Shopping Hints for Parents with Twins

One of the most common issues for prospective parents of twins is that, all of a sudden, you find that you have to buy a lot more baby gear than you’d planned. Making sure you have everything you need for a new arrival can be stressful enough, but when that task gets effectively doubled (or tripled or more with multiple pregnancies) it can be daunting. It can feel like you’re buying two of everything, and a lot of times that’s the case. But often, it’s not how much you buy that’s the issue. Knowing what to buy can be just as important, especially as your twins get older.

Like most young children, twins can have issues with sharing and taking turns. Twins also seem to be born with an innate sense of fairness–which is to say that if one twin gets something, the other will want it. In order to forestall tears and aggravation, it certainly helps to get each twin their own rattles, their own stuffed animals, and their own special blankets. Here are some other strategies that can be useful:

Use color-coding as much as you can. With our twins, it was pretty much a matter of serendipity. We were shopping for sippy cups, and we found one that had a twin-pack — one pink cup, and one purple cup. One wanted the pink cup, and one wanted the purple cup, and ever since we’ve been buying things in pink and purple. This isn’t a foolproof method by any means, because you can’t always get everything in the colors you want. But assigning colors to your kids not only helps you identify whose toy it is that they’re wrangling over, it also helps them identify what item is theirs. Try to buy personalized items when appropriate. All kids love having things with their name on it, and online shopping makes it that much easier to get things personalized. One of the most helpful things we got personalized was individual toy baskets so that each child could put her own stuffed animals in her own baskets. One side benefit is that personalizing items helps each child recognize his or her name in print. Don’t get two of every single thing. Perhaps more than most children, twins and higher-order multiples need to learn how to share and how to take turns. It can be a lot easier to buy two of every toy that your twins have (in terms of keeping them from fighting over things you just have one of) but it’s expensive, especially for higher-end toys. Having just one of some toys helps reinforce lessons about sharing and taking turns. Try to develop a balance between smaller, more personal toys (like dolls and stuffed animals) that you have two of and less-personalized items (including books and puzzles) that you only have one of. (Having said that, we did get two rocking horses because we were worried that the one who was riding the horsie would try to pull the other one off, or they’d both try to ride the same one at the same time. Both of these things happened anyway.)

Unfortunately, none of these rules really apply to clothes. Dressing twins is a perennial issue for twin parents, mostly because it’s just so much fun to dress them identically, and it’s looks just so cute when you do it. It’s okay to give in to the temptation now and then, especially if your kids are identical (mine aren’t). But even identical kids have different likes and dislikes, and as your kids get older and want to make more decisions about how they dress, they may not want to dress identically all the time. What we try to do is to get ours clothes that compliment each other but that don’t match. That way they still look cute and adorable but still maintaining some individuality.

You’re still going to have to buy two car seats, though.


People also view

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *