Josemar and Jason Alparo-Hernandez, 5, are getting ready to start first grade.
Sparks resident Judy Townsley made the decision to put her twins in different classrooms when they started school four years ago, but Emily Meoli, of Towson, did the opposite, requesting her twins be together.
Who was right?
Turns out, they both were.
The decision about whether to place twins in the same classroom or separate them is a tough one for many parents of multiples. Limited research on the topic, along with continually shifting educational and social philosophies, further complicate the matter.
Much of the literature and research on twins’ classroom placement is anecdotal or survey-based, and does not produce consistent patterns on twins’ achievement and adjustment in relation to their classroom placement, according to research compiled by the University of Illinois’ Clearinghouse on Early Education and Parenting.
School officials at both Howard and Baltimore county public schools say they determine classroom placement of multiples on a case-by-case basis and factor in requests and concerns voiced by parents.
Parents like Townsley and Meoli insist the right choice depends on the personalities of the two children, their relationship with one another and whether they’ve been adequately prepared to be separated in school.
Townsley said she and her husband followed their gut feeling in deciding to place now 9-year-old Nicholas and Britton in different classes when they entered Sparks Elementary. She said she hoped that splitting them up would enable each to grow at his and her own pace and avoid constant comparison.
“I want to be sure they find themselves and make their own friends,” she said. “I based it on what I felt would be best for them.”
She noted early on that her twins displayed different personalities and interests, with Nicholas being drawn to hands-on activities and Britton preferring books and drawing.
Meoli, on the other hand, requested that her identical twin boys be assigned to the same class in kindergarten despite the principal’s recommendation to split multiples at their Baltimore County school.
“They had never been in a daycare situation. They’d never been separated,” she explained. “I felt it’d be difficult for them to be separated from me at the same time as being separated from each other.”
The decision proved to be the right one for her family. “I don’t think there should be across-the-board rules on this. I really think it depends on the kids,” Meoli said. “I don’t have a dominant twin. My decision would probably be different if I had. They’re remarkably alike in their abilities.”
According to research compiled by the University of Illinois, the incidence of twins increased 62 percent between 1980 and 1998 — a phenomena child development specialist and author Joan Friedman attributes to the popularity of fertility treatments.
Friedman, a psychotherapist from Los Angeles who specializes in twins and has written a book on the subject, can hearken back to her own schooling experience, when she and her identical twin were always placed in the same class. This was the norm in the 1950s, she said, adding that schools’ philosophies on twins’ classroom placement has shifted over the years. In the 1970s and ’80s, the philosophy in many schools became a rigid policy of separating twins, she explained.
“This was not really questioned until the 1980s, when there was a rise in the twin birth rate,” said Friedman, adding that parent preference has had a lot more clout in the decision over the past two decades. “Parents started to say, ‘Hey, this is not OK.’”
Friedman, whose book “Emotionally Healthy Twins” was published in February, recommends parents separate their twins in school, but also advises parents that a good deal of preparation take place before the first day of class.
Friedman and her sister didn’t experience a significant separation until they attended different colleges — an experience for which neither was prepared.
“To always be known as ‘the twins,’ or Joan’s twin or Jane’s twin — you’ve never been responded to as an individual. I was ill-prepared to meet the world as a singleton,” said Friedman, who is also a mother of five, including 19-year-old fraternal twin boys.
“My basic philosophy is that twins have the healthiest way of developing a separate self when parents take the time to bond with them as separate children,” she said, adding that she accomplished this with her twin sons, in part, by taking them to nursery school on different days and spending time with each one-on-one.
Twins’ “close and special bond” should not be split suddenly or they are likely to experience separation anxiety, Friedman contends.
“If they’ve never been separated and show up on the first day of kindergarten in separate classes, they will really be traumatized,” she said.
Marie Sauter, a first-grade teacher at Yeshivat Rambam, a Jewish day school in Baltimore, has taught six sets of twins in recent years. All but one of the sets were placed in different class sections at the school’s recommendation, she said.
“They’re always referred to as ‘the twins,’” Sauter said. “We feel that they need their own identities, their own set of friends.”
Sauter has observed some classroom competitiveness between twins or a tendency for one child to feed off his or her twin, she said.
“If one acts up, the other one will contribute, kind of egg them on so to speak,” said Sauter, who also is grandmother to 18-month-old twin boys. “Probably, at home, they’re compared enough. I don’t think they need to be compared again by a teacher.”
Area parents have taken different approaches and are generally happy with the results.
Holli Abramson, of Woodbine, said she decided to separate her fraternal twin daughters, Ashley and Shaina, once they reached the first grade in an effort to help them develop confidence and an independence from one another. Abramson added that she didn’t want her shyer daughter to use her more outgoing twin as a social crutch.
“It was hard to separate them because they’re always together and they’re best friends,” she said. “I think it’s worked out really great. They’re both blooming.”
As the Townsley and Meoli twins have progressed in elementary school, both families have changed their tact.
Townsley is considering requesting that Nicholas and Britton be placed in the same class now that they are entering fourth grade and have achieved a degree of independence from one another, “just for my own sanity,” she said.
Meoli and her husband, on the other hand, separated their boys for the first time last fall as they entered third grade.
“We thought this was the year to try it out,” she said. “We started to see at the end of the second grade that they could be a little more influenced by each other. If one was having a bad day, the other could start to have a bad day, too.”
After an initial “honeymoon” period where the boys were happy, they began to miss each other, Meoli said. But now that her boys are older, she wants their classroom assignments to be based solely on their academic abilities and not on their status as twins.
The debate and research over twins and classroom placement likely will continue to be the “big talk” among local mothers of multiples social and support groups, Meoli said.
“The mothers of the babies are already talking about it,” she said. “It’s such a big decision.”
Although she tries to keep up on current twin studies, Meoli said she makes parenting decisions based on what she thinks best for her boys.
She added that parenting twins is an experience that never ceases to amaze her. For instance, when her sons still shared a classroom in second grade, although sitting on opposite ends of the room, they often came up with the same test results, right down to which math problems they solved correctly and incorrectly.
“It’s wild,” Meoli said of parenting twins. “It’s the next best thing to being a twin.”