Twinsight: A Guide to Raising Emotionally Healthy Twins with Advice from the Experts (Academics) and the Real Experts (Twins)

This parenting manual from Lovitz, a children’s rights activist, blogger (Some Twinsight) and mother of fraternal twin girls, is like a cup of weak tea when what the parents of twins really need is a cup of strong coffee. Lovitz does usefully identify particular issues as uniquely important to twinship, including emotional co-dependency, competition and comparison, and one-on-one parent time. However, her advice is colored by her assumption that, first and foremost, twins must always be treated and recognized as separate people, despite the possibility that the duo may want to be seen as a unit, or that identical and fraternal same-sex or boy-girl pairs present different scenarios. Her earnestness is to be admired—the book emphasizes the modern parenting principle of validation, and listening mindfully to each child’s feelings and being empathetic. In fact, much of her twin-specific coaching really amounts to basic parenting technique appropriate for any set of siblings. Lovitz supplemented her own experience by consulting psychologists, educators, and adult twins (and triplets), but her book seems more like one mom’s adventures in overparenting than a generally useful guide.[em] (Mar.) [/em]