THOUGHTS ON PARENTING A TWINLESS CHILD
Elizabeth A. Pector, M.D.
(Published In Twinsworld)
SEPTEMBER, 1998
Parenting my oldest son seemed fairly straightfoward. I expected
more challenge raising busy twin babies, and was getting psyched for it
when our world fell apart in February, 1997. Jared was born a
sole survivor, a 3 pound, 9 ounce premie, seven weeks early because his
identical twin brother Bryan had died from a cord accident within two
days of their birth.
As Jared enters toddlerhood, I’m daily realizing that the unique
parenting path trod by grieving multiple-birth parents is largely
uncharted territory. There are a few important points to keep in mind
as we proceed through this life with our survivors but without our
precious lost children.
Above all, we need to be cautious not to read too much into our
survivors’ behavior and expect them to be inconsolable over their loss.
We don’t want to doom them to despair. Their primitive, formless
grief from losing their womb-mates is quite different from the complex
way adults experience the same loss. Unquestionably, survivors
are imprinted with the knowledge that they once were part of a pair.
Adult survivors of stillborn or infant twin loss often report a sense
of loneliness even if they are unaware of their twinship.
Although we cannot replace their twins, we can give our surviving
infants abundant love, consistent discipline, security and confidence,
which are the things they’ll need to maximize their happiness and
success when they are grown.
Caring for a surviving infant is made difficult by the simultaneous
grief. Parents can become withdrawn from their survivor, pulling
away lest they be hurt by another loss, or alternatively can become
smothering, pouring all their energies into the remaining child.
Many parents admit they’ve missed a lot of the joy of parenting because
the grief process has necessarily been combined with their survivor’s
early development. We constantly see the absence of the twin who
should have accompanied our baby. Perhaps it helps to know that parents
with two living twins must divide their time between them, and each
receives less attention than they would if they were singletons.
Looked at from that standpoint, I believe our surviving twins receive
the amount of care they would have if their twin was alive. Their
deceased twin occupies much of their parents’ time the first few years,
as we negotiate the early stages of grief. I still consider myself very
much a mother of twins, since I spend considerable time remembering and
honoring Bryan in addition to guiding Jared.
Our toddlers and older children need discipline--teaching, correction
and guidance. This is such a rough task as Jared leaves
infancy. It hurts to raise my voice to him, since I’m
ever-conscious of his unfair loss at birth and his rough start in
life. Parents of older surviving twins have told me of their reluctance
to discipline their children, and many family members accuse them of
“spoiling” their survivors. We doubtless will be guilty of
letting them get away with some things, since we already feel sorry for
their suffering, yet they still need to learn to get along in an unkind
world. Hopefully God will help us to successfully complete this
task as our twinless children grow.
As parents, unless we are twins ourselves, we have not personally
experienced the “twin bond.” We can only observe it in others and
imagine what it would be like to have shared our earliest development
with a partner. I’m frustrated to realize there’s much I’ll never
understand about that relationship. I struggle with the twin
encounters I have when I am out with Jared. It pains me to see
parents who have what I will never have, an intact set of living twins,
but I know also that Jared needs to learn what twins are. Several
parents have reported that their survivors seem to get along especially
well with twin classmates in preschool, and with babysitters who are
twins or surviving twins. Likewise, some older twin children seem
particularly drawn to our lone twins. Whether or not there is any
mystical bond that allows twins to recognize others of their kind, such
experiences allow our survivors a glimpse of the uniqueness of twinship.
I believe Jared will someday meet Bryan again in heaven. He will
be raised with the knowledge that he is a twin. But since it will
hopefully be a very long time before that reunion occurs,
my job is to guide him to be the best individual he can be, while
knowing that he should have been not only an individual, but half of a
pair, with a living partner and soulmate.