Jennifer Senior’s book All Joy and No Fun: The Paradox of Modern Parenthood touches upon the many stressors of present-day parenting. The fear about giving our children more freedom to be outside the home is high on the list of parental conundrums. She writes, “By the time children get big enough to venture out on their own—to the grocery store, to a friend’s house down the street—their parents feel strange about letting them go, believing the world to be a […]
Tag Archives: children
Tired of Being a Twin Referee?
My identical twin sister and I frequently reminisce about our worst fight. Although we both remember the incident with slightly divergent perspectives, the upshot of the argument was that my sister ended up with a few broken fingers after I pushed her and she fell down onto the pavement. I believe we were about seven years old at the time. When parents seem surprised and dismayed about their twins’ incessant bickering, I wonder if they are under the spell of […]
Separate Classes, Different Lunch Boxes
Among the many interesting questions that were asked during my workshop and book presentation in Guatemala, there are a few that I’d like to write about in some detail. A mom of eight-year-old fraternal twin girls seemed puzzled by some behavior exhibited by her daughters. She explained how well each girl functions independently. They are in separate classes and have separate friends. So, when mom suggested that they each do a different afterschool activity, she was surprised by their reluctance […]
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 […]
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 […]