By katef | Leave A Comment
When I first discovered I was having twins I was desperate for information and I devoured every book about twins and multiples I could get my hands on. In quite a few of these books I read about ‘Twin Escalation Syndrome’… of course each book gave it a slightly different name, but it was all the same thing; the idea that twins or triplets (or more!) can get up to a heap more mischief than singletons do!
The theory suggests that it is not merely ‘double trouble’ when it comes to twins, it is more like trouble squared. And so it follows that with triplets it is not three times the trouble but trouble to the power of three!
I admit I scoffed when I first read this, back when my girls were still safely under control on the inside. How ridiculous! I was a qualified preschool teacher with years of experience. If I could manage a classroom of three and four year olds, then two of my own would be a walk in the park!
But then my two arrived….
In the beginning I did feeling like the intensity of crying in stereo might be a clue as to what this Twin Escalation Syndrome was all about. Then they became mobile. I didn’t doubt the truth of the theory any more.
There was the day when we tried to coral them in a play pen, and watched as five minutes later one lifted the side while the other crawled out underneath. Then there was the yogurt food fight at 18 months of age… who needs an adult’s attention or approval when you have an instant audience in your sister, who of course thinks the exact same things are funny as you do!?! Later there was the egg on the couch, the skating on skin cream, the snow storm in the living room (see image above)….and so it continues.
So what do you think? Is this Twin Escalation Syndrome real? Or is it just a nice excuse for wild kids like mine?
ABOUT katef
Kate is chief cook and clothes washer at the Pickle Farm in 'almost rural' Victoria, Australia, as w{read more}
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Hmm…I think it’s DEFINITELY real. Hi, I’m Aunt LoLo…and I AM a twin. I have an identical sister who is 77 minutes older than me. (Yes, really. Mom was 21, itty bitty…and my sister took her SWEET TIME coming out. Mom almost fell asleep after she was born, and had to be roused before I could come along!) To my knowledge, we never caused mischief like your kids did. However, I attribute this SOLELY on the fact that my sister is Ridiculously Good. I once stole her toy when we were toddlers. She, of course, cried and I was sent to my room…crying. Not five minutes later, my mother noticed that I had stopped crying. She came into my room…only to find that my sister had snuck in and returned the toy to me – and I was the thief! Twins tend to amplify whatever they are. There was one food fight when we were 10…but we cleaned it all up (it was dry spaghetti while my parents were out). (They found a spoon in the kitchen closet two weeks later, and couldn’t imagine WHY we started laughing so hard.)
Twins are fun! Yours just sound a little more inventive than my sister and I were. She would never let me do anything as fun as skating on shaving cream!
i continue to be amazed by what my three can get into. regardless of how well i try to monkey-proof the place, it takes only moments for them to find trouble to dive headfirst into. and escalation? oh yes indeed. they always have a captive audience for their shenanigans…ever feeding their mischief.
i hate to be bored, though, so at least i know i’ll forever be avoiding that fate!