Jane Seymour's Advice About Parenting Twins
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Anything else you'd like to add about parenting twins? In terms of the kids having friends over to play, we always find it’s best to have, well, certainly one other kid but usually two other kids. So they each have a friend, so one doesn’t get left out. We have a lot of sleepovers here. We’re very sleepover friendly. So a lot of parents are quite happy because they can park their children here. Sometimes they’ll stay for a few days and then once in a while we’ll call up and say, "Can they for a change of pace go to your place?" One of the things [that is good for] twins -- and not just twins-- is sleepovers. [T]hey did sleepovers from the time they were born, pretty much. So it’s never been a case of, “How old do you have to be before you do a sleepover?” Sleeping in someone else’s house, in someone else’s bed, going here, going there, having other people stay with us -- that’s just been normal in their lives. I told my girlfriends who were having their first children while I was having my second batch... So all of their children have been doing sleepovers since they were like tiny. And [my friends] were all really grateful for that, because they noticed their friends’ kids had a trauma about change, about parents being gone, about staying at someone else’s house. I always tell people I think [sleepovers are] really healthy to do for your child so that your child can trust someone else. God forbid something does happen to you or your husband, you don’t want to have your child be so in need of you uniquely that they can’t deal with it if for some reason [if] you can’t be there. So I think it’s actually good for children to learn to be able to deal with being at someone else’s house, being able to sleep in someone else’s bed, being able to learn the manners and to be polite and to eat food that different people make and to taste everything. They know the usual pleases and thank you and [help] to tidy up. I really don’t think being totally controlling of your child and being the only person that your child can be with works for children. In my experience, my kids have done very well from being okay about even getting on airplanes by themselves. They’re perfectly capable of it. The other thing, I know this from my older kids, is you need to know who the kids’ friends are. You have to monitor what’s happening on the Internet. You can’t let them be loose on the Internet. We have minimal cell phone use, no texting. During the week and school time there is no TV or video games, at all. Weekends, they have a certain amount of time for television and video games and that’s only after homework assignments and music practice and things like that have been done. This is a privilege that they can lose if they misbehave or talk back or don’t do something they were supposed to do. And we always used to say to my older kids and we tell the twins too, “Imagine you’re a horse and you have a bridle in your mouth and the reins are held by your parents. Well, every time we give you the opportunity to do something independently and you promise you’ll do something and you do it in a certain way by a certain time and you fulfill the freedom that you were given, you won’t even know the reins are there. But the reins are there so that if for some reason you either test us or you make a bad choice, we can let your mouth know. (The imaginary bridle. Needless to say there is no such thing as a bridle that goes in a child’s mouth. It’s an imaginary bridle.) It’s a wonderful adventure. Even though they sometimes say that they hate one another, clearly they love one another. And they would probably kill the person that injured or in any way hurt the other twin. There is a bond that twins have that is unspoken and quite formidable. Every mother of twins I’ve spoken to has had the same things I’ve had. The twins fight, but they also love one another. If there is a school situation and somebody would, say, beat up the one twin, the other one will come and probably try to take out the other person that did harm to their twin. It’s a remarkable, wonderful adventure and I keep telling the boys, “You’ll always have this unique connection that the rest of us don’t have. For the rest of your life. And if it means you’re doing a sport, you’ll always know what the other one’s about to do. And if it’s something you’re doing that’s musical, you clearly know how to play together. And you also pretty much know how to make one another mad, how to make one another sad, and hopefully how to make one another happy.” By Pamela Prindle Fierro, About.com
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