Here are a couple more questions from my readers: My newborn twins are easygoing, but my two-year-old still craves undivided attention. How do I give her the attention she needs and still find time for myself? Caring for two newborns at the same time is a daunting task on its own, not to mention with the additional demands of other family members. The best thing to keep in mind is that you can only do your best, that this […]
Category Archives: Loss
Without You, Who Am I?
Recently I have been troubled by the many calls I have received from twins having difficulty coping without their sibling. A while ago, a young man in his early thirties shared his twin dilemma. He poignantly related that he does not miss his brother in a physical sense because he lives just a few hours away; rather, he misses the way he feels about himself when his brother is around—calm, secure, and confident. This pair of identical twin men had […]
Flying Solo
I have had the privilege of helping a middle-aged twin woman (whom I shall refer to as M) reclaim her self following the sudden loss of her twin brother. When her brother died unexpectedly, her world fell apart. Both twins had been heavily emotionally dependent upon one another in a myriad of complex and complicated ways. At two years of age, their father took M and her brother away from their biological mother because she was too mentally unstable to […]
Heartbreak
If more people understood the complicated dynamics between identical twin girls, the public might be less inclined to treat them as a unit and lump them together. When I work with adult female MZ (monozygotic, or identical) twins, I am amazed and dismayed at their underdeveloped and unsophisticated knowledge of themselves and one another. Since they have had few opportunities to be separate and have primarily shared a peer group, they are shockingly unaware of their personality differences until an external event […]
I Can’t Say It Any Better
I have often remarked that parenting multiples involves expansive scheduling along with enlightened thinking. The following article describes how a mom of triplets came to recognize and appreciate what her daughters needed and how she made sacrifices to accommodate each of them. It originally appeared in Multiples of America’s Notebook magazine (Fall 2015) and is reprinted here with permission. WHAT I LEARNED IN KINDERGARTEN By Sherry Santa, Higher Order Multiples Coordinator, Multiples of America Six years ago if […]