Reward charts. Such a popular parenting tool. We’re trying one out with the twiglets at the moment, yet I’ve always felt quite conflicted about them. I’ll try to explain why I have some reservations about reward charts in this post… 😊
I feel like there’s a lot of stuff swirling around in my head at the moment and I’m in the mood for writing some of it down… So here we are 😂
Back when the twiglets were babies, whenever I met a mum with older twins, one of the main questions I’d end up asking was ‘when does having twins get easier?’ Always spoken with a slight undertone of crazed desperation, meaning ‘please tell me it gets f**king easier, please, PLEASE!” 🤣 The other day, as I got the twiglets out of the car and they walked, both sensibly holding my hands, into their playgroup, it suddenly struck me that maybe we were actually there… Has it finally got easier?!
I remember vividly the first time the twiglets came home from nursery and started singing a song that I didn’t know. They were about 19/20 months and hadn’t been going there long. Their speech was nothing like it is now, but they were clearly attempting to sing a song and I had no idea what it was.
It was such a weird feeling hearing words come from their mouths that I knew for a fact had not been learned from us. That was the moment I realised that it was no longer just me and the husband (and our close family) who were responsible for shaping their little minds.
Up until then, pretty much everything they’d experienced in their lives had been with one or both of us. We were trying to teach them right from wrong, trying to explain things in a way they could make sense of, trying to encourage them to be kind and caring towards others, above all trying to ensure they were happy. All obviously guided by our own views, opinions and experiences and how we wanted to parent our children.
So that singing moment felt significant to me because it was when I had the realisation that other people, with different views, opinions and experiences to ours, were now really starting to influence our twiglets.
I’ve always completely celebrated the fact that the twiglets are twins, as I think it’s such an amazing and special thing. But a few things recently have made me start to wonder: Can being twins ever hold twins back?