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No Two Alike
Parents of Multiples Fight for Flexible School Placement Policies
By Alexandria Powell
"We were blindsided." That's how Kathy Dolan felt when she went to sign her twin sons up for kindergarten. It had been a tough year for the family – both of Dolan's parents were seriously ill – and her main concern about kindergarten was that her boys be kept together to avoid stressing them further. The twins were healthy, well-adjusted and had been in the same preschool class with no problems.
"I was told, 'That's not possible,'" says Dolan, of Queens, N.Y. It took a note from her sons' pediatrician before the school would allow them to be kept together for kindergarten. When the boys went to first grade last fall, the struggle repeated itself, even though Dolan's sons had been doing well in the same classroom.
As Dolan learned how common forced separation of multiples is, and how hard it can be on families and children, she decided to do something about it. "It's discrimination," says Dolan. "Any time you have an across-the-board policy based on a circumstance of a person's birth – well, that says discrimination to me."
Dolan's organization, Parenting in Education: A Child's Entitlement, is perhaps the largest of many groups asking for legislation that will give families a voice in their children's placement – and encourage schools to look at each set of multiples on their own needs and merits.
Minnesota became the first state to pass the so-called "Twin Bill" legislation. Parents in Illinois, Texas, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania and California are working to introduce similar legislation.
This is not a trivial issue, says Nancy Segal, professor of developmental psychology at California State University, Fullerton, and the author of Entwined Lives: Twins and What They Tell Us About Human Behavior
