Once I experienced motherhood I realized that my well thought plans and straight forward approach didn’t work quite as well in real life as they did in theory. Not that the theory was wrong but real life is so much more complicated and sometimes I am at a loss as to how to apply the book knowledge to a certain situation.

My most recent ‘complicated’ experience started a few weeks ago. Video games entered our home. I was so not prepared for that. One night when I was working my husband had introduced Mario Karts to our oldest. Couple weeks later, when they had opened every possible new track, a package arrived in our house that contained Sky Captain. Now it’s on to the Monster Trucks.

Clearly the boy enjoys playing them. And I’m not completely against them in the lives of children. There just seemed to be ‘too much’ of it. From the beginning my husband and I talked to him how playing games is a privilege and not something he should take for granted. And there have been days when he’s lost that privilege and have had to go without playing all day, sometimes two or three in a row.

Here’s where it became ‘complicated’. I was feeling guilty for letting him play that much (what ever that much is) and at the same time I was thrilled he had found something to do that didn’t require my attention. Better yet, Beth and Joshua loved watching him race so they left me be also. WELCOME FREE TIME! But the quilt was growing as was his addiction. I had to intervene, for both of us. I was tempted to throw the games away but realized that would not address the problem. Something else would take the place of videogames and we’d be in this situation again. (And I also imagined him to grow up to be holed up in a room playing videogames all day long, not being able to hold onto a job or a wife and blaming me for ruining his life by not letting him play when he was a kid .. kinda like the relationship I have with Finnish chocolate because my parents deprived me of that when I was growing up. Yeah, totally blaming my lack of self disciple on them!). So what I needed were guidelines. I had mentioned this to a mom friend and she told me about an other mom who has her children ‘earn’ their TV time. Sounded like a good idea. After struggling to decide how much one workbook page meant in video time I settled for 10 pages (about 45min) = 30 minutes playing, usually separated in two sessions (Nathan’s choice).

Transition was much easier than I thought it would be. Nathan seems to be proud that he can ‘earn’ his game time. After breakfast he asks for his book and does the required pages. So far he has been satisfied with 30 min /day. My quilt has disappeared. A win win in my book!

(I should add that when my husband is home and he wants to play with Nathan that time does not need to be earned. That is counted as ‘quality time’ between Dad and a son. Because clearly, it is.)

How are you handling tv and video games in your home?

Hanna is a mom of ‘one and twins’ who’s trying to strike a balance between theory and real life. And to not ruin her kids while figuring it all out.

I know a lot of people who had one child and then had twins. Or they had several children and then had twins. And in those families, the non-twins all seem completely level-headed and happy. But I wonder if a younger child growing up in the shadow of older twins might feel, well, like a third wheel. And then I think, well, if we have a third, we should probably have a fourth, so that he/she doesn’t feel that way…and it feels sort of funny to be thinking so far ahead about bearing a child just so another one won’t feel left out.

I’m curious about the experiences of other MOMS who have had another child after having multiples, especially if the multiples were your first children. Obviously you can try to ensure that your youngest child is included and doesn’t feel left out, but I imagine that having older identical twin sisters, as would be the case for any new child that I might have, would at times feel lonely, what with having no twin of your own. Have any of you found that be true? What have you done to help the non-multiples in your family not feel left out?

To be sure, the idea of having a singleton after having twins is very attractive. When the girls were young I used to day dream about breastfeeding only one baby and hearing the cries of only one baby. Did you all find raising singletons to be that much easier than your multiples? What was different about having one baby at a time versus two or three (or four?)

Recently Jenna, a fellow HDYDI blogger,  discussed the issue of twins and identity, and you can read her eloquent thoughts here. At the end of her post, she asked, “What would happen if I told people I have a son and two daughters, instead of telling them I have a son and twin daughters?” Well, this is what I do every day. If someone asked me how many kids I have, I usually respond with one 7 year old and two 4 year olds. I never mention the fact that they are twins unless asked.

Both boys are different not only in physique but in personalities and interests. One boy is very athletic, but tenderhearted, and you will often see him taking care of his dolls. The other boy is not as interested in sports, but loves to pretend firefighter/policeman and play board games. They look like brothers and their personalities are so different that once kids and teachers get to know them, they are hard to confuse with one another.

This past year in their “three’s” preschool class, fellow parents and students were asking the boys if they were twins and I realized that up until this point I hadn’t even TOLD them they were twins! I always say, and they now say to me, that they are brothers and best friends. I might have under emphasized their twin relationship too much. It is special to be a twin, but more important for us to focus on our family as a whole.

As much as I try not to be multiples specific, having twins is a fact of life.  As my daughter says, “how can I get a break, Mom, there are TWO of them.” Each year I am surprised by the multiple specific issues I face: separations for classrooms and playdates; differing interests and activities; getting along with each other and their sister; sharing a room. Whether a Multiples Mom or a Mom that happens to have multiples, we all face the same problems. Do you consider yourself a Multiples Mom?

Leslie H. is a freelance writer and mom to an amazing 7 year old girl and two adventurous 4 year old boys.

Why do you like having two sisters?

I help them when they are stuck riding the car. I can read them books. If the light is off in their bedroom I can turn it on.

Sister hugs

What does it mean when someone is a twin?

I don’t know.

What make someone a twin?

I don’t know.

What does the word twin mean?

You already wrote on there [the computer screen] I don’t know. (Note – I guess we’ve done a good job of not referring to our daughters as twins.)

How can you tell which sister is which?

I ask them their names. R or S or R…. One of the sisters has a little darker eyes. (I’m not sure if this is true or not.)

Which one?

I think maybe S.

Do you know anyone else who has twins?

The Cat in the Hat does. And, the guy with two little sisters that we saw at Christmas when there was lots of snow and I forgot my mittens. (I think he means friends with twin daughters). I don’t know their names.

How do you know they are twins?

Because they are the same size as R and S. They are 2 years old.

Can twins be different ages than 2?

They can be 1 or 3.

Can they be 4-years-old?

Yes.

Were there any twins at your playschool?

Um nope. (There were very similar looking twin girls. There was also a boy with younger twins siblings this year and another one last year.)

More hugs

When the boys were little, we tried to make sure our daughter got special attention from us. She stayed up later, and she and I had tea parties together in the evenings. We went on little outings most weekends, to run errands or swing by the park.

Our boys were almost two before either of them got one-on-one time with a parent, out of the house and away from potential interruption by the other children. And those times were few and far between – mostly involving ER and urgent care visits. We poured most of our extra time into our daughter, who seemed to need us more. After all, our boys have each other.

That, right there, is the myth. Even when it benefits my singleton by securing her more individual attention from her parents and grandparents, we’re perpetuating a myth that hurts her: that she is incomplete, and would be – what? – more confident, less lonely, less needy, more whole – if only she had a twin. To treat her as though she needs more and her brothers need less, is to reinforce the lie she believes – that she is missing something that would complete her.

Our boys are 6 now, and even though they miss each other when they’re apart, they want one-on-one time with us. And they deserve it, as much as their sisters do. They might deserve it more, because they’ve certainly received less individual attention over their lifetimes than either of their singleton sisters has.

I struggle with meeting each of their needs for my undivided attention, like any busy parent does. Clearly the strategy we employed for the first 5 or so years of the boys’ lives – giving their older sister more time because she seemed to need it more – did not work. And as the boys have gotten older we’ve run into more situations where their being twins is not a boon, but a burden for them. Our new strategy is to treat them equally. Our twins are no more special than our singletons, nor any less deserving of our time and attention.

Because our kids are so close in age – and because our oldest needs to be in bed by 7:30 to keep her temper in check – they have the same bedtime. Our individual time comes on weekends. We rotate; each child gets one “date” with Mom and one with Dad before the next round begins. We started this over the summer and are still working through round 2.

I have no idea whether the “equality” approach to parenting is the right one, but I’m hoping that by consciously treating each child the same way, rather than according to what I perceive to be his or her need, I’ll be able to soothe my daughter’s fears that she’s missing something important and drive home to my boys that they are complete as separate individuals, as well.

(One of you asked about my youngest and how she feels – she’s not yet 4 and seems well adjusted so far. Most of her strong feelings hinge on things like Cheetos and her princess nightgown and when she watches “Dora,” so it’s hard to tell how badly I’ve screwed her up at this point.)

Jen is a work-from-home mom of 6-year-old twin boys, and two girls ages 3 and 8. She also blogs at Diagnosis: Urine, where she examines the finer points of potty training failure.

She was not yet 2 when we dragged her to our ultrasound appointment and discovered we were expecting twins. Over the next three months our daughter went from having an active mother who played with her and didn’t allow TV, to a mother who lay exhausted on the sofa all day and expected her to entertain herself watching Caillou.

When the babies were born it got worse. We couldn’t afford for me to quit my job, but we also couldn’t afford daycare. My employer allowed me to work from home most of the time, so we all huddled in my office: boys in their bouncy seats, Miss A in front of Caillou, and me on my laptop, working. They cried a lot – we all cried a lot. And if all three kids were crying, the one who was fed last and whose diaper was changed last was the oldest one.

This summer Miss A started acting out quite a bit. She has just turned 8. She began to lose her temper and physically go after her siblings. She would claw at her own thighs or chest, and scream, “You’re lucky I’m not doing this to you!” She’d hit herself, kick the walls, stomp on the floor, slam doors, break things… She’d lose her temper over requests that she wear sunscreen, or a reminder that it was almost bedtime – and she could scream for hours. One night she carried on until well after midnight, screaming and drumming her heels against the wall.

The other kids told us they were afraid of her. We were afraid to leave them alone with her.

We took her to see a family counselor, and she’s also meeting with her school counselor. In both settings, all she wants to talk about is twins. She wishes we’d never had them. She wishes she was one of them. She worries about them. She hates them. She loves them.

Our family isn’t very twintastic. We have rarely done matching outfits, and because they are the same gender our twins are verbally grouped as “the boys,” rather than “the twins.” We don’t belong to twins’ clubs. This summer’s trip to Twinsburg was the most twinnish thing we’ve done. At first I thought that might have sparked Miss A’s rage, but then I traced her outbursts to a month or so before the Twins’ Days Festival. I love my little boys – each one of them, individually – as I love my little girls. She doesn’t understand that for all of the emphasis society places on twins, our family had been hoping for a singleton. She believes it’s the opposite – that everyone is secretly hoping for twins, and secretly disappointed to get just one baby at a time. She believes a parent’s love grows exponentially with each additional baby, like the work does.

When she is older I can tell her how we felt at that ultrasound; how overwhelmed and terrified we were, and how terribly hard it was for the next couple years. But for now, she’s hurting and longing for the other half she never had.

Jen is a work-from-home mom of 6-year-old twin boys, and two girls ages 3 and 8. She also blogs at Diagnosis: Urine, where she examines the finer points of potty training failure.

The Twins Days Festival is really geared toward TWIN MOMS and their offspring. I’m more of a twin mom. Lower case.

We attended at our twins’ request. As we pulled into the parking lot, my boys were excited to see sets of twins in matching outfits. Attendees had decorated their cars as well. “What’s so special about being twins?” my 8-year-old singleton grumbled.

Oh, that’s a fun one to answer at Twins Days.

As we entered the high school where registrations were being taken, I was overcome by a wave of emotion at the throngs of identically dressed twosomes and threesomes. I was excited for my boys. In our quest to treat twins as individuals, I think we often go overboard and treat them as though being a twin is somehow a weakness that needs to be hammered out of them. We frown at sets of twins with rhyming or alliterative names. We tsk-tsk parents who dress their twins alike. We want them in separate classes, with separate friends. It felt good to be in a place where all the pressure to prove I’m fostering their individuality is removed, and their sameness is accepted for what it is.

The sameness is not just accepted, but celebrated. It seems a lot of effort is put into looking identical at the Twins’ Days Festival. These twins all matched completely – haircuts, clothing, shoes, glasses, hairstyles, purses, jewelry, etc.

I’d made a terrible mistake. Two terrible mistakes, actually. First, my boys were not dressed exactly alike. (This is because I am a twin mom [lower case] and just felt proud that I had the same shirt in two different colors clean at the same time.) Second, my boys have very different haircuts, due to a series of unfortunate attempts at saving money on haircuts. (Lesson learned.)

My hope that the boys would be recognized as twins was washed away by a river of candied apple slobber.

There weren’t many sets of twins or trips whose parents had made my mistake(s). Or if there were, they blended in with all the other non-twins. I was asked if my older three were triplets. I was asked if Miss A and P were twins, when G was standing right there next to them. The boys were not obviously twinnish enough, and I felt like I’d short-changed them.

This event highlighted how very lower case I am.

For most of the evening my kids’ social anxiety kept them very calm and well behaved. I received compliments. But as the kids got more comfortable with their surroundings, things escalated until they were having a four-way chasing/wrestling/punching fight that resulted in multiple minor injuries. As the violence progressed, I thought, “If there’s any public place where this probably won’t be unusual, this is it.” Based on conversations with the moms of multiples I know in real life, face-punching is sort of twinspeak shorthand for “hi, how’s it going?” But the whole evening, I only saw one other set of twins punching each other in the face. I have no explanation for this.

So, Twins’ Days made me feel inadequate. It made my daughter feel jealous. But it made my boys feel fantastic. Don’t mock me, but I’ve shed tears over how much they liked being there, and how they clearly identified so closely with all of these other people who sprang to the earth paired with another. It was such a powerful experience that it made me want to convert to TWIN MOM. Whether we subject the whole family to the festival in the future, we’ll definitely take the boys back each year, for as long as they want to go.

My kids, before G shunned his older sister for having failed to split after fertilization.

Aside: I had the pleasure of meeting up with Kim Schmidt, a HDYDI reader and mother to an 8-year-old singleton and 3-year-old twins, all daughters. She’s writing about the Twinsburg festival for American Way magazine, and I hope she’ll let us link it here when the piece is published. She blogged a bit about the festival here.

Next year, HDYDI meet-up in Twinsburg, Ohio!

Jen is a work-from-home mom of 5-year-old twin boys, and two girls ages 3 and 8. She also blogs at Diagnosis: Urine, where she examines the finer points of potty training failure.

As the girls got a little older he learned what their names were but he still couldn’t tell them apart.  He would refer to them by the colour of their blanket or coat.  That led to embarrassing situations when he would announce in his defiant 2-year-old voice in a public place, “I don’t want to sit next to the brown baby.”

Later he began to hyphenate their names.  They became R-S and S-R.  To him it didn’t seem to matter now because they had the correct name somewhere in his label.

He seems to like their names or maybe he’s still trying to figure out who is who because he has named his stuffed animals and imaginary friends after his sisters.  The interesting thing is that has named them R, S and R.  For some reason he reuses R’s name all the time.

Our son is now 3.75 years old.  He still can’t seem to reliably tell his sisters apart.  Sometimes he’ll get it right but not more than the 50% that comes with guessing. He’ll ask, “what’s this baby’s name?” and then talk to her by name.  Then he’ll ask what the other baby’s name is.  I wonder if he thinks we reassign their names and that each girl might not actually go with the same name all the time.
How have your siblings of multiples done with identifying who’s who? Do you have any suggestions for helping him to tell them apart?  This won’t be an issue long because the girls will likely soon be talking, so I”m sure they’ll correct him.

This week I stumbled upon the above quote, thanks to twin mom Lisa Mazzio. I’d never heard it before, and immediately shared it with a triplet mom I know.

Like many little girls, I dreamed of having twins. What’s cuter than a matched set of babies? Even more, I wanted to be twins. I wanted a built-in soul mate.

When our second baby was discovered at our 20-week ultrasound, people told me about how they’d always wanted twins. Once the babies were born, a coworker with three children close in age told me he and his wife were considering fertility treatment because she really wanted twins. He asked what I thought.

My twins are nearly 6 and there have been very few times I’ve been out looking cute with a matched set of babies. I’ve always gotten a lot less “Awwww!” and a lot more “Oh my!” I know this has a lot to do with my twins being bookended by sisters only 26 months older and younger, and I appreciate that my crew is as visually overwhelming to bystanders as they are mentally overwhelming to me. It sets the bar low, and I like it that way.

The reality of my precious matched set of babies is a little different than what I envisioned as a kid. The reality of my first year with the twins was that someone was always crying. My 2-year-old was neglected. She watched more “Caillou” that year than anyone should endure in a lifetime. The babies took turns crying in my lap and in their bouncy seats. The guilt of being unable to comfort both of them and unable to do anything at all for my toddler was crushing.

No, I wouldn’t advise anyone to seek this out. I wouldn’t pray to be given twins. Don’t get me wrong – I feel lucky. I feel like, for whatever reason, God shone His face upon me and sent this curveball my way. “When someone has been given much, much will be required in return; and when someone has been entrusted with much, even more will be required.” (Luke 12:48) I’ve been given a lot, and a lot is required of me. And I feel guilty that so much has been required of my oldest, by me and just by life. She’s a really intense kid – she always has been, but my mother guilt nags at me, suggesting she might be better able to cope if she’d gotten just one sibling at a time, or if she’d been a little older when they were born, or if I’d been better equipped to handle three under 3, or if I had been a stay-at-home mom instead of a work-at-home mom.

And while my boys have their built-in soul mates and I no longer feel as though I’m neglecting them, they must overcome challenges related to looking alike and each being perceived as only half a person among extended family, neighbors, teachers and classmates. My boys love being twins but I think it’s a disadvantage for them, socially.

I don’t know how to wrap this up. It’s been an intense 24 hours in my household and my boys start kindergarten in three weeks, and I’m a little blue. Aside: The boys have requested (demanded, actually) that I take them to the Twinsburg festival this Friday. Should make for an interesting post in a couple weeks!

Jen is a work-from-home mom of 5-year-old twin boys, and two girls ages 3 and 8. She also blogs at Diagnosis: Urine, where she examines the finer points of potty training failure.

This is mind-blowing in any number of ways, of course.  But looking back on this blog, which I started back when they were six months old, one thing that really strikes me is how much the “twin thing” has changed over the last three years.

The last 12 months, the centrality of their twin-ness to my parenting experience has really faded into the background. Oh, it’s still a major factor of my identity as a mom, don’t get me wrong. I will always carry that as a badge of pride, maybe as a war wound, too. I love that my kids are twins.  While they may not be as inseparable as some, they are most definitely close.  They fight, sure. They get on each other’s nerves in ways I find both exhausting and amusing.  But the last year in particular, they really have become each other’s very best playmates and have tons of fun together.  With almost no words spoken between them, a piece of rope will turn into a 20-minute game of chasing and hysterical shrieking.

While there will always be benefits and problems that are specific to having twins, my day-to-day life is no longer a series of unique logistical problems in the way it was that first 3, 6, 12, 18 months. Having twin newborns, infants, and young toddlers is so intense and so uniquely challenging, it makes for an entirely different experience of parenting from those who have “just” one. People are incredulous when they ask “how do you do it?”, especially because if we parented just like a singleton-parent-times-two, we’d never make it. We don’t fuss over every little thing, we simply don’t have the time.  That experience is foreign to us.

Today, though, I don’t think my life as a parent of two three-year-olds is nearly so different from my friend with the two-year-old and four-year-old.  Much more these days, I’m simply a parent of two children.  When people start to give the, “oh, wow, twins, that must be so hard!” reaction, they now start to backtrack and realize that it’s not so different from their life as a parent of two, even if they had them one at a time.

The intense difficulty of those first months has not been negated. It forever changed me, primarily in what I think are really positive ways (even if that was in a “whatever doesn’t kill you makes you stronger” kind of way).  My kids and their twin-ness will always have something special that their singleton friends don’t.  I will always proudly be a Mom of Twins.

But I’m also just a mom of two kids, like so many others.  The specialness of my experience is fading a little bit, I’m blending in.  I’m OK with that. I’ll never forget where I came from.