Many individuals who enter helping professions have assumed caretaking roles from a very young age. As children, they may have found themselves in a role reversal with no other recourse but to parent their parents. These children unknowingly give up their own needs to be nurtured, attended to, and soothed because they feel their job is to meet those needs for their parents. Because they lack healthy and secure parent attachments, many children in this predicament grow up without being […]
Tag Archives: siblings
Biathlon: American Twin Gives Up Olympic Spot to Sister
How do we understand this headline? Competition between twins is built into their relationship. It can be a terrific source of motivation and camaraderie. As the Barnes twins attest, they have trained together for 15 years and have been each other’s strongest advocate and inspiration. Tracy’s decision to give her Olympic spot to her sister, Lanny, has been touted as one of the few feel-good stories for a Winter Olympics sullied by security fears and antigay rhetoric. Those of us who […]
Beware Twin Denial
On the last day of the New Zealand Multiple Birth Association conference, I chaired a panel of adult twins who volunteered their time to answer questions posed by moms of younger twins. Many of the questions presented to the panel addressed issues about twins being compared, their individuality, and the importance of knowing who is older. It was interesting that the twins who introduced themselves all remarked if they were the older one! The panel members seemed to agree that […]