I am now in the stage of parenting a young tween and mid-elementary school girls. They are wonderful girls with great friends, and I feel very fortunate that we have not had significant drama on the social scene.
While I try to nurture my older daughters’ social life as best I can, I need to step up my game for my twins.
When you have same-sex twins, there are cliché sayings like, “Being a twin is like being born with a best friend,” by Tricia Marrapodi. I am sure it’s true in many cases, especially in the early years, but it also doesn’t mean they are their only friend.
Sharing a lot, such as clothes and toys, is common with twins, and mine also share a bedroom. I separated them in class when they were four so they could establish friendships and identity before kindergarten and didn’t have to share a teacher. They didn’t mind being apart, and they made new friends.
What I am beginning to notice is that outside of school, the families that we socialize with tend to be more of one of my girls’ friends over another. I was counting on them all being friends, and one friend didn’t necessarily belong to one twin. I was wrong!
One of my twins exclaimed that when going to a friend’s house on Halloween, it would be all of her sister’s friends, not hers. She had never expressed this before, and I was disappointed I did not realize she had felt this way earlier.
