How do new parents not mix their identical twins up?

[Woody479]

Do they keep their names bands on them? Just thinking back to how tired I was when DS was a newborn, you could easily get them mixed up and then they’d forever not be the baby they were born to be! I wonder if there’s any twins out there who got mixed up and never swopped back again?!

They look different to their parents.

Nail polish on one fingernail :)

The only person I know with twins painted their toenails (different colours to each other I mean) to tell them apart. Otherwise I suppose it might be difficult to tell them apart 🤔 But each will be whomever they were going to be other than name which is unrelated to personality and often looks, so no real harm.

I've wondered this too OP. They probably do keep their name bands on until they can notice subtle differences.

One of mine had a small birthmark but otherwise nail polish is good!

Yep, nail polish on the toe nail of one of them

that is an interesting question, but I bet all newborns have something to distinguish them such as a freckle or birthmark that you could use to check. Also different birth weights also making one baby bigger.

One of the parents of two identical boys I taught said that they quite possibly could have mixed them up when they were smaller as they were so alike, especially when tiny. They used the whole nail polish thing but admitted it was likely at some point they'd been mixed up.

Characteristics like head shape and ear shape can be different, and of course they can be different sizes as well. I think most twin mums (dads as well, but it seems to apply more to mums) develop an eye for differences very quickly, but the painted toenail is definitely used often in the early days.

The podcast This American Life had a story about twins possibly being mixed up in their episode last week, and it was interesting to hear how the (now grown) twins felt about it.

My manager has identical twins, his wife brought them into the shop when they were a few weeks old and a few of us commented that we'd struggle to tell them apart if we were in their shoes. But he and his wife could always see the slightest difference in their eye shape to know who's who. They're 4 now and I still can't see it even if I'm specifically looking! So I think parents will always pick up on the tiniest differences and use that even as newborns.

There was an episode of This American Life about this recently! The mum had used different coloured nappy pins for the two boys but at a check up, a nurse very helpfully put them into disposable nappies to make life easier 🤦 the mum was reasonably certain she still had it right but in their 40s they did a footprint analysis which proved....

Yes she had been right!

They have always looked different to me, there was a weight difference at the start and then lots of little differences as they grew.

An old work colleague had identical boys.
She used the nail polish trick, and obviously just got used to the subtle differences in their features.
They attended nursery and the staff couldn't tell them apart then, so mum made sure they had different coloured socks. Twin 1 had red, twin 2 had green, so nursery could tell them apart as they only ever wore that colour of sock.
(Then of course as they got older still and they developed their own personalities and what not it was a bit easier for nursery staff to differentiate)

When I was a baby my mum use to tell the difference between us by birth marks. I had one on my arm and a red strawberry mark between my fingers

One always in white
The other had coloured baby grows

My friends' identical triplets were so similar that she put them in stripes for one boy and stars for the other. The third triplet is a girl.

I would hazard a guess that there are several sets of identical twins where one thinks they are the oldest/youngest but the reality is they got mixed up and it’s the other way round.

I reckon loads of twins and triplets out there are not the ones they started out as! I think more often than not, there have been mix ups and Mary was actually Molly and vice versa. I guess it doesn't really matter.

blue they can't have been identical if they were different sexes! 😄 Maybe the boys were identical twins?

blue - if one is a girl then they aren’t identical triplets :). Or do you mean she had triplets consisting of an identical twins and a singleton?

I reckon loads of twins and triplets out there are not the ones they started out as! I think more often than not, there have been mix ups and Mary was actually Molly and vice versa. I guess it doesn't really matter.

I agree but there will be times when it does matter eg the eldest inheriting a title etc.

I remember reading about the procedure for what would happen if an heir to the throne was a twin with regards to proof of which baby was born first but there doesn’t seem anything in place (for this hypothetical situation) for after the birth as that is when the mix ups will happen.

My friend really struggled with hers until one of them developed a tiny mole as a toddler. She dressed them differently until they were old enough to have a say, at which point they insisted on being dressed exactly the same at all times (which she had sworn never to do).

I'm an identical twin, I unfortunately was a lot smaller at birth than my sister and have always been!

Our twin girls are 9m old and I'm only just now starting to tell the difference between them, so it is by all means not a given that the parents will "just know"

We took a hack we saw online and painted the big toenails on one twin before we took the tags off at home so always 100% knew which was which, which was needed especially when all the gifted clothing was matching so needed all the help we could get!

A lady I knew had twin boys and they were identical, she said that one boy always wore blue clothes and one always wore green clothes to identify who was who!