First Friendships as a Twin

My twins do everything together. They've never been apart. They prefer to be together always, and like I've said before, I'm just convincing them that they don't have to compete over all the specifics and that they can (gasp) like or want different things at the same time.

Any friendships they've had thus far, they've made as a unit. Lilly and Dulce make a friend. As LillyandDulce. It's all they know.

The only friendship they've nourished as separate people has been the friendship they have with each other. And let's face it, that friendship is weird.

As twins, they are always together. They do everything together. They play every game together. They make every move together. They discuss every decision together. They eat together, sleep together, watch movies together, do any activity together.

To them, that is what friendship means. Friendship means together. And it means together all the time.

At school, for the first time, they've been able to pick their friends...as separate people. Of course, the friends kind of picked them, since they would have been content just to be with each other all day, but miracle of miracles, one little girl picked each of the girls to be her best bud.

And the girls took to that like wildfire. Now Lilly talks about her friend A when she comes home, and Dulce talks about her friend N. I've seen it happen, too. They get to school and they go off with their separate friend.

Of course, those friends didn't really know what they were getting themselves into.

Because right now (and I'm sure this will get better as the girls get a better grasp on how to actually socially relate to people), the girls are treating their friends like their "school twin."

You can imagine Dulce's shock and amazement when N wanted to play with someone else for a while.

"Mommy," she said on the car ride home, "Today I was playing with N, but then she wanted to go do something else with R, and she didn't want me to come."

"Oh, well, what did you do?"

The answer was matter of fact. No hurt feelings. No "that moment when" awkwardness.

"I followed her."

I felt a parental twinge then. I didn't want my girls to go around annoying their friends because their friends didn't want to stick to them like glue. There are 20 kids in the class. Sometimes the friends will want to play with someone else. And sometimes the girls could use that time to find even more friends.

I tried to explain that to them.

They nodded and said okay.

I don't think that this is going to be an issue as they grow, but I found this in-between stage really interesting. Right now, they're still stuck on their one new friend. I'm curious to see how it will all turn out.