Whoever said competition is healthy has never had to parent twins
When you buy a self-assembly piece of furniture from Ikea, there are instructions to guide you through the construction. If you take shortcuts, put the wrong bits in at the wrong time or just can’t be bothered, it’s not going to be a wardrobe, but a pile of wood dotted with screws.
Unfortunately, the twins came without instructions.
The early days were hard work but relatively straightforward. Our main role was to ensure they stayed healthy by checking they weren’t too hot or cold, choking or about to fall off a changing bench (only happened once and she was fine).
It got a little more complex when we started to build proper people with the ability to respond to commands.
I started to encourage a little competition between them to muster up compliance to my orders.
I’d see Thomas dawdling, when I asked them to go upstairs to bed, and I’d shout, ‘who’s going to be first up the stairs?’
And then I’d watch as they both flew up, not for me, but because it was a game and they wanted to win.
As the weeks ticked by, they were locked into endless bouts of competition involving eating broccoli, picking toys up and putting socks on. Although, what was also becoming clear was Emma’s fervent desire to win at all costs, demonstrated by her brutality in the arena, where she’d push and grab her way to the top spot.
We assumed Thomas
would like to win but was ambivalent, accepting it wasn’t always possible to be first, especially if you didn’t know you were competing, or your competitor was attacking you. Until, that is, we went to the park on the balance bikes, where previously Tommy had excelled and was a little faster than Emma. Although, she’d been putting in the practice around the house, working on core strength and was now the stronger biker.
She demonstrated this in a show of power with flying lap after flying lap, like a young Laura Kenny competing for a gold, until Thomas collapsed in exhaustion, threw his bike to the side, and started crying, ‘I hate it’.
A weakness in competitive parenting had been revealed and he was now a victim of his ruthless competitive sister. Somehow in my construction of the compliant child, I’d broken one of them.
And I thought, not only do you not get instructions, but I can’t really take the twins back to where I got them and ask for help putting them back together.
The competition was finished, and it looked like nobody had won.