Twin mix up...what to do?

[Twinlife2]

For context, my girls are 4 and started school in September. Their teacher has asked a few times how to tell them apart (never me, either my husband or their grandparents when picking them up). This question always makes me feel uncomfortable as if people can stand there and scrutinise their faces to pick out defining features and I worry that these conversations will lead to insecurities in the future.

They aren't identical but admittedly do look similar. To the point, my daughter had an accident form handed to her with her name on it but it wasn't her who had had the accident, it was my other daughter. (It was a lunchtime supervisor who had filled in the form).Fair enough, it does happen. But when my daughter tried to tell the teacher that it hadn't happened to her, the teacher was dismissive and insisted it belonged to the wrong daughter. (They will always tell people who they are and not want to be mixed up).

It's parents evening soon and I'm wondering whether I should bring this up. Am I overreacting for thinking she should have been listened to?

I'm totally new to navigating this at school and any advice would be much appreciated. Thank you!

OP, as you’ve seen most people have assumed your main issue from your OP is the bit about how to help others distinguish the twins, when as you say the main question really is whether you bring up the fact that your daughter was dismissed by the teacher when she said it wasn’t her.

On that point, I’d say definitely do.

I’m sorry but you are drip feeding … the day the teacher mixed them up with the medical form was a non uniform day and they were dressed differently?
honestly I don’t know why you don’t just have a chat with the teacher when you collect them one day and express your concerns and agree the way forward. Twins who look similar are so common it’s not this rare occurrence the teachers have not dealt with before.

But taller, shorter, wider, thinner are all comparative words. So if they are together, fine.

What happens if there is just one.

@Twinlife2 do they have the same hairstyle? Dress same etc

She's just looking for tips! I think both sides have dropped the ball here. The teacher should have said she was having trouble telling them apart and could you do xyz (all suggestions above) but equally you should have preempted this. Non uniform day makes it more confusing anyway because they'd look different from usual! If you have a solid rule all school staff can be informed, the teacher may not have dealt with the accident.

Not only non uniform day an dressed differently, the Teacher has trouble telling them apart anyway. Plus OP doesn't want to reveal a feature that will help the Teacher to do that

My identical twin brothers used to deliberately confuse the school staff. It is only now that they are adults and lead different lifestyles that they wouldn’t get away with it.!

So have you told them that one will have yellow hair bobbles and the other pink? Or whatever? And if that's what you've been doing why hasn't whoever picked them up communicated this?

I do think you need to have a discussion with the school. This won't be the first or last set of twins they've had. Ask them how you can help and then ask that they believe the child when they say which twin they are. I think the only real issue at this stage is that they didn't believe your DD. It's early days in terms of being able to reliably identify them.

They were not even dressed the same as it was non-uniform day.

For some reason I used to find it harder to pick my DC out in a crowd when it was a non uniform day.

Do singleton siblings get this too?

My DSs are two years apart and they do get mistaken for each other now they are adult (and seen separately). One is 4" taller than the other.

Rereading your post I can see it was a lunchtime supervisor who mixed them up. So just ask the teacher to inform the support staff of whatever rule you do with hair bobbles / styles etc as the wrong child got an accident form.

What do you do? You help the school to differentiate between them so that this doesn't happen in future, of course! The school has only just met your DC. They are four years old. They are very similar in appearance. Their teachers have 30 children in each class to learn the names and mannerisms of and they need to be able to see, at a glance, which one they are talking to. So find some way to make it easy for them and stop getting uppity about it.

My twins reception teacher was very proud of the fact that she herself had twins, albeit different sexes, she'd taught twins for years, always got the differences eventually etc etc. At the END of reception year, children were chosen to take new prospective parents round the school to show them how things were, where all the different areas were etc. Twin 1 did it one week, twin 2 was supposed to do it next time. Well, guess what? The teacher was telling me how good the girls were, how they'd engaged with the new parents, very chatty, very helpful and said "you did a great job twin 2". I said "that's twin 1". Her face dropped and she asked twin 1 why she didn't tell her she was twin 1, rather than twin 2. Twin 1 said, with a world weary shrug "you didn't ask me!" Twin 2 was mighty pissed she'd missed her chance, twin 1 was very smug she'd done it twice. I laughed (quite a lot), teacher was very embarrassed.

There are two years between my girls. Even Apple gets them mixed up and leta them access each other's iPhone. People have mixed them up since they were little and they're in their twenties now and it still happens.

I think you should say something. Twins are two separate people, not one entity. Also, your daughter spoke up for herself and was dismissed , she needs to feel confident that I’ve she speaks up in future, she will be believed.

Regarding recognising singletons, I do use physical features. I work in a college, and am learning new student names There’s rugby playing Teddy (big build, not sure if he does play rugby), curly Grace (has curly hair), mama Lucy (has two young children), blond Emily and tall Emily etc. You get the gist (not actual names).

I was just about to write the same thing. It's the lunchtime supervisor who got it wrong - not a dreadful error when she doesn’t see the children for very long each day and doesn’t know them very well yet. The teacher was going by the information from the lunchtime supervisor. Yes it would have been better if the teacher had believed your child, but she might not have understood what the child was telling her. Just explain to the teacher that the girls never try to trick people (yet!) and then follow the advice you have been given about different colours etc. The school will have dealt with twins before.

I have identical twin boys, people always ask me how I tell them apart and I answer honestly "I'm their mum." It's expressions, behaviour, one would never do x, the other would. I can tell when out the room whose shouting/crying/laughing etc because the way they do these things are different. I don't expect their pre-school (mine are three) to learn these things. So I dress them differently and have a (subtle) name label attached to their clothes in a position they can easily check if needed But that you wouldn't notice if you weren't looking for it. It will be harder when at school but you say this was a non uniform day anyway.

I'd definitely raise that your daughter told them the mistake and was ignored. No need to make a big deal out of it. Just point out that they know who they are.

Everyone I know with twins or triplets had a colour theme.

E.g. the girls would wear either pink or yellow hair bands and the staff would have a note that Sasha is yellow and Katie is pink.

The boys would wear things like wristbands or coloured socks like white and black or blue and purple etc and the teacher would make a note of it.

It is in the children’s best interest that the staff can tell them apart easily.

If you don’t like having to point out their differences, then I’m not sure why you haven’t done something similar to help the staff and your kids out.

Absolutely, your child may have said "I fell over!" or "I hurt my knee" or "I need one!" (an accident slip). Would your daughter really have said 'I've checked and my twin didn't hurt herself so there must have been a mix up and someone has got us confused because that must be my accident form ".

Not the same but I was a teaching assistant many years ago. All the children wore blue tops apart from a boy and girl who for some reason wore grey. Girl grey cardi, boy a jumper.
They looked very similar.
They had the same surname (although common like Smith or Jones) and had similar names like Jack and Jade.
One came in wearing a birthday badge. I said happy birthday to both children. One looked a little confused. Turns out they weren't twins. Or cousins. Or related in any way whatsoever!

😂😂😂 That's tickled me.

Yes, totally barking.

There was a twin thread on here not long back full of twin mums saying it was so easy to tell twins apart "if only people could be bothered to spend time with them to get to know them".

The OP sounds crackers. And could just do different hairstyles or hair clips.

Also known as face blindness. My husband has it. If someone he knows from golf is at golf he will know who they are. If we meet them up on the hills and they say hello,he'll have no idea who they are.

People actually do mix up my singletons (3 year gap and very similar looking) but because they're not in the same class it's never been an issue at school/nursery, even though we're abroad and they have been in the same nursery for several years. It's only when people meet them both at the same time.

The colour or hairstyle coding seems fair at least until the teachers get to know them. How do your girls find it? Do they like it when people mix them up or do they find it annoying?

Sew a different coloured top button onto each of their school shirts, one set blue/green, one set pink/orange, so you don't have to worry about hair clips falling out, etc.

You can't expect staff members (especially lunchtime supervisors) who don't work directly with your children and see them regularly to be able to distinguish between them easily when they suddenly appear. It just doesn't work that way. So make it easy for them and ask a note to go into the school's system explaining the identifying difference until it becomes easier over time.

I don't think you're being unreasonable about that one instance, but everything else in your op and your replies is unreasonable. The comment "does this happen to singleton siblings" is ridiculous and you know it.

I’ve taught several sets of identical twins over the years, some I have found incredibly easy to tell the difference between, and some, I have really struggled with.

I once had male twins in the class who were really difficult to tell apart - they even had very similar personalities and their academic ability was very closely matched too. The school allowed white or yellow polo shirts, so one only wore white and the other only wore yellow. That was helpful because I could still tell them apart from behind or with a jumper on. They wore the same colour all through school. The staff and pupils learned the rule v.quickly and no one ever had to ask them who was who.