In the three decades that I have shared parenting advice, I have heard many stories—both positive and negative—about moms and dads’ experiences with their children’s grandparents. Now that I am a first-time grandparent, I feel as if I have joined an exclusive club with terrific membership benefits. In addition to baby-sitting duties, I take my sixteen-month-old grandson to an hour-long class near my house once a week. I admit that in the beginning, I was a bit nervous about embarking […]
Category Archives: Mothers
Missing Out on the Good Times
During one of my recent talks to a Moms of Multiples group, I asked the audience to help me understand why organizing alone time with each twin can be an emotional hurdle. One woman related that alone time with each twin interferes with family time, especially during the weekends, when full-time working parents can spend time together with their children. Another woman shared her concerns in a delightfully humorous way. She explained that her well-intentioned, engineer-minded husband was not the […]
Call Me Old Fashioned
Having grown up in the nondigital era, I am still coming to terms with living in a world where no one wants or values privacy. The video clip of the reunion of the ten-year-old Chinese twins separated at birth that recently aired on the Today show seemed like an exploitative invasion of and impingement on a life-altering experience that should have been privately celebrated by these vulnerable young girls. While I do understand the excitement of unexpectedly discovering the twins’ […]
Ganging Up on Mom
A twin mom with four-year-old fraternal daughters called me for help with a behavioral issue. She discussed her frustration about her daughters’ inability to be patient and considerate while she attends to one of them. For example, she described a situation in which one of her daughters demanded her immediate attention. She had fallen off her chair unexpectedly and was startled. At the moment Mom rushed to comfort her, the other daughter started to scream that she had a “drastic” […]
It’s Hard Work Now—the Payoff Comes Later
I continue to be awed by an acquaintance of mine who is a mom to eight-year-old identical twin girls. Some people comment that having twins is like having two singletons born close together, but without the experience of parenting identical twins, a person might never understand how difficult daily parenting decisions are with two same-age children. Let me give you an example. My friend decided to make a chart so that each of her daughters could work on behaviors that […]