To never tell them their birth order?

[sunshinepoppy]

I have twin boys who were born by c-section. Over the years I have seen interviews with adult twins where they set great store by their birth order. E.g saying one should know better because they are elder by 5 mins. This type of dynamic seems odd and unhelpful.

For this reason we have decided not to tell the boys their birth order. I am now starting to doubt this decision because I am not sure it is my right to keep the information from them.

They are only 6 months old so we have not told them anything yet.
I would appreciate seeing people’s opinions about this. Especially opinion from someone who has a twin.

*birth not borth!

I'm still struggling to understand what the terrible 'bad' thing is supposed to happen if twins (multiples) know. Or benefits if they don't know.

Someone boasts that they are the eldest

I don't see rampant damage to strings of singleton siblings knowing this information. Somehow they survive.

not Knowing who is eldest means there won't be any rivalry
Yeah right... like it didn't matter when my brothers (id twins) both pursued the same girl or my dad played sport against his brother. No Rivalry at all could arise from these moments. Rivalry can only happen if they find out who started breathing 5 minutes earlier.

The older twin "should know better" while the younger twin will get away with all sorts of mischief
Well, nobody can stop you being a bad parent-teacher-auntie if you want, by having blatent favourites. You don't even need twins to play this game.

Is that the full list? The claims all seem to be variants on those 3 items.

It’s particularly meaningless in this case, since you don’t know who would have been first had it been a vaginal birth
By the same token, is the birth date meaningless since you don't know when it would have been had it been a vaginal birth? Does the C Sec somehow make the birth "less"?

I'm a twin & second-born. I don't mind about this at all and it certainly would have been weird not to have known. I imagine the only time when it would have mattered is if inheritance/a title was an issue.

@Rumboogie and @sunshinepoppy
I didn’t tell my twins till they were 18. Heard too many damaging arguments from twin friends over the years.
We made them Twin 1 and Twin 2 t shirts to wear for the day. It was always chatted about with humour.
They were shocked to discover the truth. Very glad we did it. No regrets.

I'm a twin. I call my sister the after birth and she calls me the practise run. 5 minutes between us. Can you tell who came first? It makes no difference and we certainly don't think of either as older or younger. And a LOT of people do ask! YABU. Unnecessarily worrying.

Theres a minute between my 7yr old girls they each equally love being the youngest/oldest
The 'older' 1 when people ask her age tells them shes 7 and a minute lol (doesn't care about the days or months just that 1 minute more than the other haha)

We have refused to tell our families their birth order because we worried that they would assign age roles to them e.g. you should know better because you are the eldest.

We thought that they would tell everyone the truth that they didn’t know.

I think you're making a real drama out of nothing, im glad its on the birth certs.

You're making a mountain out of a molehill

@sunshinepoppy I have RTFT now and totally understand why you have had the thoughts you have and are wondering whether to or not. Ignore those having a go and I think there have been a few useful posts from people that will help you make up your mind.
What I take from the comments I have read is that everyone has their own personality traits and your children will be who they are regardless of whether they know which one is older. Some knew and were mean to the other twin, some knew and it wasn’t an issue. And you ILs will probably come up with something irritating whether it’s The oldest/youngest thing or a something else.
Had I been in your situation I’d have probably asked for people’s advice on this too, but we were so excited about them being born on different days (it also made them different star signs, not that we believe in all that, but is a fun bit of trivia) there was no way we could have kept it from people. Also dob goes on so many things we couldn’t have kept it secret. Good luck deciding how to play it and dealing with your awkward ILs!

@SuperSue77 that's very cool. Do they like having seperate days.? Do you celebrate on each day? What if one is a s hook day and one a weekend, does the other get fussed if they both are celebrated on their day?
I almost wanted to go to 38 weeks and go e birth naturally to have babies born in different decades this New Year gone. Almost 😂

My in-laws made HUGE deal bc my dh is younger and favored his older brother. They are 4 years apart and it would have been same 4 minutes apart.

Idiots are idiots. But secrets are damaging. Tell and deal with it lightly and your dc will follow your lead.

I also remember going through US immigration recently and my identical twin boys being asked various security questions and in particular which one was older and by how many minutes. This was asked as serious questions, not making conversation.
But the time of birth isn’t in their passports so how could it be a security question?

@Omashu How did they put the baby back? 😂 And then untangle the cords in that tight space? Even if it was possible to re-insert a baby, why would they risk the babies dying when they could just ..erm ..cut the cord?

Do the birth certificates have different times on?

Birth certificate for twin or multiple thereafter births will include time, not on birth certificate for singular birth

But the time of birth isn’t in their passports so how could it be a security question?

Because I suspect US immigration has access to a lot more information than we realise 🥵

You think? Why is bureaucracy so inept and slow then?

"Birth certificate for twin or multiple thereafter births will include time, not on birth certificate for singular birth"

My son's birth certificate has the time on it.

I think that is only England Ginger. Scotland definitely does it for single births, but not everywhere does. Doesn’t Ireland put twin one, twin two?

Yesterday they were telling me that one of them helped to push the other out. Awwww that made me feel all warm and fuzzy. I am pregnant though!

@SuperSue77 your experience sounds like the best of both worlds as you get twins and they still get their own Birthdays and a good story.
Thank you for your considerate response.

Baby A and Baby B - they’ll know at some point from scan pics etc. Unless you plan never to discuss any details of their birth or your pregnancy with them then they’ll know anyway. My twins are four and they like knowing all this stuff but there have been no negative comments towards each other. They might tease when older but I don’t think it’s unhealthy.

It’s not important really. My twins are 4 girl was 12 min older yet looks like she is a year older than my boy. We call her the big sister and he is her little brother her choice of words. Currently they don’t care and are happy they are twins I honestly never considered keeping this info to myself more important things going on raising twins in my book.

I think there’s a middle ground of being vague and saying you don’t know.
If it comes out, it comes out. My children have never seen their birth certificate though and they’ve gone through two and three rounds of passport applications.

•Baby A and Baby B - they’ll know at some point from scan pics

Scan pics have no bearing on birth order.