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Dear Care and Feeding,
My 8-year-old daughters are identical twins, right down to their freckles. We can tell the difference, but even their grandparents frequently confuse them, with reminders like “Twin A has a tiny mole on the left side of her neck” being almost useless. While we’ve taken care to treat them as individuals and not a set, encouraging them to do new activities by themselves and pick out clothes and haircuts that they like. They LOVE being identical and think it’s fun to dress similarly, get the same haircut. They refuse to let my wife or me do anything to make them easier to tell apart (we talked them into initial bracelets, but even those required multiple reminders to put on and keep on). Why? Because even after being mixed up multiple times a day, every day, for their entire lives, they still think it’s the funniest thing ever. A babysitter having to repeatedly ask who is who will leave them still giggling when we get home, and we’ve had to temporarily reduce screen time after learning they purposely swapped initial bracelets to trick their friends and spent two hours at a birthday party lying to everyone about who they were.
I’m pretty fed up with it at this point. We’ve had multiple conversations about why it’s important that grown-ups in charge of them know who they are, and why lying to their friends and laughing at them is mean and needs to stop. Two weeks ago, they started an art day camp, and while they told us how silly it was that their friends kept mixing them up, I saw them be kinder about correcting others, and had to give them fewer reminders about keeping their initial bracelets on. However, at pickup yesterday, their counselor told me that they switched hoodies (their only non-identical clothing they picked out that day) and bracelets, and joined each other’s activity group, so they could each could do their favorite activity a second time. The counselor said that they only found out because the girls told them at the end of the day, and said that we should sort this out at home, but it was important that we stop this from happening again, as it could cause issues in an emergency. We’re really upset, but unsure what else there is to do. Clearly, this shows that none of their past punishments or our talks have gotten through to them. How can we resolve this once and for all? Or should we try to think of this as a phase that they’ll be tired of after a few more years of constantly having to correct people?
—Tricked By Twins
Dear Tricked,
I feel especially qualified to answer this question, because I’m one half of an identical twin pair who loved to play tricks on people at every possible opportunity. My twin brother and I drove our parents nuts, and we found their frustration to be absolutely hilarious—but finally they decided they had enough.
I don’t quite remember what we did specifically to upset our parents on that day, but when we were 10 years old my parents decided that we would never dress alike again. Of course, we protested—but because we couldn’t prove that we could handle our “twinness” responsibility, we lost our privileges. In addition to that, my parents requested that we were placed in separate classes and groups at school, summer camps, activity groups, etc.
We hated it at first, but a funny thing happened after a while. We started to make our own friends, create our own identities, and learn that people could like us as individuals instead of a package deal who played silly tricks on people. Now we’re grown adults and best friends, but we couldn’t be more different.
My suggestion is to stop with the negotiations, because your daughters aren’t handling their twinness responsibly, either. You said they “refuse” to let you do anything to make life easier for you in regard to telling them apart, but who’s in charge here? You’re going to have to take a deep breath and be at peace with being the temporary bad guy for the greater good in the long term. For starters, stop putting them in identical (or even remotely similar) outfits—even if it means donating one half of the matching outfits to charity. Another route is giving them different haircuts or even dyeing the hair of one of them, to serve as a foolproof way to end the trickery. In addition, I would also advise the counselors to keep the twins separated at camp as much as possible.
They will probably throw a fit like my brother and I did back in the day, but trust me, they’ll be fine. The alternative is enduring this nonsense for years to come, which is not only annoying, but as the counselor pointed out, could be dangerous in case of an emergency. From a twin who has lived through the stage your daughters are currently in, just rip the band-aid off right now—especially if you value your sanity.
https://slate.com/human-interest/2022/07/identical-twins-confusion-tricks.html
My 8-year-old daughters are identical twins, right down to their freckles. We can tell the difference, but even their grandparents frequently confuse them, with reminders like “Twin A has a tiny mole on the left side of her neck” being almost useless. While we’ve taken care to treat them as individuals and not a set, encouraging them to do new activities by themselves and pick out clothes and haircuts that they like. They LOVE being identical and think it’s fun to dress similarly, get the same haircut. They refuse to let my wife or me do anything to make them easier to tell apart (we talked them into initial bracelets, but even those required multiple reminders to put on and keep on). Why? Because even after being mixed up multiple times a day, every day, for their entire lives, they still think it’s the funniest thing ever. A babysitter having to repeatedly ask who is who will leave them still giggling when we get home, and we’ve had to temporarily reduce screen time after learning they purposely swapped initial bracelets to trick their friends and spent two hours at a birthday party lying to everyone about who they were.
I’m pretty fed up with it at this point. We’ve had multiple conversations about why it’s important that grown-ups in charge of them know who they are, and why lying to their friends and laughing at them is mean and needs to stop. Two weeks ago, they started an art day camp, and while they told us how silly it was that their friends kept mixing them up, I saw them be kinder about correcting others, and had to give them fewer reminders about keeping their initial bracelets on. However, at pickup yesterday, their counselor told me that they switched hoodies (their only non-identical clothing they picked out that day) and bracelets, and joined each other’s activity group, so they could each could do their favorite activity a second time. The counselor said that they only found out because the girls told them at the end of the day, and said that we should sort this out at home, but it was important that we stop this from happening again, as it could cause issues in an emergency. We’re really upset, but unsure what else there is to do. Clearly, this shows that none of their past punishments or our talks have gotten through to them. How can we resolve this once and for all? Or should we try to think of this as a phase that they’ll be tired of after a few more years of constantly having to correct people?
—Tricked By Twins
Dear Tricked,
I feel especially qualified to answer this question, because I’m one half of an identical twin pair who loved to play tricks on people at every possible opportunity. My twin brother and I drove our parents nuts, and we found their frustration to be absolutely hilarious—but finally they decided they had enough.
I don’t quite remember what we did specifically to upset our parents on that day, but when we were 10 years old my parents decided that we would never dress alike again. Of course, we protested—but because we couldn’t prove that we could handle our “twinness” responsibility, we lost our privileges. In addition to that, my parents requested that we were placed in separate classes and groups at school, summer camps, activity groups, etc.
We hated it at first, but a funny thing happened after a while. We started to make our own friends, create our own identities, and learn that people could like us as individuals instead of a package deal who played silly tricks on people. Now we’re grown adults and best friends, but we couldn’t be more different.
My suggestion is to stop with the negotiations, because your daughters aren’t handling their twinness responsibly, either. You said they “refuse” to let you do anything to make life easier for you in regard to telling them apart, but who’s in charge here? You’re going to have to take a deep breath and be at peace with being the temporary bad guy for the greater good in the long term. For starters, stop putting them in identical (or even remotely similar) outfits—even if it means donating one half of the matching outfits to charity. Another route is giving them different haircuts or even dyeing the hair of one of them, to serve as a foolproof way to end the trickery. In addition, I would also advise the counselors to keep the twins separated at camp as much as possible.
They will probably throw a fit like my brother and I did back in the day, but trust me, they’ll be fine. The alternative is enduring this nonsense for years to come, which is not only annoying, but as the counselor pointed out, could be dangerous in case of an emergency. From a twin who has lived through the stage your daughters are currently in, just rip the band-aid off right now—especially if you value your sanity.
https://slate.com/human-interest/2022/07/identical-twins-confusion-tricks.html