The moment of birth—living without your twin by your side, as twins experience the womb—is the first stage of twin separation, which is accompanied by crying and fussing. Growing apart peacefully from your twin while using good judgement is a long-term process which starts at birth and continues on for practical reasons and to encourage individuality.

School classroom separation in kindergarten is a planned and official time for separation from one another. For more than fifty years school policy to separate twins in modern learning centers/schools has been and is still required. Educators finally realized that twins need to learn on their own and give up working together and copying one another. Being in separate classes teaches twins to begin to make decisions on their own doing school tasks and making new friends.

Separation is certainly more difficult for twins than single children. I have reached this conclusion based on my many consultations with parents and teachers. Twins speak clearly about missing their twin, especially in childhood. I also remember that my twin sister and I were not separated in school until we were in seventh grade.

Being in separate classes was a big emotional task that was hard on us from an emotional and cognitive perspective. For example, we missed each other’s companionship and had a hard time not getting help with school work and homework assignments. Making new friends without my twin with me was a totally confusing experience for so many reasons, but I don’t have space to recount them here. My sister had very similar experiences, which we talked about.

Finally, we also........

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