Joan Friedman's book: Emotionally healthy twins

I posted a comment on http://www.hdydi.com/ that I thought I should post on my own blog.

I have read the book, "Emotionally Healthy Twins," and our twin club had the author come down to speak at our club meeting. I appreciated her perspective as both a parent of and a twin herself.

I have identical twins and am always concerned that we and ,more likely, others treat them as one unit. Right now, they call themselves by one name (we’re working on it).

People like to think they should have polarizing personalities; they say comments like, “It must be so neat to see their different personalies” when in reality they actually are quite similar for the most part. Which only reinforces the perception that they are the same. I prefer to think that they have “unique” personalities which is what Joan talked about. It’s the uniqueness of each twin that should be fostered and not necessarily their independence from each other. Their uniqueness can be brought out alongside of that their twin bond. One on one time is a way to obviously bring atttention to it, and keeping it “unfair and unequal” as the book talks about it is something to keep in mind. It’s a tricky thing trying to bring up 2 individuals who are so similiar physically and mentally, we can only hope to try to do our best and hope that it is enough.