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Twin identity: Celebrating twinship and developing sense of self

by Diana Day

Dr. Eileen Pearlman is director of Twinsight and co-author of Raising Twins: What Parents Want to Know (And What Twins Want to Tell Them).

Dr. Pearlman, an identical twin herself, is a licensed Marriage, Family and Child Therapist who specializes in twins and twin parenting.

In this Q & A with BeTwinned.com, Dr. Pearlman discusses identity development in twins and multiples and what parents can do to celebrate being a twin or multiple and to also create healthy individuals.

BeTwinned.com: When are twins and multiples aware of themselves as different, or aware of themselves as a pair, or more, as the case may be?

Dr. Eileen Pearlman: It’s between 5 to 6 months old when they start becoming aware that there’s someone else there and that the mirror image is not themselves, it’s another person.

BeTwinned.com: Is there a point at which they are aware that there’s an “otherness,” a sense that they are somehow different than children who are born one at a time?

EP: Regarding the separation and individuation process for everyone, the first three months of even a singleton’s life is usually spent in an autistic state, a womb-like state. The infant needs to be fed and quieted and comforted and also dry. And there’s not much interaction with anyone outside.

Between three to six months they’re breaking out of the state of autism, and they’re becoming more aware of mommy or daddy taking care of them.

This is a symbiotic stage when the mommy and baby are like one, or the daddy and baby are like one; the mother tries to read her child’s needs. So twins are not very aware of each other between birth and six months old. And then, at about six months old, all of a sudden, they’re starting to become aware, in little glimpses at a time, of another in their life, whether it’s mommy as a separate person and then later on a sibling, a twin, as a separate person.

When you’re holding a young baby in your arms and when they touch your hair, they’re not really aware of whether it’s your hair or theirs — it’s all one. You and baby are one. And as they get older, they become aware that it is your hair, when they touch it, is not theirs. From six months to 36 months, they branch out more into the separation-individuation process. Little by little, they become more and more aware of themselves as being separate from other.

Some things twins do to find out whether they’re separate from one another – they hit up against one another, or they bump up against others. If I bump up against you, I know that that’s not me, that’s you, and this is me. They’re starting to be able to tell what’s “me,” and what’s “not me.” This occurs during the “terrible twos,” when everything is “no” to mommy and daddy. They’re not only saying no to mommy and daddy, they’re also saying no to each other.

You’ll also notice that at 18 months or two years old, they’ll start biting and fighting with one another. It’s because they’re starting to separate and individuate from each other. They’re realizing, that’s “me” and that’s “not me.”

Concerns about biting happens to be one of the most frequent questions parents will ask around 18 months to two or three years of age. Twins don’t have much language at that time. With so much emotion and exploration of their senses, they just put everything in their mouths, and sometimes it happens to be the other person. At first when one twin bites the other twin, they’re probably just as frightened as the one being bitten. All of a sudden, they realize that that’s someone else they’ve bitten. That’s part of the awareness that there’s another person and this other person is separate from me.

BeTwinned.com: Should parents cultivate a sense of specialness in their twins or multiples, a sense of you are twins, you are multiples, or is it more important to cultivate individuality, or both?

EP: There is a unique relationship that twins have with each other, some twins more than others. Monozygotic twins tend to have a closer relationship than dizygotic, but that may not always be the case. So if there’s a close relationship, cultivate that — why say, “You can’t be friends?” It’s also very important to cultivate individuality – encourage twins to see themselves as separate, independent individuals because it’s eventually what they’re going to be in the world.

A lot of people make twins special because they’re twins — and it is rare to have someone born at the same time as you. It’s part of who you are as a twin — but it’s not all of who you are. A twin is a unique individual who also happens to be a twin. I think twins get a lot of accolade and attention for just being born a twin. And sometimes twins feel that they don’t have to do anything special because they get recognition for just being born this way. They may not live up to their potential because they’re getting attention for their twinship.

BeTwinned.com: Related to that, how important is it for twins to see themselves reflected in movies, books, TV shows? Do they need to see themselves out there in the world, reflected back at themselves? Should parents make sure to have books about twins, for example, or is that just giving them more attention for being twins?

EP: They are twins, and that’s reality, and I think that having some books about twins and twinship is great. I don’t mean to say that twins shouldn’t feel special because they’re twins, it’s just that that shouldn’t be all of who they are. They are individuals and they are also twins. Seeing themselves just as twins is limiting.

[It’s good to read] books to children about them being twins, because they are faced with challenges non-twins do not face – they have to share earlier than non-twins, they have to share their grade in school, maybe they have to share some friends. Given the challenges that twins face, I think it’s important to see that other twins are facing these similar challenges.

When we see twins that are more the exception rather than the rule – these are twins who are always dressed alike, and are treated as one person, or twins that are labeled the “good twin” and the “evil twin” – when twins are being sensationalized, I think that is not at all helpful.

BeTwinned.com: In BeTwinned toy reviews, we want to review toys that are good for sharing, but we also want to review toys that are simply great toys even if they are really best played with alone. Is it OK for parents of twins to buy toys that belong just to one twin, or should twins share everything? And, is it OK for parents of twins and multiples to double-up on some special or highly-desired toys? At first, I was afraid I was spoiling my kids if I bought them each a their own Thomas train, for example.

EP: It’s not just OK, it’s important. In order to be able to share something, you first have to own something. You can’t go straight to sharing. First it has to be learned that this is mine, and then that’s yours, and then OK, we can share.

For someone to have ownership is really important because sometimes what’s on the outside is what is reflected on the inside. If I have my own toys and my own clothes, that means I’m my own person. If I have to share everything on the outside, then do I also have to share my identity and myself inside? So the inside and the outside work together in this way. I think it’s important for parents to be able to give twins their own toys, to be able to have their own thing that they covet. This gives them a sense of ownership, a sense of pride, a sense of identity. Yes, I can see where swings and big-ticket items you could have one that they have to share. But there are certain things where they may want to have one of their own. Maybe they want something a little different, or maybe they want the same thing.

I remember when the Cabbage Patch dolls were in, and one mother told me she was going to get one of her twins a Cabbage Patch doll and the other one something else. And I said, “Well, what if they both want a Cabbage Patch?” Even if they were both singletons, they may both want a Cabbage Patch doll.

It is important for parents to follow their children’s lead to see if they want the same or if they want something different. And if there’s something that’s coveted, we need to listen to them. If they both want to take ballet, fine. But if one wants to take ballet and one wants to take gymnastics, it’d be better to say, OK, this is what I need to do right now. If you both want to take it, fine, but if not, it’s all right.

BeTwinned.com: That’s very empowering. You feel pressure from society’s values that they must always share and that you’re spoiling them if you buy them two Thomases or two Cabbage Patches.

EP: No, you’re not spoiling them at all. There is a lot of pressure. I had a mother in my group just last week – she has 15 month old twin boys. She said, “They should be sharing, they should be the same.” And I said, “Why should they be the same? Even identical twins are not the same.” We need to see where each of them is, and we need to see where they overlap. Sometimes the overlap may be great. I use the example of one twin being a red circle and the other being a yellow circle, there are places where they overlap to make orange. Sometimes there is a big overlap and sometimes there’s not. There’s a lot of red and yellow in each one and there’s orange. So you have to pay attention to all of that.

BeTwinned.com: As twins get older and get ready to go to school, should parents look for schools that allow flexibility in classroom placement, or should there be a set rule that twins should not be in the same classroom?

EP: There should be not be a rule regarding twins being placed together or apart. Some twins flourish quite well being apart. Some twins who haven’t spent any time apart from each another and have not had their own individual identity established, may have a difficult time in separate classrooms. It may be very traumatic for them. So we have to take little steps – put them together in Kindergarten or pre-school and little by little, gradually get them to spend some time apart. So, it depends on the twin pair and on the twins themselves. And, each year, their needs may change. It is a good idea to evaluate the school placement on a year-to-year basis with the children and the school. Maybe one year they’ll do well together and another year they won’t do well together.

For example, maybe they’ve been apart for the first and second grade, and then for third grade one teacher is really great and one of them is really marginal. You may think, well, gee, which one of them am I going to sacrifice? You may think, this may be a time for me to put them both in the same class. Or maybe one teacher specializes in science, and they both really love science – you may think that it’s a good year to put them together. If they’re really clinging to one another and having a hard time separating or if they’re feeling a lot of competition – maybe one is further ahead than the other — you may think it’s too much pressure on the twin pair and it may be better if they were in separate classes. Sometimes if twins are constantly checking with each other all the time, they are not doing their own work and are not progressing as far as they can.

Also, it’s really important for parents to have separate conferences with each teacher for each child. Sometimes the teacher will only hold one conference for both children. In those cases, many parents say they leave the conference and they don’t remember what was said about each child. Twins are two separate individuals who need two separate conferences. They have separate needs. In the conference, we want to talk about the specific child and as a part of the conference, how the twins relate to each other, but not for the whole conference.

BeTwinned.com: I try to let people know right away which twin is which and who is wearing what color today. Some people make jokes as if they’re not even going to try to tell the twins apart, but I still try to tell them who is who.

EP: Good for you. What does it tell the twin [when people don’t try]? It tells the twin “I don’t really care to know who you really are? Why bother?” People come up to the twins in the stroller and say, “Double trouble, double this, double that.” Well, what does the child feel? They might feel that they’re a lot of trouble or that people don’t even care to know who they are.

BeTwinned.com: What are common misconceptions about the identity development of twins?

EP: There are a lot of myths about twins. Some people, teachers, parents, aunts, uncles think that there’s a good twin and a bad twin or that there’s always a leader and always a follower. It has to do a lot with labeling of twins. The parents have to help the twins figure out that we don’t label. We tell parents that when people ask, “Which one is the fussy one?” to say, “We don’t label. Sometimes one is and then the other.”

Yes, people will be asking, and I understand that it’s their way of telling the differences, of telling them apart. Sometimes they label which one is the reader or which one is the mathematician, when maybe they both are, or neither. People tend to do that — the constant comparison and the labeling. I think that this can be hurtful because once you have the label, it’s hard to remove that from becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy.

BeTwinned.com: Is there a common misconception that twins will always be in their own world and can’t relate to the other kids on the playground or that they will have social development problems?

EP: I think some people do have that perception, particularly with same sex twins, and especially when they’re younger. People think that they’re always going to be together. We see that sometimes on television or in movies that twins are always together, they don’t have individual friends. There’s all kinds of myths about twins – they will not be friendly with their other siblings; there’s always a dominant one and a passive one; do they have ESP?

In my book I talk about the myth that twins are supposed to be best friends. Well, sometimes they’re not best friends. Sometimes they have different personalities and different temperaments and different likes and dislikes. They may clash at times. So, they’re not always going to be best friends with each other all the time. For twins who are more similar in their temperaments, they may be best friends much of the time, but that’s not always the case. Some children are just automatically more social, and they want to be with their twin, but they also want to be with others as well. They’re children, and sometimes they may want to play together and sometimes they may want to play apart.

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Research on twins has long yielded valuable insight into nature/nurture question

by Diana Day

Twins have long fascinated those who study human nature, whether present in medical theories of Hippocrates or in stories as old as the Bible’s Jacob and Esau or Romulus and Remus, the mythological founders of Rome.

Sir Francis Galton, a distant relation of Charles Darwin and a scientist, scholar and author, was a pioneer in the use of twins to study questions of nature versus nurture in the late 1800s. Today there are any number of twin studies and twin registries all over the world. The results of twin research have helped form the basis of our modern understanding of human behavior.

Dr. Laura Baker of the Southern California Twin Project at the University of Southern California is a long-time twin researcher. She recently spoke with BeTwinned.com about twin registries and how twin studies are set up. She also gave us a sneak preview into early results from her current twin study.

BeTwinned.com: Please tell BeTwinned readers a little bit about yourself and what you do at USC.

Dr. Laura Baker: I am an associate professor of psychology at the University of Southern California. I’m a twin researcher, and I study twins as a vehicle for understanding the nature-nurture question of human behavior. Twins are a great resource for us to understand how genes and environment impact our behavior, so it’s great to have so many twins in Los Angeles.

I have been at USC since 1984, when I began doing research on twins. I started a twin register when I first arrived here. The way we started out was with volunteers, just advertisements through newspapers and the radio and through word of mouth, slowly gathering names of twins who were interested in participating in research. And then we gradually moved toward hospitals and school districts, and we recruited twins through those sources as well.

So I now have a fairly large register of twins that’s, for the most part, kids, but we still have an interest in studying adult twins as well.

BeTwinned.com: There’s a difference between doing research about twins to find out about twins themselves and doing research using twins in order to understand humans in general, right?

Baker: That’s correct. I am, of course, fascinated by twins themselves as a group of individuals. There are lots of interesting things about twins, but mainly, people doing twin research in my area — the area of behavioral genetics — are interested in the larger picture of human behavior. Twins give us an insight into how humans function in general. They really help us to have an understanding of the larger scope of human behavior.

BeTwinned.com: Why are twins and multiples uniquely situated to do that?

Baker: Because there are basically two kinds of twins. There are identical twins (monozygotic twins — from one fertilized egg that split) that came from the same fertilized egg so they are essentially genetically identical, and there are fraternal twins (dizygotic twins) that come from two different fertilized eggs, but they happen to share the womb at the same time.

The way that twin studies generally work is through the comparison of the two kinds of twins to each other. What we do is to look at the similarities of twins to one another and we look to see if, for example, the identical, or monozygotic, twins are more similar than dizygotic twins, and if so, that would be suggestive of genetic influences because the increased genetic similarity could explain their increased phenotypic, or behavioral, similarity.

So the nice thing about twins is the fact that there are these two kinds of twins, the genetically identical and the non-identical twins. But, they both share environments, they both share the womb at the same time, they are the same age, they grow up with this contemporaneous relationship. And so they serve as a comparison group for one another.

There are, of course, also studies of identical twins raised apart. Those are a really fascinating and unique group of individuals to study as well. It turns out that they provide a really powerful design for separating genes and environment. But it’s not necessary to have twins who are separated at birth. You also don’t have to have adopted twins to get a handle on gene-environment influence. By looking at the two kinds of twins who are raised together you can make many of the same comparisons.

BeTwinned.com: What are some of the big discoveries that researchers have made using twin studies?

Baker: In the last 25 years the study of twins and adopted children together really changed the way that social scientists thought about human behavior. Twenty-five or 30 years ago, it was really thought that learning and experiences were the primary explanation for individual differences, but the systematic study of twins and adopted children and their families all really changed the way people think. We now have moved away from a primarily nuture model to thinking that genes and the environment are both important in explaining individual differences.

In fact, it’s now the case that it seems that just about every realm of human behavior that you look at shows evidence for some genetic influence. Twins have really helped us to understand that very fact. Identical twins routinely are much more similar than fraternal twins on just about everything that you look at, from their actual physical appearance, to their general cognitive abilities, to their very specific talents, whether they’re conservative or liberal, the degree to which they are religious and even their social attitudes.

All of these things have some genetic influence, which was a surprise to a lot of social scientists. Everyone thought that social learning would be the key factor, but in fact genes seem to have these pervasive influences in the way that we think, feel and behave, in general.

It’s almost become kind of a joke to try to find something that’s not heritable, that’s not influenced by genetic factors. For a while, people were searching for something that wasn’t genetic, and it was really hard to find something. There are a few things that came up – it does appear that how spiritual or how extensively one participates in their religion seems to be influenced by genetics, but the type of religion that one participates in is probably more a family-learned cultural experience. So, which religion you participate in seems to be more cultural or environmental, but the degree to which you participate in it seems to be influenced by genetics.

BeTwinned.com: You obviously spend a lot of time with twins in your work. On a personal level, what have you learned about twins from working with them?

Baker: Twins are a really special group because they have this contemporaneous relationship. Twins can be, and often are, extremely close, more so than non-twin siblings. The bond that you see between twins can be remarkable. The love and affection and devotion they have for each other is really heartwarming.

Sometimes you’ll meet twins who are so similar that it’s hard to keep track of who’s who, and you get really confused when you try to hold a conversation with the two of them together. And a lot of times you’ll have twins that finish each other’s sentences, and it’s as though you’re talking to one person, but it’s really two. It can be a really bizarre experience, but fascinating.

I think that that bond, that really special emotional connection and level of communication between twins is really special and unique, but it also varies across twins. Some twins are closer to each other than other twins. And you also see some twins who are really competitive, and that close bond can actually be a problem for them because they feel almost not recognized as unique, functioning individuals. They can resent each other because of the competition. So at the same time that you can see this close, loving bond, sometimes it creates competition that’s even more drastic than between non-twin siblings.

Sometimes I’ll see twins who, during adolescence, will grow to almost loathe each other. They want to go their separate ways and be their own person and stop living in the shadow of their twin, and they’ll sometimes just go their separate ways as young adults and not see each other for years. A lot of times I’ll find that they come back to each other once they get rooted in their adult lives, and then they rediscover each other and they have this close connection.

BeTwinned.com: I’ve heard and read recently where it’s supposed to be common knowledge that twins are underachievers, except in athletics.

Baker: I’ve never seen any evidence for twins being underachievers. I’ve never seen any evidence for adult twins, at least, being any different in terms of IQ, educational attainment, or psychopathology. There’s no greater instance of psychopathology in twins. They seem to function just like everyone else.

There are some studies that show some early delayed cognitive development in twins, but those studies are kind of mixed as well. But, it seems to disappear by the time they get out of school, or even by the time they get into school. So sometimes twins will have language skills that will develop just a little bit later, and that can just depend on the twins themselves, how many other kids there are in the family and what’s going on with the parents. Of course genetics can play a role in their development as well, and premature birth too. So all of those factors might lead to some delays in twins, but they tend to disappear by the time they’re well into elementary school.

So it’s my understanding that twins are really the same psychologically and physically as the rest of the population, perhaps with this exception of having this special bond with each other. But they’re no more psychic than other people, for example. They’re not psychic. It might seem that way sometimes. You hear these freaky things sometimes, like one feeling what the other felt when they were across the world. Those are compelling stories, but what you don’t hear is all the times they don’t feel those things. Some of them really think they can read each other’s minds and that they can feel this connection from a distance. It’s hard for me as a non-twin to believe that. My feeling is that they just have this special communication and that they really understand each other in a way that no one else can. They have this intense communicative bond. But I don’t know how that would explain their experiences from a distance.

BeTwinned.com: When people say “twin studies” does that imply multiples as well?

Baker: It does imply multiples as well. Of course, twins make up the bulk of multiple births. But in our research, we do include triplets as well. We’ve never had anything higher than triplets. But we have nine sets of triplets in our study out of 605 families. It becomes tricky, trying to figure out how to statistically analyze the three. But in some ways you can think of triplets as a bonus because you can get three twin pairs out of them. You’ve got A-B, B-C and A-C, so triplets are wonderful because they give you three times as much information.

BeTwinned.com: What can people do who wish to sign up their twins or multiples on a registry?

Baker: People can go to websites. I have a website where I mention that I’m doing twin research, and there’s a link where people can send an e-mail if they’re interested. We’ll accept any twins that want to be in our register, but that might mean that they have to wait for a while before there will be a study that they will qualify for. But they still get our newsletters, and we keep them posted on things.

Sometimes other people write to us wanting to know if they can find twins for their studies, and we’ll send out letters to people on the registry saying to contact this person if you’re interested. People try to be protective of their twins and while we want to make them available for studies, we also don’t want to go sending their names out to anybody without their permission.

So people can look online. There’s lots of twin registers, and people can just put their names in them. There’s actually some effort right now at the NIH to put together a national twin register, to find all the twins in the U.S. and get them into a database somehow.

BeTwinned.com: What does a study entail?

Baker: It could be anything from doing nothing to coming in and participating in a laboratory assessment from anywhere from a couple of hours to a couple of days. The people in Minnesota, in their study of twins, had them in there for a week, so that’s really unusual. There are a lot of studies that are done with mail surveys and phone interviews, so there’s a range of things.

We’re doing a study right now with someone from the University of California Davis who’s a political scientist, and he found out about my twin register. He called me to say he was interested in voter behavior. He said we could do the study by just matching the twin register for the adults to the voting records in the County of Los Angeles, and we could look at concordance for their voter behaviors without having to contact them, because it’s public information.

But we felt uncomfortable even though there’s no harm to anyone. We just felt that out of courtesy we should just write to the people in our register and say that we’re doing this, and if you have a problem with that, just let us know. So we did do that, and so far most people have written back enthusiastically, and in fact they started telling us about their voting behavior.

I find most twins that sign up are really eager to participate, and they like to feel special. The only problem sometimes is that families with twins get really busy. It’s hard with kids, and even with one child, we tend to overschedule and having two must be a nightmare. So it can be hard to schedule time to get them to come in and participate in the study. So that’s one of the challenges we face.

BeTwinned.com: Are there any hot new discoveries?

Baker: Here at the Southern California Twin Program, we are actually looking at the development of both social and anti-social behavior. We’re interested in the range of problem behaviors that kids might experience.

We’re particularly interested in adolescent rebellious behaviors. It’s always been thought that that’s the norm almost, for adolescents to become rebellious and anti-social, that that’s what they do as they try to break away from their home ties and become independent.

We’ve been investigating the development of aggressive, anti-social conduct problems in twins. We started at the age of nine and 10. We’re looking at the whole community, so we’re not just looking at kids that get in trouble. We’re looking at all kids, and we’re looking at the range of behaviors, and we’re looking at why some kids become more aggressive than others and why some people are more rule-adherent, versus others who may eventually break laws.

One of the things we’re finding is that that there’s a big range of behaviors that kids display from the age of nine to the age of 14 — our study started at pre-adolescence and now we’re moving into the adolescent phase. We do find some evidence for genetic predisposition towards aggressive rule-breaking, anti-social behaviors. So, conduct problems do seem to have at least a partial genetic basis, but there’s also a huge environmental influence. And things like socio-economic factors, the level of stress in the home that the mother reports, certain kinds of life events, all do seem to contribute to conduct problems as well.

We’re really interested in following our kids into adolescence, where one question is: How much do peers actually influence kids to become more anti-social? Is there going to be a greater effect of environment via the peers than genetics, or are the genetic factors going to become even more important in determining who can resist those peer influences and who can’t? Those are questions we have, so we have studied these 605 families of twins and other multiples. We’re about to follow them up when they are in their teens, from 14 to 17, so that’s the next five years of our study. We’ll be recruiting some new sets of twins, so twins in California who were born between 1990 and 1995 and who are interested in this particular study can contact me.

Additional resources about twin research and twin registers.

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Bringing them home: A Southern California family embraces Haitian twins

by Diana Day

On that hot Haitian morning, Nancy Connelly, with her family right behind her, ran up the steps of the orphanage to get to her babies.

Bam, bam, bam. She remembers the sound of her feet hitting the tile steps.The humidity sucked the air out of her lungs. She saw some older kids playing at the top of the stairs, the sound of them getting closer as she ran.

She thought of stopping to greet them, but her desire to see twins Seth and Amara again, to hold them, was too great.

The Connelly family, Nancy, husband Scott, and their children Iris, 9, and Drew, 5, zipped into the orphanage’s baby room.

The room was a “sea of cribs,” Nancy said, “And it was overstimulating. I wanted to acknowledge all my friends’ kids … mainly, I just wanted to hold my kids.”

Understandably, the family all differ on the details of what happened in the next few emotional moments. Did Nancy go to Seth first, or did she go to Amara? Maybe Iris picked up Amara first, but maybe it was Nancy who picked up Amara and then handed her to Iris. Nancy said Scott looked overwhelmed, and she handed Seth to him.

“It was all a blur,” Nancy said. “I meant to remember every detail of it, and of course I didn’t.”

Nancy and Scott do agree that one of the nannies was holding 18-month-old Seth when they came in. The nanny said to Seth, “There’s your mommy,” and Seth started shaking his head, no-no-no.

After an hour or so with the babies inside the orphanage, Scott had to go outside for a break from the oppressive heat. But Iris never needed to take a break.

“Iris stayed up there the whole time both times we went [to the orphanage],” Scott said. “She was holding infants that have died. There was one that died of AIDS the month after we got home. Seeing [her with the babies] was my favorite part of the trip.”

The Connellys eventually went to the orphanage’s sitting room with Seth and Amara, the new members of their family. Amara appeared somewhat detached, though she seemed content to be out of her crib. But Seth was inconsolable.

“The nannies called Seth ‘the king,’” Scott said. They favored him, and he had more time outside of his crib than his sister Amara. The first few days with the Connellys were hard for Seth, and he “definitely wanted to be back at the orphanage,” Scott said.

“It was hard that day. It was hard that whole nine days [that we were in Haiti],” Scott explained. “There was a lot of crying. I felt bad for Seth. I thought, ‘Oh boy, this is going to be hard.’”

And that wasn’t even the beginning of the journey.


The journey of a lifetime (or two)

The trip from Southern California to Port au Prince, Haiti to bring Seth and Amara home was only one part of the adoption process. Nancy and Scott actually started the whole process in 2003 with discussions about adding to their family.

The couple, who met in 1987 and married in 1991, had always known there was a possibility they would adopt. After having two children by birth, they were considering whether to have another child or to adopt. Nancy had been looking into adoption on the Internet and would call Scott at work with updates.

He remembered when she called one day and mentioned, among other possibilities, Haitian boy-girl twins that might become available at an orphanage called For His Glory.

Before they hung up, Scott said, “Find out some information about the twins.”

Scott remembered Nancy asking, “Why?” He told her he didn’t know why. It was just something that came to him.

Nancy found out that the twins were from Cité Soleil, Haiti’s poorest slum. The birth mother was giving up the children – then known by birth names Jacqueline and Jacquelin, which are now their middle names — because of extreme poverty. They were her sixth and seventh babies.

Haiti is the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere. AIDS, political unrest, illiteracy and malnourishment are just a few of the dire problems that plague this island nation in the Caribbean. According to the 2005 Human Development Indicators put out by the United Nations Development Programme, the life expectancy in Haiti is 51.6 years with a 34 percent chance that a person will not survive to age 40. Ten percent of infants die being born, and 16 percent of the poorest children will die before they turn five. Almost half of the population is illiterate.

Scott had reservations about adopting from Haiti at first. He was mainly concerned about how having siblings of a different race would affect Iris and Drew in a society where people are not always accepting of multi-race families.

But, Haiti was more affordable for Nancy and Scott. And, they found out that the twins’ birth mother visited the orphanage once or twice a month, so it was comforting to know the children were loved. (At the request of the birth parents, Scott and Nancy have sent some pictures and updates since they came home with Seth and Amara.) Scott had also long been inspired by the closeness of his boss’ large family. Then, their neighbors had twins.

So, the idea of the twins from Haiti stuck. Nancy and Scott turned their focus to Seth and Amara.

“We just kind of kept in the loop on their status and how they were doing,” Scott said. He said he just knew it was right.


Every step is intentional

It took Nancy and Scott five months to assemble the adoption papers.

They started the dossier in February 2004, the same month that Haitian president Jean-Bertrand Aristide was ousted from office. Nancy and Scott decided to delay submitting an important form called a 1600A, along with the first outlay of money, because they feared their paperwork would be lost in the coup’s chaotic aftermath. They decided to wait for the political situation to settle before filing the form.

Nancy learned how to navigate the ocean of paperwork and legal technicalities from her Internet adoption networks and extensive reading. Her own self-described “anal retentive” nature helped her keep track of the many details. But still, sometimes it just got to be too much. When the paperwork got overwhelming, Nancy said Scott would comfort her: “One paper at a time, honey.”

“Every piece of paper you get together for the dossier is one step toward changing your family,” Nancy said. “It’s such a conscious choice, every step of the way … That was the beginning of the roller coaster.”

Now that Nancy has successfully been through the adoption process, she volunteers as the adoption coordinator at For His Glory. Nancy, who is a trained doula — a woman’s birth assistant — said she has thought many times about the differences between birthing, helping women give birth and the adoption process.

“Believe me, the contrast is not lost on me. I am being a doula, but in a different way. I’m helping families being born by helping at the orphanage,” Nancy explained. “I have to give pep talks. It’s just like someone giving birth, it’s just a longer process.”

“Linda, the director [of For His Glory], is also a doula. Maybe we have the gift of encouragement, and that’s why we do what we do.”

Once Nancy and Scott turned in the dossier, it took a total of ten months for the process to be complete in Haiti.

In Haiti, the official certificates are beautifully handwritten, Nancy explained. But this is slow, of course. “If a copy machine is broken, you’ve added a month onto the process.”

And then there was the challenge of telling friends and family.

“You already have two kids, which everybody thinks is a perfect-sized family,” Nancy said. But there she was, telling people that she and her husband were planning to adopt outside their country and outside their race. And twins. She was sure everyone thought they were crazy.

In June 2004, a year before the Connellys brought Seth and Amara home, Nancy took Iris to Haiti to meet the babies and see the orphanage.

“We thought it would be a great thing for Iris to see and experience. Our social worker agreed, which ultimately gave Scott the feeling that he could let me take her with me. He was worried about her safety, but at that time Haiti was filled with U.N. forces, and it really was a calm and quiet time to go,” Nancy wrote in a follow-up e-mail.

“It wasn’t scary, it was just different,” Iris said of the time she’s spent in Haiti. “It was sad seeing people not having homes and stuff.”


Coming home

Scott really wanted a picture of his newly expanded family on that first day at the orphanage.

So, after a couple of hours in the sitting room, they went outside to take pictures and walk around a little.

Scott keeps one of the pictures on his desk at work. It reminds him how far they’ve all come.

Iris, Amara, Seth and Drew in Haiti
Iris, Amara, Seth and Drew in Haiti; photo courtesy Connelly family

The nannies had lovingly groomed Seth and Amara – shoes and socks for both, a ruffly dress for Amara and cute plaid shorts for Seth. Nancy remembers that they had bloated bellies. The children at For His Glory have three large meals a day, so Nancy theorized that the bloating was probably caused by some other nutritional imbalance.

Amara was emotionally distant, and she was sick too. She had stuffed some cotton up her nose, and it had festered there, causing an infection. Seth had calmed down some, but he was still unhappy being away from his nannies.

“It was a shock,” Scott explained about those first few hours. “It was real — it was what we wanted, what we prayed for. It was the right thing, but it was just different.”

But the most harrowing part of the trip was yet to come.

The day before the Connellys left Haiti, the twins had their visa appointment. Nancy and Scott were advised not to come because there had been gunfire in the part of town where they needed to go. The morning of the appointment, Pierre Alexis, the Haitian orphanage director, and one of the nannies took the children while Nancy and Scott stayed with Iris and Drew at their hotel.

The appointment was only supposed to take a couple of hours, but Seth and Amara weren’t back until dinnertime that night.

In the For His Glory newsletter, Linda Kohn, the American orphanage director, published the following account of what happened that day:

While Scott and Nancy Connelly were in Haiti in early June about to take their twins, Seth and Amara home to the US, our staff had to take the children downtown without their parents to get their visas, as it was so unsafe the parents could not join them. The gunfire rang out and Seth, Amara and our staff had to hide out in a safe house for several hours before they could return the children to the hotel. On the eve of their freedom from kidnappings, killings, starvation, etc., the children had to experience one last terrifying event before they could rest safely in their parents’ arms on the AA flight bound for America.


Hunkering down

There was an unexpected five-hour layover in the Ft. Lauderdale airport because of an airplane problem. Still shell-shocked, the Connelly family deplaned and settled in to wait.

Iris remembers the time passing fast, but it was an eternity for Nancy.

“For Iris, it was just fun, running around the airport,” Nancy said. But she was worrying about many things, including about whether the last-minute schedule change would prevent family members from being able to greet them in the Long Beach airport.

“I needed the emotional support by that time. It was totally survival mode by then,” Nancy said.

But still, she was very thankful to finally be back in the United States and on familiar territory after the difficult days in Haiti. After staying an extra four days in Haiti because of paperwork delays – they got through with enough clothes because of Nancy’s overpacking — and then after the last day of violence, Nancy was out of steam.

Mainly, they passed the time just letting the kids play. Amara had somehow learned to walk a little in her crib – Nancy described it as a sort of “Frankenstein walk” — and Seth could manage a few steps. But, as kids do, the four children found ways to have fun.

The airport was also Nancy and Scott’s first taste of the world of public opinion regarding the changes to their family. Scott was holding Seth as they got off the plane, and the first comment he heard came from an African American woman who said, “What are you doing with that black baby?”

This made Scott wary, but there were no more negative remarks after that, Nancy said. In fact, “People seemed to be going out of their way to smile at us.” One woman even mouthed the words “beautiful family.”

Once home, the Connellys made a cocoon around themselves for awhile and didn’t go out much. They figured that the best way to make Seth and Amara feel safe was to stay put.

Scott remembers setting Seth and Amara on the grass outside for the first time. Some of Nancy’s relatives came to visit, and they all went outside.

“Amara’s a toucher, and she was touching everything,” Scott said. He found the twins’ happy explorations comforting – a sign that Seth and Amara could indeed venture out of the house and still feel safe, connected.

Drew, formerly the youngest in the family, faced a big adjustment. Nancy remembers that Iris recharged her batteries by retreating into her room for a short time and creating a world for her Barbies, but Drew had a harder time at first.

“[Drew has] grown into his role as a big brother,” Scott said, but he had to work through it. Scott has recently been thrilled to see Drew looking after his new siblings, or spontaneously running to give them a hug or kiss.

“That was the hardest part for me, seeing Drew struggling,” Scott said. “But now looking at it, … it definitely has made him stronger.”

Amara, Iris, Drew and Seth at holiday time
Amara, Iris, Drew and Seth at holiday time, about six months after their homecoming; photo courtesy Connelly family

Attachment issues have been at the forefront of Nancy’s and Scott’s concerns. They are vigilant and observant, trying to gauge how well Seth and Amara are adjusting.

Nancy had done a lot of reading about attachment issues before Seth and Amara came home. But she said that reading the material before the children came was very different than actually dealing with attachment issues when they were really present.

“I expected to feel the same way about [Seth and Amara] as I did about my birth children. And I don’t, you can’t. They were not born of me,” Nancy said. “With adoption, it’s different. … And once I came to peace with that, I didn’t feel as guilty. I didn’t feel like a bad person.”

Scott knew that it might take time to feel a deep connection to the family’s new additions. But “in the last month, I haven’t been thinking about that too much. I have been having that comfort – they’re ours, they’re really ours.”

He relishes coming home from work and hearing four children running and calling to him. Seth says, “Daddy-o, Daddy-o!”

And it takes time for the adoptees to attach, too.

Seth, formerly bonded to his favorite nanny at the orphanage, has now bonded to the family. But Amara still sometimes exhibits some of the detached emotional state Nancy and Scott saw in Haiti.

Amara received good and kind treatment at For His Glory, Nancy said, but she was still “hurt by virtue of being in an orphanage.”

It concerns the couple that Amara will hold up her arms to be picked up by anyone. And at their church, well-intentioned people reinforce this behavior by picking her up, passing her around and ooh-ing and aah-ing over her.

They have good intentions, Scott says, but it’s not really helpful when Scott and Nancy are trying so hard to have the children bond to their new family.

Nancy was greatly comforted by a visit from a county social service provider whose doctoral dissertation was about attachment.

The woman said it was O.K., for now, to let other people hold Seth and Amara and comfort them. Nancy also found it helpful to hear that there will be time later to teach the twins discretion and caution.

Nancy said that when the social worker told her “attachment is a process, not an event. … The weight was lifted off my shoulders.”


The days behind, the days ahead

Besides the larger attachment issues, there were a host of other daily challenges. Both Seth and Amara had intestinal parasites; Seth is still struggling to overcome his.

Also, because they were fed so quickly in the orphanage, the twins wouldn’t chew their food and had to be taught.

And language.

“You don’t realize how important language is,” Nancy said. And then one day she was chatting with Amara while changing her diapers. At one point, Amara responded with a simple, “Uh-huh.” Nancy was struck by the power of this moment of understanding between a mother and a daughter who speak different languages.

And then there were moments of intense worry and self-doubt. Nancy said she sees this kind of thing all the time on her e-mail listservs.

People post questions like “Am I good enough to raise these kids?” and “Will they hate me for taking them out of their birth country?”

Nancy said she worries about these things too. She’s not Haitian, doesn’t speak the language, doesn’t know the intimate details of the culture.

“You can try. You can try, try try,”she said. Nancy and Scott do plan to take Seth and Amara back to Haiti sometime so they can see where they were born.

In spite of all the progress the family has made together, there have been some really tough days. Nancy looked to her e-mail companions for help but couldn’t really find evidence of people who were having as hard a time as she was.

At first, Nancy was reluctant to disclose her frustrations: “My big fear is that I don’t want to be a bad ambassador for adoption. … I didn’t want to be that cautionary tale.”

She decided to post a “candid e-mail,” and then the responses poured in. It turned out that many people were having the same experiences and just weren’t posting them.

Nancy also read a book called The Post-Adoption Blues by Karen J. Foli and John R. Thompson and said it helped her a lot.

Scott and Nancy agreed that they can even see themselves adopting again. They are already discussing it — a little. They also both agreed that they are pretty tired right now.

“It’s definitely hard work with twins, changing diapers and getting meals prepared. It’s definitely more work, but you know, I don’t even like to call it work. Whether you have four kids or seven kids, it’s what you do,” Scott said.

Scott said that it’s “amazing” to see how much his twins like to be together. They might be doing different things, but they do them close to each other.

Once Scott watched Seth put a hand on Amara’s shoulder and pat her back when she was hurt. “They definitely hang together,” he said.

Nancy said parenting twins has changed her concept of what’s “fair.” She said it’s very different from parenting one at a time. Nowadays, what’s fair is not always what’s equal, depending on the needs of each child, she said. She is also less likely to get involved in sibling squabbles, preferring to let the twins work it out themselves where reasonable.

Both Nancy and Scott speak proudly of the twins’ resilience in the face of such big changes.

“They’ve come a long way, and they still have a long way to go,” Nancy said.

Something as simple as romping freely in an open, carpeted American home with plenty of toys and books around or having older siblings to chase and tickle them is completely new for Seth and Amara, now nearly two-and-a-half. In the orphanage, their cribs were side-by-side, but they didn’t get out of them much, though they did have a few toys to play with.

In Nancy and Scott’s home today, Seth and Amara play in front of Nancy on two oversized balls. They roll their little bodies around or sit up and bounce, their little socked toes stretching to balance on the floor.

“I look at them in the grocery cart at Ralph’s, and I can’t believe they’re here after everything. They’re from another country,” Nancy said, shaking her head in disbelief.

“We’ve got a whole host of peeling back the layers and figuring it out ahead. It’s going to be a lifetime of that,” Nancy said. “I can only hope that [Seth and Amara] know that we went on our hearts and not in our heads.”

But, in the end, Nancy said, “It’s really the babies’ story to tell.”

Twins Seth and Amara now have a better chance to grow up to tell that story, their way.