Comparing the two
Found an interesting article in The Age online this morning. Seems to have some good pointers on dealing with multiple births. Not only the birth bit either.
One point that jumped out at me was to ensure the kids aren’t constantly compared to eachother. To make sure they are their own person:
“One of the things I’m very strong on is persuading, not just parents, but often grandparents who are asking questions like which one is doing better at school,” Prof Hay said. “That is just setting things up for a long history of comparison.”
And this is very true. I even hated it when my first two were little and being compared constantly with some competitve parent’s offspring. “My little Johnny is already walking at 9 months” and then look at your little tyke with disdain, as he/she crawls across the floor. I’ve never had time for these parents. It’s no wonder I didn’t join up with a mother’s group after Bert’s birth. I had a good support network for a while with Phee, but one or two of them made me feel bad on too many occasions, so I wasn’t fussed when we stopped meeting up.
I suspect it could be worse with 2 the exact same age in the same household. Might make a bit of a difference with two genders, I can only imagine the questions that parents of identicals would get.
March 19th, 2007 at 12:36 pm
A lady I meet recently has twins - about 12/13 now. She said it was an uphill battle to ensure that they were not called ‘The Twins”. They are now called by their names and the older sister has a label of ‘older sister’.
As for comparing - its a bloody nightmare and I have decided its undertaken by insecure parents. Whenever I get to hear the comparison conversations I move away - although maybe I sould join in make outrageous comments like my 16month old can read books out loud by himself! That would be a laugh. I’ll report back on the results!!