Emotionally Healthy Twins

Mom to twins? Me too! Well, at least in utero. I still have some time before my twins are born, and I am already hearing phrases that make my ears ring in pain. It's amazing how the moment you become pregnant with more than one child, others seem to lose a sense of couth (if they ever had it to begin with) and say things like "better you than me," "are they natural?" or "double the trouble." The list goes on, and if you are a mom to twins, it is certain you've heard even more offensive or hurtful words. It all goes back to the stigma attached to twins. The stigma of always being a twin, being compared to someone else, having to always share the spotlight with a sibling that just happened to be born on the same day. I suppose if you aren't a twin yourself, you may not think about these things until you become a mom to twins. To go even further, parenting and raising twins to not feel that stigma could be the challenge of a lifetime.

Goodbye stigma; hello to Joan A. Friedman, Ph.D. Friedman is a twin, is a mother to twins, and is author of an amazingly insightful book, Emotionally Healthy Twins: A New Philosophy for Parenting Two Unique Children. This book covers parenting from pregnancy into adulthood, and couldn't have come at a better time for me!

Over the past year I've listened to my best friend talk about her twins. From their birth she's made a conscious decision to never compare the two - but it's easier said than done. It just seems to happen naturally. However, her goal falls in line with the first chapter in Friedman's book, being a mom to two unique children, identified by their own individual likes, dislikes and personalities. Two children not identified as "the quiet one" or the "more active one." These kinds of comparisons begin in utero and can follow each child into adulthood. Combating the comparisons is immediately addressed in Friedman's book. Even though the world around us glorifies twins by making them seem more intriguing or appealing (think Double Mint commercials), we as parents can and will silence the glorification and focus on each child individually, making sure they grow into emotionally healthy adults.

Emotionally Healthy Twins is arranged in a way for parents with twins of any age to simply pick up and start reading and learning ways to help each twin feel unique and separate. For me personally, and for my husband, this book is providing strategies to view our children as two individual children long before they are born. We've already learned to use phrases like "the babies" instead of "the twins" to ensure the separate and unique ideal we will want to follow after they are born. It is easy little changes in the way we are thinking that will make huge differences for them in the future.

As for those with older twin children, relative guidance is given to parents with children in their preschool years, elementary school years, preteen and teen years, and young adulthood. Each age and stage brings new situations to the table, from friends in school and those rebellious years, to forming meaningful and emotionally healthy relationships with people and potential spouses in young adulthood. Emotionally Healthy Twins really hits on all the basic, yet pertinent stages of raising a child who is happy with themselves and happy with their relationship to and with their twin.

So whether you've just found out you will be having twins, or have twins already into their teen years, Emotionally Healthy Twins: A New Philosophy for Parenting Two Unique Children has something to offer moms and dads alike. Even if you haven't overcome the stigma, there are ways to move from it and Friedman offers the tools you'll need to raise two unique children who share the same birth date.

You can learn more about this book at Amazon.com or http://www.emotionallyhealthytwins.com/.