In the United States there are thousands of babies born every day but how many of them are twins? Twins today are more common than they once were. There is actually a 3 percent chance that if you are pregnant right now you could be having twins. Twins are something miraculous and special. I have had the pleasure of meeting seven different sets of twins in my life time thus far. Only one set is older than I am while the rest range from juniors in high school to just starting pre-school. Today, I am going to talk to you about three things. First I am going to discuss the bond that most sets of twins share.
Secondly I will address individuality and its importance among twins. Last I will talk about the difference between identical and fraternal twins and how this effects their relationship. Each of these twin pairs that I have met, had their own unique bond but they did all have one. “The twin bond is important since it’s a relationship that really started in utero,” says Eileen Pearlman, a licensed marriage, family, and child therapist who lectures on multiple birth issues and is the author of Raising Twins: What Parents Want to Know (And What Twins Want to Tell Them). Even in the womb, there was a lot of working together sharing a very small space. ” Yet it’s not only this preordained creation that makes the twin bond so special; there are other forces at work, too. From a practical point of view, most young twins do everything together from eating and sleeping to bathing and playing. Although done to save time (and a parent’s sanity), this high access to each other has an added bonus—helping to cement a strong intra-twin relationship.
The third factor contributing to the twin bond, Pearlman explains, is that they become each other’s transitional objects—you know, that teddy bear or security blanket that helps to ease the pain when Mommy’s not around. “That teddy bear can also be replaced with a twin,” she says. “If Mommy’s not here but my twin is, that will soothe me. ” It’s that helping each other in times of stress that allows many multiples to more easily adjust to unfamiliar situations * I think that it would be kind of cool to be a twin because you always have a best friend with you no matter what. Even if you don’t hang out together all the time or have exactly the same interests, you are the same age and experience most of the same things and can have someone to talk to about it Most twins, especially if they are identical, stress being individuals as much as possible. They want to be their own person and not dress or act like their twin. One of the sets of twins I’ve had the pleasure of getting to know is a little different in this way. Doris and Dora decided long ago that becoming an individual wasn’t nearly as important as staying inseparable.
The now 84 year old pair appeared on CBS evening news in 2007 to mark their 80th birthday. Through all their years, they can only remember one day when they weren’t wearing the same shoes. They match their clothing everyday of the year. Really, this whole ritual of mirroring one another is just an excuse for keeping close. You can’t look alike if you don’t get your hair done together. You can’t coordinate outfits if you don’t talk every day. Which is why you never will see them dressing differently.
But they say the greatest thing about having someone so like you for so long isn’t just being able to finish each other’s sentences. It’s having a safe harbor for your embarrassing secrets. Dora and Doris are incredibly close women and show this by their abundance of similarities. The two even got married on the same day. Another set of twins that I got to know well in high school actually played hockey with me. They too, like Dora and Doris, were identical and when taking a quick glance one could confuse the two. Rachel and Kelcie talked to me one day about being twins.
They told me that they understand each other in ways that others just don’t. They also told me that they are really close and can share anything with each other. Seeing how they interact as members of my high school team, I could clearly see the bond. No matter what they were doing or talking about, they agreed or supported each other. Some might argue that this type of bond can occur in any set of two siblings and that it doesn’t have to be between twins. This may be true but the chance of it occurring in twins is so much higher.
Being individuals like I said is important to most twins and their parents should help aid this process throughout life. I have an example for this. My friend Tom has a set of twin sisters. His parents started treating them as individual persons more so in the fourth grade. They were put into separate classes so they could be themselves and obtain their own friends. The family also tried hard to not refer to them as “girls” and to call them by their names and treat each one as a separate relationship. This helped the girls as they grew older to have their own style and become more independent.
The girls are still close but Tom is confident that they could live separate lives without having any issues. No matter how much you support individualism however, the relationship between the twins will still be strong and will always be present. Furthermore, twins when conceived are either born from one egg and sperm or from two. This makes the difference in whether the twins will be identical or fraternal. Identical twins come from the one egg and that is why they share physical traits and characteristics. Identical twins are always the same sex.
Fraternal twins on the other hand are from two different eggs and two sperm. This means that they could be the same sex and could look alike but they don’t have to. Fraternal twins are actually the most common type of twins. Fraternal twins are often very similar to any other set of siblings because they do not share traits. The only thing they have in common is their parents and that they spent the same time together in the womb. For this reason they may be a little bit closer than other siblings but the sibling relationship here is pretty basic and not as best-friendish like the identical twin bond.
An example of this is a set of twins I again met through hockey. Kayla, as well as previously mentioned Kelcie and Rachel, skated with me in high school. Kayla has a twin brother named Kurt making them a set of fraternal twins. The two of them share some similar interests like hockey but do not really have a best friend type of relationship. They do share personal feelings and secrets, that I am sure comes from being a twin and being raised at the same time. Kurt and Kayla also have a younger set of twin brothers who are identical and share many interests.
Kayla told me however that she can already see the individualism in the two of them; one being more athletic while the other is more theatrical or dramatic. Being twins seems to be something truly unique. It would be fun to be a twin. You’d always have a best friend at your house. It’d be like a constant sleep over. How wouldn’t that be awesome? All in all, twins are people just like me and you, they just get to share life with someone special. An at home best friend.
