Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt have plenty of money.

With unlimited monetary resources and limited personal time, I would advise them to do the following with their older three children and twins to be.

First, I would advise the expectant couple to prepare their kids for the birth of two babies and try to minimize the use of the word TWINS. While it is so ingrained in all of us to use the word, the word itself conjures images and stereotypes about twins as ESP conjoined soulmates who inhabit the private and exclusive world belonging solely to twins.

Second, I would set up two separate rooms with nonmatching accessories. Twin babies do not have to sleep together although they have shared the same womb for 37 weeks (hopefully). Their names should not begin with the same letter and their distinct personalities should be identified and respected from birth going forward.

Third, the parents need to spend time with their older children so that they do not feel eclipsed by the birth of two babies. The media will be jumping all over this because a twin birth captivates the public. These new twins are fortunate to have older siblings because their relationship will hopefully be a source of loving support when the parents are unavailable.

Shall each twin have his own caretaker? Absolutely – every baby needs that one-on-one relationship.

Will Angelina feel resentful about the babies’ bonds to the caretakers?

Time will tell.

To Raising Emotionally Healthy Twins,

Dr. Joan Friedman

A mom of two and a half year old twins explains that one daughter cries whenever mom attempts to take her out alone without her sister. Her daughter yells and screams and protests that she does not want to leave her sister at home. Mom feels angry and guilty about this situation.

She feels badly about the fact that her daughter misses her sister but at the same time resentful that her daughter is unwilling to spend time with her alone – without her sister present. Mom reports that her other daughter exhibits none of these behaviors when she is separated from her sister. In fact, mom notes that this daughter relishes the time alone without her sister present.

How do we understand this dynamic? Sometimes, one twin is more attached to her twin than to her mother.

Thus, the over dependent attachment to her twin is an attachment to mom via proxy. Parents need to understand this dynamic and attempt to make some restitution. While it’s exceedingly difficult to see one of your twins longing for the other, there is an important developmental lesson to be learned.

The intense separation fear has much more to do with an insecure attachment to mom and NOT unrequited love for one’s twin.

“One of the twins has always been the leader and has bossed his brother since early on. I have enrolled them in a preschool and this is their 4th week. The boys seem to block out the teacher and do not want to follow rules. They will not make eye contact. The biggest issue today is M pushed another child and stomped on the teacher’s foot. M doesn’t seem to want to sit at circle time and one day this week he got up and pulled pictures off of the wall. His brother T then followed him doing the same thing. So in a nut shell they are disruptive to an existing class.”

I recently received this email from a mom feeling distraught about this situation with her twin boys. She read what I wrote about “too much togetherness” in my book and concurred that this is truly what has happened. I can’t tell you how many times I have encountered this issue with preschool age twins. The twin dynamic that has characterized the twin pair can become a problem within the contextualized social world of preschool. If this pattern of one twin controlling the other and the other twin imitating and accommodating to this pattern, entry into a preschool class with other children will only exaggerate the difficulties. Hoping or believing that the presence of other children will help to minimize this dynamic is often wishful thinking. In fact, often times the opposite occurs – there is a resurgence of the dynamic in spades as both twins are threatened and uncomfortable by the socialization demands to which they are unaccustomed.

Don’t deceive yourselves – there is no magical solution. What it takes is dedication to the principle of separate experiences with the hope that given ample time the twins can adjust to being in separate classes so that the strength of the twin bond is reduced, thereby giving each child the opportunity to be acting on his own behalf rather than feeling like half of a pair.

The media announces that the quadruplets born in Baltimore will be presented to the media next week!

The keynote speakers at the upcoming annual convention of the National Organization of the Mothers of Twins Club (NOMOTC) are the parents of twins and sextuplets. Their family life is filmed and aired frequently on the Discovery Channel and the Learning Channel and they have been Oprah’s guests.

I remember hearing about the Dionne quintuplets. They were identical quintuplets whose lives were sensationalized and destroyed by the exploitation of the Canadian government and their family. Their books reveal the horrific aftermath of their lives’ ordeals.

Perhaps, seeing other parents with so many children to care for makes some of us feel less burdened by our parental obligations and tasks. Having twins is a breeze compared to these broods of children.

I think about these large families and wonder how the kids will develop.

Certainly they will thrive emotionally and physically within the framework of their sibling network. They will grow up in a rich communal environment. Yet, will these experiences provide them with any opportunity to know themselves as individuals?

Jon and Kate plus 8 put enormous faith in God to help them with their large family. Faith is a viable resource along with the monetary benefits of television fame and exposure. They certainly will need all the help they can get.

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