprinted here with the author’s permission. The Complexities of Being a Twin Maranda Elizabeth What is it like to be a twin? When, shortly before dying, Elspeth is asked this in the book Her Fearful Symmetry, she responds, “All I can say is, you haven’t got a twin, […]