Too much focus on similarities between twins is unhelpful to healthy individual development.

Comparison and competition promote fighting and jealousy, which can derail the twin bond.

Teaching your twins to respect each other develops authentic closeness that is long-lasting and nurturing.

Parenting twins is very hard to do, no matter how much experience and help you have with your twin children. While the right way to promote a sense of uniqueness in each child can take extra thoughtfulness and time, a strategy to promote real similarities and differences will pay off day to day as twins develop into maturity and can make their own decisions. Having skills that promote identity uniqueness is very important because too much focus on similarities between twins contributes to competition and comparisons that are totally unhelpful to healthy individual development. In addition, comparison and competition promote fighting and jealousy, which will quietly (or loudly) derail the twin bond. Teaching your twins to respect each other develops authentic closeness that is long-lasting and nurturing.

Seeing each of your twin children as unique, special, and talented in their own way requires a lot of patience and a substantial amount of your attention and concentration to different areas of their experiences. For example, twins may like different food, toys, games, and friends. Differences in likes and dislikes can become the basis of individuality between twins. How parents manage to label and normalize differences between their twin children is critical to individual development. In my professional and personal experiences, twins who have a sense of themselves as individuals and also as twins are able to adjust to the........

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