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Twins at Play
Adding Friends to the Fun By Kelly Burgess
Karen Gromada, a registered nurse and author of Mothering Multiples: Breastfeeding and Caring for Twins or More (La Leche League International, 1999), says that her twins, the third and fourth of her five children, were always either kissing or killing each other when they were toddlers, but that's just the stage they were at.
Another thing parents need to watch for is the possibility that someone in the triad will be excluded from play. Gromada points out that humans tend to form pair bonds. Even with triplets, she says, it's not unusual for two to pair off. In the case of a singleton coming to play with a set of twins, it can be hard for that child to take on two individual people and get to know them both. This can result in one twin playing with the visitor to the exclusion of the other twin, or the twins excluding the visitor.
Which is not to say it's a bad idea to bring in visitors singleton or otherwise. Most experts agree that it's very important for healthy social development. It can also be good for the visitor, Dr. Pearlman says, because a singleton can learn a lot from a more socially-advanced twin.
"Other children may not have had to share as much, and sometimes twins are more aggressive when younger because they're used to taking from their twin" Dr. Pearlman says. "This becomes a learning process of give and take for both."