Built-in Playmates

Encouraging Positive, Cooperative Play

By Heather Johnson Durocher

Jane Haller overhears this conversation between her 3-year-old twin boys one day: "I need to fix my car," Ray says. "I need to go to work. My beep is broken."

"Let me see the beep," Dan replies. "Oh, it's kind of beepy. Let me see the wheel. I'll check the other wheel."

As their pretend play continues, the boys talk about hammers and saws, concluding they'll use a saw for the job of fixing the "broken beep" because, well, they don't have a hammer.

For those few moments, as their mother watches from nearby, Ray and Dan are in their own world. Sure, their playtime isn't without its typical childhood mishaps one wanting something the other has, one bopping the other over the head but their parents are happy to see they often work together and truly enjoy each other's company.

"They play together really well," says Haller, of Columbia, Ill. "Right now, they're getting into different kinds of role play."

It's often said that a twin or triplet grows up with built-in playmates, but each child's temperament, abilities and interests determine how well multiples interact. While child development experts and parents of multiples say you can't force the friendship, you can still influence positive, cooperative play.

"They are almost always in the same geographical space, and they're going to be in each other's company for a long time," says Judith Wagner, professor of child development and education at Whittier College in Whittier, Calif., and the mother of twin girls, now grown and each the mother of infant twins herself. "Therefore, it's really important for twins to learn to be together peacefully and cooperatively."

Multiples typically develop the art of cooperative play faster than singleton babies. "Twins are born interacting and their play is richly developed with one another, even pre-verbally," says Patricia Malmstrom, a Berkeley, Calif., mother of twins and the author of The Art of Parenting Twins (1999, Ballantine).

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• Talk about it!