Philosophies Gained Through Twin Watching + #MyPostMonday Featuring The Week's Best Original Content

 "There they go, they're at it again....", I say to myself, as I try to intervene before too much damage is done. The two pre-teen boys in our classroom start to tussle violently, one of them receiving a solid punch in the face and withdraws, whimpering and defeated. He lays his head on his desk for an hour.

It happens so often that I can count on an incident every day with them. The difference with these two fighting and any other similar fight between non-related boys, is that with these two, everything seems to be forgotten within hours. 

The next thing I see is that they are laughing together at some private joke they have between themselves, that no one else will ever understand because it's the language of identical twins!

When one of them leaves the room for any prolonged amount of time and the remaining one doesn't know where the other one went, he becomes agitated and tries to leave the room to search for his brother. 

When one of them isn't able to get prizes from a rewards program because of his own negligence, the other one will step in and give his own prize to his left-out brother.

These boys haven't come from an abundant lifestyle, from what I can gather. They split time between their parents because of divorce, they don't have a lot in the way of clothing or extra "stuff". And of course they are in our classroom because of  some kind of learning disability. But they seem happier than most of the other kids, and their peals of laughter, mostly at inappropriate times, gladdens my heart for them. 

It has been really interesting and an education for me to be able to observe these 6th graders for as many hours as I do each day, in such close proximity. But despite the total closeness and kindred spirit type of bonding they enjoy, they do have definite differences. Some of them quite striking. 

They look so much alike that I'm sure early on the parents decided to let one of them have long hair while the other one wears his hair close to the head. It really helps to quickly identify them at school. Without that helpful hack, it would have been near impossible at the first of the year to tell them apart. 

I have learned to tell them apart and have noted a couple of significant differences! I have learned that one of them (Twin A) is more able to talk and be social with grown-ups. I like to talk to him because he is so interested in things and seems to have a genuine thirst for new information. At the same time he is more spontaneous than his brother. One day, I had about 10 of the students outside during a nice fall day for about 20 minutes. It was going just great....until Twin A suddenly pulled another boys pants down. The thing is, the other kid wasn't wearing any underwear! It was not cool at all! The rest of the day was spent sorting out what everyone did and didn't see, who might have been traumatized and would anyone be suspended? An incident like that requires a whole lotta paperwork. Yet. This is the one who, when given a reward like a bag of chips or candy, will go without so he can give it to his brother, after a fight in which he was trounced by said brother. 

 

Twin B is a little bit different. He is very oblivious to adults and being social with them or even listening to the smallest direction. He pretty much does his own thing. And although he may be just a tiny bit more advanced than Twin A, he doesn't use it to his advantage. The only thing he wants to do that I can see is flaunt his slight edge over his brother. He always has his brother in tears because he is constantly rubbing his brother's nose in it. He isn't too concerned with trying to earn rewards for good behavior. He knows his brother will come through for him. And he is definitely more dominant in his relationships with girls. He easily has the attention of the only girl in our class over any of the other 13 boys, including his brother. But he manages to stay within the bounds of middle school propriety and has stayed out of serious trouble. He is part of the whole and I celebrate when I see him being kind to his twin!

About the part where they get into some serious tussles: I came across this opinion from an MMA fighter concerning fighting between boys during their adolescent years. I'm not completely sure how I feel about it yet:

"I find it inconceivable that someone can grow to adulthood without ever having been punched in the face.

Kids, especially boys, are supposed to fight, to wrestle, and to become familiar with violence. That is biology.

We live in a time that robs children of experience of dealing with real interpersonal violence, instead filling their heads with videogame killing, and over-medicating them with psychiatric drugs anytime they act like normal kids.

When they finally snap and shoot up a school, we blame it on guns. This is a cycle of insanity.

Get your kids away from the television and into a combat sport. Jiujitsu, judo, boxing, wrestling, or whatever. You'll find they're not actually as crazy as the doctors say."

 

Before getting to know the twins this year, I may have strongly disagreed with this. But seeing how natural it is for them to fight, I almost think that like in the animal world, play fighting may be necessary for development. But it shouldn't and can't get carried away!

 

Do you know twins? What are some similar characteristics besides looks that you have noticed? Are there big differences? How do they relate to each other?   

Today is "My Post Monday!", a curation of my picks of the week's best original content. It's all about posts from Crafts to Camping, Wellness to Wealth, Fashion to Food, and whatever else is on the brain!  I  open up with a post of my own and then follow it up with a linky of the week's top original blog posts! It's all about what the writer thinks, believes, and knows--in other words, they are active, writing blogs. If I happen to find a great original, non-sponsored post, I'll link it up and share it with you here and on Twitter via the #MyPostMonday hashtag!  I can miss some amazing posts, but I don't want to!  So, in addition, if you'd like to link up yourself, you can do that too!  I'll visit your site, comment, promote and publicize(Affiliate links welcome)