I Put My Twins In The Same Class This Year So I Wouldn’t Go Insane

When their kids start going to school, parents of multiples are faced with a dilemma: do I put my kids in the same classroom, or do I split them up? Last year, when my twins were in kindergarten, I had them in two separate classes. This year, they are in the same class, and I am a much happier person for it.

I originally split them up because it just seemed like the “right” thing to do; like pushing that baby bird out of the nest so it can figure out how to fly. My reasoning was that my kids had spent the past five years together constantly, and maybe some space from each other would do them some good. Also, I am a twin, and my mother separated us in school so that we could develop our own identities. That all sounded positive to me, so off they went to kindergarten with two different teachers.

And that is exactly where I ran into trouble. Two different teachers. In fact, my children had two teachers who were opposites of each other — one was extremely organized and structured, the other was a little more free-wheeling. And it made me go bananas. One teacher gave us little assignments to do at home, and the other one didn’t. This made the one without assignments jealous, because my kids are big ol’ nerds. One teacher had her class do a few plays for the parents, and the other one didn’t. My dramatic child was, of course, in the class that didn’t do plays.

Two sets of expectations, two sets of paperwork, one class with show and tell, one class with crazy hair day…I barely kept up, and often didn’t. So this summer, when it came time to let the school know if I wanted my kids in the same class or not, I decided I would ask them. I figured that if they really wanted to stay separate, I would suck it up and do that for them. And if they chose to be together, I could sing the hymns of angels.

Luckily, this didn’t backfire on me the way it did for one of my friends, who had one twin choose to stay together and the other one choose to be separated. My kids begged to be together. Begged. And I said, “Well, if that’s really what you want. For the Lord God Omnipotent reigneth. Hallelujah! Hallelujah!”

My life is so much easier with my kids in the same class. There are no arguments about whose classroom mom goes to first for drop off and pick up, there is one schedule for field trips and special projects, and, best of all, one set of classmates to get to know and one group of parents whose names I need to try to remember. Of course, it helps that I have a boy and a girl, so they tend to gravitate towards different friends and there aren’t any jealousy issues there.

So to any parents of multiples who are unsure which way to go with their own kids, I highly recommend bunching them up. It makes life pretty heavenly. Sometimes I feel discouraged, and think my work’s in vain, but then the Holy Spirit, revives my soul again…

(Photo: Lumina Images / Shutterstock)