As you know, we have twin teenaged girls. I don’t know how much you can glean from this piece if you don’t have them. Perhaps you can understand if you just have two daughters who are close in age. I am going to talk about the difficulty our daughters are having as they try to figure out who they are as individuals, not just as one of a set of twins. This separation has been interesting and heart breaking to witness as well as aggravating to go through and we are hopeful that the girls come out of it with a relationship that is still strong yet one in which they aren’t defined by each other.
When I first came around the girls, they were about 10 years old and at that time they were very close. If one was out of the eyesight of the other, they immediately had to know where the other girl was. If you said something to one of the girls the other demanded to know what you’d just said. If you were talking to one of the girls and the other walked in, the expectation was that she would be included in that conversation and be quickly brought up to speed. If you got one stick of gum for one and not for the other, there was no end to the drama created by the perceived unequal treatment. They are still THAT way. They shared a bedroom at that time and had since birth, so sleeping for either was dependent upon the presence of the other. They attended a small private Catholic school during these years and became friends with a little group of girls. Our girls liked having friends over and sleep overs but I noticed fairly early on that neither of our girls were invited to other kids’ homes very often. When I once commented on that to my husband, he seemed unconcerned about it and said that he thought it was probably because people felt like they would have to have two kids over, not just one so he believed they chose to have neither. I accepted his wisdom at the time on that, but have since developed my own opinion as to why it might have been the case. I think back on it now, and believe that as the girls got older, the other kids didn’t want to have both of our girls present at a gathering for fear it would turn ugly between them. And knowing my daughters it probably would have.
One thing that started to get my attention big time was the fussing and fighting between these girls that developed into almost constant bickering. They began to not be able to agree on anything. And they were hateful about it. If not for the fact that you put a calendar under their noses to offer objective evidence as to which day of the week it was, they wouldn’t have been able to agree on even that. It was perplexing because at times they would still act like they had before, and a glimpse of that earlier closeness could be had.
When the girls’ Dad and I decided to get married, we also made the decision that we would reside at the house I was in, rather than theirs as mine was bigger and each child could have their own room. Sounds good, right? And the girls were so excited about that. See my post (They’re moving in). Moving and their Dad and I getting married coincided with their last year in private school and transitioning into public Junior High. To be sure this was a lot of change going on in their lives all at one time, so it’s impossible to really tie together a cause and effect for what I’ll go into here in just a minute but after the trauma of leaving the only home they’d ever known was behind us,mwhich I can identify with believe me, we turned our attention to their new house. The kids’ Father and I thought that it might be nice if each of the children could personalize their new spaces. So to the paint store we went. I wrote about this in an earlier post but suffice it to say three of my tastefully painted, warm toned rooms were converted into hot pink, cobalt blue and red. What happened though when it came to the girls was that the excitement of having separate rooms was quickly replaced by anxiety over being apart. Though their rooms were right next to each other and I swear one could have thrown a book and hit the other while each in their own rooms, one or the other of them couldn’t sleep. Each girl would steadfastly deny that she was the instigator of this, but we’d wake up each and every morning and invariably find the younger of the twins in the floor of the other’s bedroom. No amount of talking about it, forbidding it or poking fun at it made any difference. This went on for months. Eventually they outgrew it, but I thought at the time that it was the beginning of the girls trying to separate.
Then, once in Junior High, things started to change between them. I think this was foreshadowed in earlier years when at birthday time, the older of the two sisters apparently tried to get buy-in from her parents for having separate birthday parties. I guess their Mother gave in to that idea and it was a disaster with a fairly long lasting emotional toll. One girl had friends come to her party. The other girl had no one show up at hers. Oh boy, that must have been an awful spot for them all to have been in. Not sure how I would have handled that one myself. I do know that to this day, the idea of separate parties has been broached by one of the sisters (the one who had the successful party of course) and it hasn’t ever been allowed to happen again. But, once they went to Junior High, they had almost no one there who they had known before at the private school. This was hard, and it became clear early on that the girls were going to go separate directions. One decided she wanted to be a cheerleader and all that conjures up in your head. Her Dad gave in and for a time, she participated in cheer and hung out with that crowd, then at her Dad’s urging she gave it up to concentrate on what he considered a real sport. Her sister, definitely not the cheer type went through this period of time with a “whatever” response to her sister’s cheer phase and made the comment to me one time about her sister, we don’t exactly run in the same circles if you know what I mean. The division continued to grow and the almost daily arguing became more intense. Cheer girl seemed to have friends who began asking her over and out to do things, our other daughter did not. It concerned us at the time. The twins still had sports which was a common ground at least.
Let’s talk about that for a minute. Sports, once a common ground changed once the girls moved on to high school. Our girls are quite different too when it comes to athletic ability. One, cheer girl…is naturally gifted athletically, things seem to come more easily to her in that area, she’s quick, pretty well coordinated and can run like the wind. Our other daughter has a lot of heart, but if left to her own devices would rather veg and watch TV. Everything sports related takes more effort from her and she’s not as naturally graceful. What she lacks though she maks up for in mental toughness and she gives 100%. Bless her heart it must be difficult. I went to pick them up at school one day and quite innocently stumbled into a situation. My husband had not warned or reminded me that the girls had been in soccer try outs and were to find out that day how they did. Out comes one of the girls (the one who has to try harder) and she gets in the car obviously upset. And I find out pretty quickly that the inevitable has happened. One girl made Varsity, the other did not. Lucky me! So it’s quite a while before our other daughter came out, she was having a talk to the coaching staff…welcome to the team…what the expectations were that sort of thing. While waiting on her sister, I listened as our other daughter vented at the injustice of the decision and how sick she was of working so hard to get everything when things were just handed to her sister. I said many things in an effort to help. I sympathized with the fact that she does seem to have to try harder, I understood her frustration that she had spent her entire summer conditioning for this try out while her sister didn’t and walked off the field with a spot on team. I tried to remind her that her older brother had also not made Varsity initially and he continued to work hard and not let it get to him and ultimately he played up and was moved onto the Varsity team. I told her she could either be a poor sport, rob her sister of the opportunity to be happy about being selected onto the team and by acting that way prove to the coaching staff for the Varsity team that maybe they had been right not to select her….or do the very opposite of that, make sure everyone knew it and make them think that maybe they had made a mistake in not selecting her too. I told her I think you show who you are when things don’t go your way. She sat quietly. Out comes our other daughter, sheepishly slides into the back seat, and I say to her congratulations kid. She mumbled thanks. That was it. On the drive home, it was very chilly and our new Varsity team member called her Mother to letbher know she’d made the team. At some point the girl who hadn’t made the team whelled around and snapped at her sister, “I don’t want to hear about it”! Of course Dad was very proud but it was all hampered by the understandable yet completely selfish reaction of our other daughter. Later in the year when we went to the Letter ceremony, more bad feelings and harsh words. It was during this time that I realized our girls didn’t even really like each other much anymore.
I have witnessed our oldest twin act aloof at her sister when asked for fashion advice. I have heard her say hurtful things that are not helpful or just refuse to give an opinion at all. I have heard terrible things said in the meanest way by our youngest twin to her sister. Calling her the Princess, a spoiled rotten b@!$&…I hear fighting and more fighting all of the time. They tattle on one another. The oldest went out more, was invited out to do more things and had two serious boyfriends before her sister had one. More harsh words and feelings between them. We watched the gap widen but felt rather powerless to alter its course. Once the serious boyfriends started, there were even more hard feelings. While the girl with the boyfriend seemed always and only wanting to be with him, her sister sat and seethed. I also believe that the girl with the boyfriend did everything she could to rub it in her sister’s face. Consequently I believe, daughter number two has made a couple of bad decisions when it comes to boys…some sort of contest….or one upmanship for attention, maybe desperation… I don’t know.
Throughout High School the animosity has grown interspersed with times when they actually get along. I guess it’s just because they are older, but when they fight now it’s really ugly. There have been times when we wondered if it would actually come to blows. See my post (Sweet and Sour 16). I had a talk with them about it recently and I know their Dad did too. I shared with them how I had not been very good to my Step Father. Then as I turned 17, I thought to myself, who do I want to be? I then realized I had been blaming my Step Father for things that really weren’t his fault. All he’d done was try to offer his guidance and provide for me. I changed my thinking and I changed my behavior. They seemed to take in what I had to say. I told them…you guys have to decide, is this who you want to be? Is this how you want to be with each other? I guess time will tell where they end up.
Lessons learned
As your kids get older and start to become their own people, they may grow apart. All you can really do is try to be there for them but to let them know that acting disrespectfully to each other in your home will not be tolerated.
Twins have unique challenges. How do two people who were forced together by life circumstance come apart successfully? I don’t know the answer, but I do know that for some it can be an extremely difficult process.
I love both my Step Daughters very much. This has been hard to watch. If they go to college locally I think they will be with us, at least part time for a few more years. It may come to a point where we have to tell them like my husband did our oldest, get it together or you can’t live here and disrupt the rest of us. If it does, so be it. Tough love isn’t easy but is at times necessary for the greater good.
Raising girls is really hard!
Good Stepmom
