My friend Leora Eisen, a world-renowned Canadian documentary filmmaker and an identical twin, sent me a CBC article by Bridget Yard titled “As Identical Twins, We Shared Everything. Except My Eating Disorder.” While I found the article very interesting, I believe that some key issues were not explored. I imagine that certain factors could not be explicated due to the very public nature of the publication. Nonetheless, I am presenting a reasonable hypothesis to speculate about deeper issues. While Bridget […]
Tag Archives: eating disorders
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 […]
Thoughts about Dr. Phil’s Program “Identical Twins Starving to Death: Who’s to Blame?”
Recently, Dr. Phil featured a program about sixteen-year-old twins, Taylor and Tricia, who both have an eating disorder. It was tragic to witness how these girls’ lives have been swallowed up in an anorexic bulimic vortex. The visual images of their binging and purging behavior were graphically stunning. While we certainly cannot know all of the circumstances that contributed to the girls’ eating disorder, the producers of this program focused on the parents’ divorce, the mother’s boyfriend, and the father’s […]
The Risks of Twin Motivation
While twins can be excellent motivators for each other, sometimes risks are associated with the constant comparison and competition that underlie their attachment. This article discusses how these dynamics can contribute to eating disorders in some identical twin pairs. It was originally published on FoxNews.com on August 28, 2016, and I am sharing it here with the author’s permission. Twins at higher risk for eating disorders, experts say Julie Revelant Growing up, identical twins Jennifer* and Marie*, 34, were best […]