Everyone knows that boy/girl twins can’t identical right? Wrong!

[Tincytot]

Here is my Friday night rant as a mum of twins teenagers who still gets asked if they are identical when the girl/boy twins are standing right in front of them, looking not one bit alike let alone identical. Plus they’re different sexes!

typical conversation-
“oh you have twins, what are they?”
”a boy and a girl”
“lovely, are they identical?”
”no they’re a boy and a girl”
”yeah but are they identical?”

🙄🙄

Pretending to be the opposite sex doesn’t have any effect on whether twins are identical.

I used to work in East Africa and was chatting to a middle aged woman I worked with who was holding one of her daughter's twins, while the daughter held the other. Oh how lovely, I commented, twins! (They are considered lucky in that area). Yes replied the grandma, my daughter is a twin too. Oh gosh I said, I've heard it runs in families.
Yes, said the grandma. I had 7 pairs of twins.

To be fair, we did have boy/girl twins at primary school who looked weirdly identical, same face with the same curly hair in exactly the same style. I do wonder what they grew up like!

I wonder how many times twins are asked that, it must be annoying.

To be fair we’re equally dim at times, we took our daughter to an appointment last week and my husband mentioned his own disability want wanted to know if what she has was potentially a mild version she had inherited from him. Shes adopted…

But in the rare condition postulated, the resulting XY and XO twins would not develop to be identical even if for a brief period their embryos were.

I remember a local newspaper referring to twins in an article and stating that "they are both aged seven".

A truer word has never been spoken.

I have B/G twins. I was asked if they were identical regularly.

I have also been asked who one was the “good” one
Which was my favourite
Why I didn’t dress them to match
If they had a secret twin language
If they could read each others minds.
Whether they were “real” twins i.e not IVF

Twins are fairly common, people must really lose their minds with triplets!

To be fair I don’t understand genetics at all @ErrolTheDragon , so I appreciate your clarification. I suppose they could still be defined as monozygotic twins, rather than identical. That bit is true at least.

Someone once looked at my twins and asked if they were identical when looking in the pram, and then said “oh no, they can’t be. One’s awake and one’s asleep.” Seriously.

To be honest, I only learnt they can’t be identical a couple of years ago. I thought they could be, but one was obviously more masculine looking and the other more feminine.

@TwiceTwoDouble I do find triplets quite fascinating but try to avoid asking stupid/predictable questions on the rare occasions I meet some. We had triplets at school, all male. Two were identical twins and the other was just a random brother; I did feel a bit sorry for him but hopefully they all had good relationships with each other.

At my children’s school, there were identical triplets which I think is quite rare.

There were B/G twins at the playgroup I used to attend and the parent/s maybe wished they had been identical as they made them really hard to tell apart.
They had the exact same hair style- long, blonde curls and they would always be dressed in unisex clothes like plain black tracksuits and facially they were very similar. They also were called near enough the same name.

An identical male (XY) zygote begins to split, but one embryo loses its Y chromosome during early cell division. This results in one male twin and one female twin who has Turner syndrome (XO)… I’m not sure how to dumb it down as though you’re 5 but I’m sure you get what I’ve wrote

Turner syndrome

That’s seems like a massive number! How does that work stats wise with the average in the population ?

I take my hat off to triplet parents. Incredible.

Someone once asked me if both twins were mine.

Edited to add that my twins are identical!

If you were a man, it would be possible for one of the twins to not be yours.

Holy shit! Surely that tips over into bad luck 😳

I'm not a man. And my twins are identical.

At least this person didn't ask if they both feel pain when one gets hurt.

I have asked the question, but as a joke. I do know it isn’t possible.

I thought it went like this: Identical twins - one egg/ one sperm, embryo splits ending up in two babies. Sometimes it doesn't split completely and you end up with Siamese twins. Non-identical twins (including different sexes) - two eggs, two sperm, two embryos and two babies who were never one.

Edited: the fact that I have no idea how I know this point to me learning it at school

Did you not know what the word identical meant until you were in your 30s then?

Also, I’ve always found people look disappointed when I say no they aren’t identical, almost like I didn’t get the ‘good’ type of twins 😂

Just as funny as me who is an identical twin and people always asked ‘ are you identical’ despite not being able to tell us apart….So yes clearly identical

some people are dumb