advice to help twin of very G&T DS

[bettysviolin]

Hi
I have twins, non ID. Both are bright and go to a selective school that they both got into easily.

But one comes at or near top of the class in everything. The other is near the bottom of his class in most things. One excels at extra-curricular stuff - picked for sports teams, music groups, wins art prizes etc. It's non stop. The other is picked sometimes (not often.)

I feel concerned for my DT who is lovely and bright and normal but feels in the shadow of his brother. He has far less self confidence, he is also mildly autistic (recently diagnosed with HFA) and has all his life had a raft of physical problems.

I'm genuinely concerned that he'll end up feeling like his brother got all the breaks and he didn't, or that he isn't up to scratch in some way. It's clear from his withdrawn reaction when his DT announces yet another A* mark or team pick that he does judge himself against his brother unfavourably, even though we never do and are careful not to compare them.

I want to help him gain confidence to be happy in his skin and happy at what he does and who he is, but it's hard when his twin (who is taller, thinner etc) keeps bringing home trophies.

How can I help increase his self confidence?

I'd love him to get into something that wasn't competitive, that was just fun, for its own sake.

DS2 did indoor rock-climbing for a while. It's not in a team and you progress through the levels at your own pace. It did get a bit scary when he started belaying other people (with me thinking: don't forget to tie the knot! don't forget to hold on!) but he enjoyed it.

ATM he is into parcours aka free-running. I've sung its praises on another thread, but it's basically a padded gymnasium (padded up the walls too) where loads of grungy teenage boys try to run up the walls and do back-flips into pits full of foam pieces. It's not structured or competitive, so is perfect for DS2.

In terms of finding something you can do with him that he's better than you at, it doesn't have to be anything complicated. I recently downloaded the rules of some obscure card games which we have been learning. Turns out I'm not very good at remembering the rules , so DS2 has become the family expert.

I love the sound of all these. DS2 has always fancied parcours. Might Google and see if there's a course near us...