Twins are very competitive.
Trust me- I should know. I'm a twin, and my sister and I have always been competitive. Even today decades after we were born,
we still compete over all sorts of things.
When we were younger we even had a two and a half hour fight over a towel!
Yes a towel!
Even today, if the towel is ever brought up in conversation we still argue over it!
As most parents know, siblings will compete with each other for all sorts of things, including toys, food, love, attention,
etc.
So how do you deal with it when you have two children who are the same age and together all of the time?
Well most of the time our mom would just let us figure it out for ourselves. Of course this usually resulted in a massive
fight!
Sometimes mom would say "I don't care who started it. But if you don't stop I will punish both of you". Of course our response
to this was "But that's not fair!"
This tactic did make us stop and think about what we were doing though, and we would usually decide it wasn't worth the punishment.
Like most twins, we would fight over the most ridiculous things.
Such as the towel I mentioned before, but also other things like how we made our beds, how we ate etc!
When we got older and started to develop, we fought about who had the bigger chest.
As I write this I see how silly it was to argue about such trivial things but this sort of arguing is fairly common with twins.
It's important to know that twins will probably behave like this. As a parent of twins, you should be prepared to step in
when necessary.
But make sure the punishment is dealt to both twins in an equal manner.
Punish both children the same, and they might learn that it doesn't matter who started it- they'll both get in trouble regardless.
Also, try and make sure that one twin doesn't concede to the other twin too often.
What do I mean by this? Well usually the older twin has the stronger personality, and will boss the younger twin around. If
you see this happening don't encourage it, as it could lead to self esteem problems later in life.
The main thing to realize is that twins don't just get along all the time, as is often shown on TV. Like any siblings they
will fight a lot, and often more than normal siblings would. As long as you watch for this, you shouldn't have any problems.