Last week, I left my three kids with my mom (their GG) while my husband and I went to an out-of-town wedding for one of my dearest friends. Leaving my kids for an extended amount of time always gets me a little worried, so it was just a little troublesome when my mom seemed to be SUPER freaked out about watching them all.
She turned to my husband and said, "Are you sure you trust me with them?" I thought, "What? Mom!" I had to reassure HER that everybody was going to be fine, that she raised four of her own kids, and this was only TWO days. How hard could this be? I wrote her up a schedule, clearly marked all the diapers and clothes and what belonged to whom, and tried making it extremely easy for her. But she still acted completely freaked out by this task. Way to really calm down the mom who is leaving her kids, right? ha.
But don't worry, all was well. We had a fabulous time kid-free, and when we came back from the wedding all three kids were still alive, and my mom didn't seem too haggard. Win, win! She said my kids were very well-behaved, so sweet, and just the cutest. Good news!
When I started coming up with an idea for this post, I asked my mom if she had any ideas from her recent experience with them. She told me I should write about reading with twins. She explained that one of the hardest things she had done all weekend was figure out how to read to both of them. This made me laugh (maybe a little too hard) after she had been so worried about watching my three kids. "Reading was your issue?" I thought. "All right, let's hear it."
So why did reading to them present such a problem?
When reading to one kid, you can be as interactive as you'd like with them. If there are instructions for pushing pictures of buttons, or flaps to lift, or items to find, etc, the one child gets them all! But with twins, they both need to do everything. You could argue this would be the same reading to multiple children, and it is to a certain extent, but depending on the age of children, but you might find it easier to tell an older child, "Your turn is next" versus two children of the exact same age.
My mom was reading a book to them where you find the duck on every page. The problem was, they BOTH had to find the duck on every page. So they weren't finding the duck on one page, and moving on, they were essentially reading the book twice.
My mom then read another book to them. She figured that she would have one twin read the odd pages, and one twin read the even pages. But this book had flaps. And each flap exposed a different animal. And BOTH twins had to open up each flap. So when she finished the book having one twin read the even pages, and the other the odd pages, she read the book again and then had them switch places.
So instead of reading four different books and having them be completely content, she found that she was just reading the same book over and over again so they both had their turn being interactive with the books.
Since we already do all the interactions twice at home, this seemed completely normal to me. I just found it hilarious that this was the biggest hurdle my mom encountered as she babysat them. So if this is your hurdle as well (I'm probably speaking to you twin babysitters or grandmas I assume ;) ), then buckle up! Reading to twins takes twice the effort and twice the time.
But isn't it completely glorious to spend all that interactive time with them? You wouldn't have it any other way, would you?
*The “Two to Kiss, Two to Love” series is a helpful series for all you twin mamas out there! If you have a twin related question, comment below, and I’ll answer it for you!*