How Can Parents Help Their Twins Develop Individuality?

Parenting twins is very hard to do, no matter how much experience and help you have with your twin children. While the right way to promote a sense of uniqueness in each child can take extra thoughtfulness and time, a strategy to promote real similarities and differences will pay off day to day as twins develop into maturity and can make their own decisions. Having skills that promote identity uniqueness is very important because too much focus on similarities between twins contributes to competition and comparisons that are totally unhelpful to healthy individual development. In addition, comparison and competition promote fighting and jealousy, which will quietly (or loudly) derail the twin bond. Teaching your twins to respect each other develops authentic closeness that is long-lasting and nurturing.

Seeing each of your twin children as unique, special, and talented in their own way requires a lot of patience and a substantial amount of your attention and concentration to different areas of their experiences. For example, twins may like different food, toys, games, and friends. Differences in likes and dislikes can become the basis of individuality between twins. How parents manage to label and normalize differences between their twin children is critical to individual development. In my professional and personal experiences, twins who have a sense of themselves as individuals and also as twins are able to adjust to the non-twin world more easily. In other words, forming relationships with non-twins can be tricky and hard to understand and accomplish when twin identity dominates their personality and individuality is seen as less important. Simply stated, too much twin closeness prevents the growth of social development. Focus on your children’s individuality.

Reflecting on my own experiences, becoming “truly myself” is really hard to explain. Maybe if I had an entire book to write on how I put my twinship in perspective, I could start this overwhelming and confusing investigation. Twins who ask for my input on how to get along with their co-twin seem to have a similar problem explaining how they became psychologically separate from each other.

My sense of what is most important to developing individuality in twins is the mother’s and father’s efforts to deal with what is unique about each child. I know that many twin experts would say that genetic endowment and environmental input are critical and are more important than the quality of parent-child interactions to individual personality development. I still stand by my point of view that parental efforts make a very strong impact on how twin personality evolves. For example, if one twin is favored over the other twin by her parents, it will create anger, guilt, and shameful feelings in both children. Or if one twin has special learning issues and receives more attention than his brother, the child with the problem does get more attention, but may feel damaged in relationship to his twin.

Twin Personality Development Suggestions for Parents

Clearly, twin personality development is complex. When you add the cultural belief that “all twins should get along,” personality development becomes more difficult to address. Twins want to be different, but they like the camaraderie and attention that they get from looking alike. “What should parents do?” is an important question. Here are some suggestions that might help.

1. Discuss the issue of developing individuality in your twins with grandparents, aunts and uncles, teachers, and nannies.
2. Try as hard as you can not to refer to your children as twins. Use their first names when introducing them to new people and when you are with them in other social situations.
3. Give them their own space at home, which might include their own rooms, toys, food, and attention.
4. Cultivate friendships that are not shared.
5. Talk with your twin children about their differences.
6. Separate your children at school, but allow them to see one another at recess.
7. Explain to your twins that being different from each other is normal.

Conclusions: Advice on Avoiding Twin Fighting and Unhappiness

All twins fight, but they are not born with an extra personality trait that encourages them to do so. But fighting, unfortunately, is a common characteristic of twins. The importance of being right when your twin has an opposite point of view is created by everyday closeness and sharing their parents and their home environment, which leads to disagreements. Said differently, it is the innate structure of their extremely close relationship that creates competition that leads to fighting. Comparisons that intrigue family, friends, teachers, and just everyday onlookers also encourage competition about who is smarter, prettier, better at sports, or more popular, to name a few comparison points that keep twin fighting ongoing.

It helps if you can keep in perspective that what one twin has and the other does not can create very serious arguments involving physical fighting and foul language. What does not occur without outside professional help is a resolution that will reduce fighting. Parents or other authorities are needed to solve the argument. Talking your twins down will take time. Empathy is important, but so are rules.

Besides being emotionally complicated and physically exhausting, it is not easy to raise twins because so little has been thoughtfully researched about what helps twins and their families to get along. In my experience, valuing each child for who they are and their unique individual potential is an excellent beginning, alongside acceptance by all close others that it is “real work” to raise twins, and it is just plain hard to be a twin. Ask for help from family and friends. Do not encourage your twins to be copies of one another.

Understanding Twins Essential Reads

Twin Studies and the Role of Genetics in Religious Belief

When One Twin Has Turner Syndrome

Suggestions for Dealing With Conflicts

1. Remember, it is not your fault when you get tired and frustrated and lose your temper. It happens. Leave it in the past.
2. Find other parents of twins to talk to who may have solutions to your parenting problems.
3. Ask your twins to solve their own problems. They may know what to do to stop fighting better than you do.
4. Use twin separation as a way to reduce fighting.
5. Teach respect for the differences each of your twin children has selected. Encourage their differences.
6. Limit sharing toys, friends, and experiences. It will help promote differences to grow.