Barbara Klein, Ed.D.

I will be talking about twins, especially my last book, "Alone in the Mirror: Twins in Therapy." Please come!

The address is: 1246 Glendon Avenue, Los Angeles, CA 90024

Phone: (310) 474-1739

Beginning Thursday, June 25th from 4:00 to 5:30 PM Pacific Time (Daylight Saving Time).

This group will be conducted through Skype. If you are interested call me at (310) 443-4182 or email me at drbarbaraklein@gmail.com

A reoccurring concern from twins who contact me is, “Why do I need psychotherapy?” Here are some simply stated answers and my reasoning.

1.  Separating from your twin is a very hard inner and outer journey of self discovery. Support and insight into your journey of identity makes the road you must travel less rocky, more tolerable, meaningful, and fulfilling.

2.  Knowing who you are without your twin is complicated. Indeed, individual sensibility is very hard to face, understand, and accept. Encouragement to move forward in your self awareness is extremely important but this insight cannot be given by your twin alone. Who do you turn to?

3.  Understanding your relationship with your twin is critical because the roles you take in relationship to your sister or brother will define your strengths and challenges.

4.  How you are different from your brother or sister should be one of the goals of psychotherapy. The details of your interests, friendships, joys, and disappointments will build your identity as a twin and as an individual.

Twin attachments are primary bonds created before birth. Like the mother-child bond, these attachments are irreplaceable emotional experiences that nurture and develop the identity of each twin in a pair. Sharing parents, memories, experiences, and friendships creates an indelible closeness that enlivens and haunts twins as they grow up. The comfort of twin sharing from birth through adulthood can be easy, fun, and even seductive. Deep psychological roots of the self are established. These roots of identity are difficult to impossible to remove even with the death of one twin. Separating from your twin, fighting with your twin, and living separate lives is very challenging for countless reasons related to shared identity development. Untangling the social emotional problems that twins experience as they grow into adulthood can be stressful and overwhelming for everyone who is close to the twin pair. Outsiders to the twinship or onlookers can be very confused by twin intensity and at their wits’ end with twins’ issues.

Psychological reality informs us that twins cannot know the extent of their developmental and emotional entwinement when they start to separate from one another, beginning at birth and continuing through childhood, the teenage years, and adulthood. Only the experiences of a lifetime will tell the struggles and comforts that lie ahead as twins make their own lives. Unfortunately, very little clinical literature is written about the problems that twins face being on their own. Novels about twins do portray the uniqueness of their twin bond. Movies often idealize twins or make them into freaks. Where do twins go for help and support they need to get long on their own?

Twins also need help learning how to get along in THE WORLD OF NONTWINS. Finding the right therapist for a twin is difficult, because most therapists believe that twins have issues understanding emotional boundaries, but the therapist doesn’t know why and assumes that boundary issues for twins are the same as boundary issues for nontwins. This belief is absolutely wrong. Boundaries between the twin pair and outsiders are based on a great deal of experience and sharing. Separateness for twins is crucial and over- and under-determined. Twin problems confuse nontwin therapists.

Twins who are looking for help should consider psychotherapists who are interested in the effects of interpersonal relationships on self esteem and therapists who are twins themselves or related to twins. Making an investment in the self understanding you attain from psychotherapy is an important investment for twins.

All teenagers have difficulty separating from their families and finding and establishing a separate identity or sense of uniqueness, making adolescence a time that is very turbulent for all teens and their parents. But for twins and their families, the teenage years are truly double trouble. Teenage twins can be hypersensitive about everything that is going on around them. Moody fighting between the twin pair is intense and confusing to outsiders. Even though the twin pair may understand some of what is going on, they may be unable to explain the problems they are having.
    
Absolutely essential is the development of separate friendships and interests that began early in life. While young twins and elementary school age twins enjoy their close bond, teenage years can be conflicted and painful. Interactions between twins that were once kind and supportive can become angry, jealous and mean spirited. Or twins can become more attached to one another and not look for separate interests and friendships.

Parents can be confused by their teen twins’ hostile antics toward one another or their over-involvement in each other’s lives. Dramatic fights and long silences are predictable between middle school twins who are so involved in their dramatics that they are not even aware of how unstable they are behaving. When do parents and their teens need help from a mental health professional?
 
Troubling issues in middle school that might require psychological support include:
1.  Separation anxiety from the twin or parent. For example 10-, 11-, 12- and 13-year-olds can be afraid of going to school and to separate classes without their twin.
2.  Problems with making or keeping friendships. This might include a lack of social skills in everyday interactions—such as an inability to make small talk. Or a twin might display misplaced anger or jealousy with new people who seem better able to explain their own ideas.
3.  School or school-work fears or conflicts appear. Often an inability to concentrate on school work appropriately suggests the probability of depression or a lack of language acquisition skills related to the twin dynamic.
4.  Jealousy or intense competition with their twin, which causes too much intensity. Twins can be ridiculously jealous and competitive with clothes, cars, friends and grades. Some twins need everything in their lives to be “even Steven,” which is indicative of a problematic development of the twin bond.
5.  Isolated behavior that may lead to phobias can develop when twins spend too much time with each other and lack the confidence to try new experiences alone and together.

Behavioral and emotional issues that I am consulted about can be very different from one phone call to the next. “My 12-year-old daughters are pulling each other’s hair out.” Or, “my 13-year-old twins have not spoken to each other in a year.” However, the twin dynamic, or the roles twins take in relationship to one another, is in most instances contributing to their emotional turmoil and inability to feel successful and secure. For example, feelings of worthlessness and insecurity or an inability to contain anger and impulsivity, the compulsive need to always be right or the opposite, never feeling adequate, are symptoms of an imbalance of identity between twins. Jealousy, competitiveness and general unhappiness are other signs of a distorted power struggle between twins. Working out an imbalanced twin relation or twin bond is critical and takes a lot of time and effort.

And yes, you do need help! Adolescence is an important time in twin development that is the foundation for a psychologically healthy and happy life. Look to the underlying cause of your twins’ issues, because temporarily fixing a problem is only a band-aid on a more profound identity issue that needs to be uncovered, acknowledged and dealt with in an open-minded manner.

Many of the twins who call me or email me want to know why it is so hard to separate from their twin brother or sister. There are high-brow psychological explanations which support the reality that twin separation is difficult. I must confess that I have written theoretical books on how unique twin development is from that of single-birth children. My research and theories always highlight the difficulties twins have with separation. Personally, I have experienced intense separation anxiety when I was without my twin. When it comes to the “nitty gritty” of actually having to separate—to move away from each other—confusion and overwhelming feelings of loss can paralyze decision making. Twins can stay glued together even when they desperately want to break apart.

Deep anger at one another and intense fighting is another sign of the difficulties twins are having with separation. When separation issues are alive in the room between twins, calming down their angry intensity is very challenging or futile. I know that my children, brother, husband, psychotherapists, aunts, cousins, uncles and close friends would eagerly agree with gusto and exasperation that there was a lot of intense arguing between my sister and me.

I know that I have felt “crazy” and “confused” at different times in my life because I needed someone to understand me instantly, and often without words, the way my twin would get it. For me feeling misunderstood was the start of my awareness of missing my sister. Then I experienced being deeply and intensely enraged at her because we saw the world so differently. Trying to understand myself without her and as a nontwin individual was an endless journey in midlife. And trying to help other twins find peace with one another is an ongoing quest that is of great interest to me and brings me the rewards that come from helping others survive complicated emotional stress.

At this point in my understanding, I really want to normalize the problems twins have with separation. Twins are naturally locked into one another in deeply intense psychological ways. Interdependence from birth creates confusion for twins as they find their separate paths. “Whose path am I taking, mine or yours?” is always a question for twins to be conflicted about. Competition between twins is based on differences that cannot be accepted. For example, if you feel fat or poor, your twin brother or sister wants to fix you because they feel responsible for you and are overly invested in you. While you may appreciate your twin’s concern and support, you may feel like he or she is intruding on your space/ability to make your own decisions. “Why does my twin care if I am fat or poor?” is a question the criticized twin often asks.

Anxiety and depression about missing your twin is normal if you are a twin. Loneliness that twins experience is impossible for nontwins to understand. I believe that is why people see twin problems as pathological—a form of mental illness. But really, if you are a twin, you will understand the pain and emptiness of being left out of a conversation or feeling misunderstood. I have suffered from feeling different because I am a twin at different times during my entire life. I have decided that my issues  about adjusting to the world of nontwins are quite normal. I feel more self-confident when I see myself as normal in my struggle to survive in a nontwin world. When I feel abnormal about not being a single person—a nontwin—my life is harder.

Fortunately or unfortunately, depending on your state of mind, we as twins have to make other friends, find spouses and have children if we want to. What has helped me deal with my sense of loneliness and being misunderstood is to accept my fate. Twins are born married and divorce is not an option. I have gotten over being ashamed of my feelings of being a misfit by accepting that being separate from my sister is a normal struggle with loneliness.

Helpful Tips for Dealing with Separation Anxiety and the Loneliness That Ensues When Separating from Your Twin

1.  Prepare yourself to miss your sister or brother by talking about your separation anxiety with your twin. Labeling your feelings of anxiety or loneliness will contain and make more real your discomfort about being on your own without your twin. For example, you walk into a room alone at social event. How do you feel? Happy, scared, angry, relieved?

2.  Loneliness can be insufferable for twins if it goes unacknowledged. Talk with close friends and family when you become aware of feeling overwhelmed and misunderstood by others. The more you understand your feelings and express them the easier your life will be as a twin without your twin.

3.  Criticism and fighting can be overdone because twins are so reactive to one another. It is important to find a way to disagree without intensifying your anger at one another.

4.  As you separate from your twin make a great deal of effort to affirm his or her accomplishments and differences from you. Not only is criticism demeaning but it paves the way for endless resentments and battles over who is best or who is right or wrong. Self-righteous arguing is destructive and accomplishes nothing.

Finding a school that meets your child’s unique way of learning will make your child’s education more meaningful and ultimately a more valuable commodity. In today’s world, education is a passport to success in life. When your child’s school experience is a good-enough fit, problems such as homework completion, teacher-student alienation, and social and behavioral defiance are limited. Parent-child “entrenchment in negativity about school performance” is less prevalent and less emotionally consuming for the entire family. Attainment of an education is played out naturally, as the child searches for meaning in his/her life.

School choice is a crucial parental decision now that the standardization of teaching in public education has taken over. Parents who want a more well-rounded learning experience for their child must look at alternative options to avoid the rigidity and depersonalization of their neighborhood school. Fortunately for everyone, parents are educating themselves in the art of child-raising. Enlightened parents are more aware of the power they have in making a meaningful decision about their child’s education.

Thoughtful parents see education as an investment in their child’s future. Reflective parents do their homework about different kinds of school experiences. Children are more outspoken about the problems they have at school because they know that their parents are participants in their day-to-day education. Kids see mom and dad go to parent conferences and attend school meetings. Children gain a voice through their parents’ interests in their academic and social emotional development.

Right beside more parental involvement is an understanding that children not only have distinct learning styles, but some school situations are more productive for each type of learner. The over-used soundbite “no one size fits all” applies. What is right for your family is very different than what is right for the neighbor’s children or your sister’s children.
    

Issues to Consider When Choosing a School

Type of Curriculum Design
Traditional
When choosing a school, understand what type of curriculum design is being used. The most common is a traditional curriculum that is directed by objectives handed down by the state and school district. Public schools on the whole are traditional. Private college prep schools are also likely to have a traditional curriculum. A traditional approach to learning is very appropriate for children who like to do school work and like to succeed. It is difficult curriculum for children who are very creative or have special needs. Social emotional learning is valued as secondary to academic achievement.

Project Centered
A more open-minded and hand-tailored approach to curriculum is called project centered or a constructivist curriculum. Children learn by interacting with their teachers and fellow students the basics of academics and social emotional learning. This type of education is best for creative and curious children who like to learn by doing or exploring. Children with special needs do well in this type of learning environment.

Home Schooling
Home schooling is an individualized approach to learning. The teacher may be mom or dad or a learning institution that provides teachers to go out to the home. This approach is good when a student has special needs or is extremely difficult to work with. Other reasons for home schooling can be a religious belief or a long travel distance from an appropriate school. Homeschoolers have networks so they can connect with other families. Still, home schooling is a very ambitious decision.

Learning Style of Your Son or Daughter    
All children have unique learning styles. From personal and professional experiences, I know that even identical twins process information differently. Accepting that children have their own particular learning style is essential because it helps you relate to your child’s way of learning. Know your child’s strengths. Know your child’s learning struggles. Work carefully with what they love to do and what they seriously want to avoid. Always be sure to share your sense of what your child has accomplished with them. Let your child know that you are their partner in learning.

You may think that you cannot understand what a learning style really is, but you are mistaken. Countless books have been written on different types of learning styles. Make yourself familiar with these ideas that may be new for you. Ask your child’s teacher what she sees helping your child being successful in school.

Financial Realities
Over-stretching your budget to fit into private school will be a big mistake if you have to take your child out of school when you run out of money. Being the poorest family at school and struggling to make ends meet all of the time creates unnecessary stress on children. If you change schools later, friends can be lost along with the comfort of routine. Spending extra money that you don’t have is not a good parenting strategy.

Look at all the options available to you given what you need for your child and what is available. Public schools have different options that parents need to explore and possibly advocate for their child. The parents who are the most persistent are the ones who are most successful in finding a good school match.

Fighting is a serious issue for young twins, parents of twins, and adult twins. Twin fighting is a style of interaction and a part of identity development that grows out of the twin bond and lives on and on as small children develop into adults. Competition is one acceptable and understandable form of fighting. Twins always measure themselves against one another. Who is the best? Who deserves more brownies? Who has the trendiest lego? Who has the coolest boyfriend? Who has the best car? Disarming competition can be extremely difficult and troubling for everyone close to a twin pair. Brothers and sisters, parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles, teachers, and psychotherapists can become overwhelmed and confused by predictable and sometimes understandable twin fighting.

Let’s look at the complexity of the twin attachment or bond, which some psychologists might label as overdependent or a form of enmeshment. Competition is rooted in the twin bond. Twins are born “married.” Twin closeness is based on a primary attachment that is irreplaceable, much like the parent- child attachment that is the footprint of identity. Nurturing and interdependence between twins is deep and all-encompassing in infancy and childhood. Personality development and the need to be competitive is established and based on twin attachment. Separating out and finding individual differences between twins is a serious and important struggle for parents and their twins. Emotional health and an ability to see the serious side effects of fighting are based on each twin’s individual development.

It is critical to keep in mind that codependence, interdependence, and overidentification are not sharing but forms of psychological merger. Sharing and harmony, often idealized by twin onlookers, grow out of an acceptance by each twin of differences. Telling twins to respect one another is a meaningless task when twins share too much of their identity. Practical ways to foster sharing and eliminate competition are based on developing individuality and unique interests and gifts in each of the twins. Yes, twins are individuals even if they are very similar. Twin sharing is a way to limit individual development and intensify competition. Parents who want their twins to really get along will seriously limit sharing, both overt and covert, that goes on between twins. Adult twins will establish firm boundaries about what objects and thoughts are shareable and what are off limits.

Teaching twins to share or learning to share with your twin should be orchestrated. In other words, parents and twins themselves need to see their individuality and respect their uniqueness. In order to teach twins to share you must let them experience “real” sharing. One way to encourage sharing is to teach them the difference between mine and yours. For example, designate some important objects in the non-share zone. Parents can see which toys, clothing, and friends are special and keep them as separate. Other toys, friends, etc. can be shared and labeled as such. Adult twins know not to share but they can tumble into sharing everything, including opinions and advice and “too much information.” Adult twins need to learn to respect their twin by not being critical. From first-hand experience I know that keeping your unsolicited thoughts to yourself can be very difficult because twins see themselves in one another. Unfortunately, sharing critical thoughts is destructive to the health of the twin attachment as the aging process takes hold.

Young twins, teenage twins, and adult twins need to have exclusive no-sharing zones. The following strategies will make psychological room for the no-share space between twins.

1.  As a parent, know and talk about differences between twins.
2.  Be aware of sharing behavior and try to understand why it is necessary. Do your twins need more individual attention?
3.  As a twin, understand the times when you are codependent and why.
4.  Talk about what you would like to share and what is private and respect these boundaries.
5.  Remember, you are not your twin.

Sharing that is based on the wrong reasons, which involve convenience or identity confusion, will lead to serious fighting and entanglements.

Many phone calls and e-mails from twins and their parents are about separation issues that are particular to twins. For their children, parents ask, “When is the best time to separate my children?” And, “What is the best way to develop my children’s individuality?” Obviously, there are no pat answers to these questions. In adulthood, learning to living separate lives can lead to emotional confusion. Getting along as very different people is often a serious problems for twins. Sometimes a twin asks about fighting with their twin or disappointment with their twin, but the core issue that twins ask me about is always related to how they can get along with their twin.

I have spent a lifetime trying to get along with my twin sister. Sometimes I have been successful accepting her way of dealing with me. Sometimes we have been successful getting along. And at other times I have had to distance myself from her. There are no easy answers to creating harmony between twins that I have found as a twin and as a psychologist. Without a doubt, twins have conflicted and complicated relationships because of the power of their bond. Non-twins cannot understand their deep pull toward one another and their deep resentment. Smart parents are certainly in the right when they take separation of their twins as crucial to their children’s happiness and social-emotional well-being.

From my perspective the first thing that you have to do to get along with your twin is to understand that you are very different people. YOU ARE NOT YOUR TWIN. No matter how identical you and your twin appear to be, you are each special and individual. Each twin within a twin pair sees the world through his or her own eyes. Twins share a very deep and primary bond. Fortunately, twins usually have different interests and want to live separate lives. It is natural and healthy for twins to have their own friends when they are feeling self-confident. When life gets tough, twins want the comfort of their twin identity. They may turn to each other for support in times of crisis. Closeness can and will lead to arguments when bad situations are resolved.

Fighting is a result of too much closeness and too much need for mutuality. You and your twin do not have to agree with each other. Essential to a non-combative relationship is respect for one another. Saying this is easy, but holding onto who you are and how you are different from your twin is hard to do. You try to be supportive and understanding, but you can become frustrated with your twin interaction. From my longstanding interest in twin development and the many people I have worked with over the last 30 years, here are some tips that can diffuse the deep entanglements that twins experience:

For Parents

1.  Carefully develop a unique attachment to each of your twins when they are born and as they grow.
2.  Talk to each child about how special they are to you as an individual and as a twin.
3.  Respect your twin children’s deep attachment.
4.  Discipline the child who misbehaves, not the twin pair.
5.  Encourage close helpers such as grandparents, teachers, and nannies to treat your twins as individuals.
6.  Gradually separate your twins, being careful to talk about how they feel being separated.

For Adult Twins

1.  Try to understand your anger at your twin and put your anger into perspective.
2.  Respect your twin’s differences.
3.  Have an objective understanding of how you are different and similar to your twin.
4.  Identify areas of harmony and disharmony.
5.  Look at your anger or feelings of estrangement as a temporary state of mind that can change with time.
6.  Value the harmony you have with one another and try and make that the focus of your adult relationship.

There is no question in my mind that homework needs to be completed and turned in to the teacher. Unfortunately, this year I have heard more and more parents complaining about their children not doing their homework. And the next seriously hard thing for kids to do is to is to actually hand their homework in to the teacher. Why is homework such a huge problem? What happens to completed homework that is mysteriously lost at school or forgotten at home? We all know that there is no homework monster that steals your son or daughter’s completed work.

Both parents and teachers are very clear that homework is the child’s responsibility to be taken seriously and completed carefully. Obviously, children don’t want to bother to do their homework. Children want to do what they want to do. Homework is a bore no matter how much your children love you and want to make you happy. Even the most engaging homework from the most wonderful of schools may be an annoying and bothersome task. When a child is angry about school or his/her family life, homework can become a more serious problem to manage. A school that does not fit your child’s learning style can everyone’s life miserable.

The bottom line is that homework needs to be completed. And honestly, when I was growing up long ago there was no question that all assignments sent home were completed and returned. The culture of education has changed. There is more tolerance for wiggling out of homework. Some parents and schools no longer support the policy of letter grades. So children do get mixed messages about how important following the school and home rules actually is. Children are encouraged to have their own opinions, and they are allowed to express them openly.

Certainly an open-minded approach to parenting and education is valuable. But I believe as an intellectual community we have gone too far in trying to listen to our children’s complaints, insistent demands, and even temper tantrums about how they want their life to proceed without homework.

Clear standards and expectations need to be explained and respected by your children. A special place and time is very important to establish a routine to follow with as much predictability as is possible. Of course, life situations can take place that alter schedules, but still parents must be serious about helping their children get their homework completed.

Homework problems are a cry for help from your child. If you and your family is having problems with homework, there are two avenues to consider. First, are you as the parent helping your child to take school responsibilities seriously? Second, does your son or daughter have a learning or behavioral problem that needs to be addressed by a professional?

When the parent is the problem with homework getting back to school

There are certain parental attitudes and behaviors that definitely contribute to homework problems.

1.  Parents are too busy to take the time to set up and follow through on a homework routine.
2.  Parents are too easy going or too indifferent to their child’s learning responsibilities.
3.  Parents encourage their child to be defiant and opinionated.
4.  Parents are too preoccupied to follow through on checking homework.
5.  Parents are fighting about how to raise their children and they let the homework problems fall through the cracks.
6.  Delegation of authority to tutors, nannies, and grandparents who are not parents or the child’s primary advocate.

When the child is having learning problems and cannot manage their homework

Sometimes your son or daughter really is lost and needs help doing the school work that comes home. Here are some indicators of your child’s learning struggles:

1.  The teacher tells you your child needs help.
2.  Your child is afraid to go to school.
3.  Your child does not have any friends to play with at school.
4.  Your child is always angry and defiant.
5.  Sickness or family trauma has created emotional and behavioral problems that require attention from professionals.
6.  Your child has a learning disability or other educational problems that require specific interventions.
7.  The school you have selected is too pressured for your child, who is shutting down and not paying attention at school because he or she is so unhappy.

Decide where the homework problem starts. Is the problem related to your inattention? Is your child facing learning challenges that need tutorial help or professional intervention? Is the school setting inappropriate for how your child best learns?

You need to get behind homework challenges and show your child how to move forward in learning how to face challenges that are not necessarily interesting or fun.