In article ,
(Marty Billingsley) wrote:

Hi --

I'm seeking advice from those who have twins (or more), or who
have worked with twins. How do you offer them lots of choices?
When I pick my two up from daycare and say, "Would you like to
go home or go to the playground", invariably one wants to go
home and one wants to go to the playground. Same with getting
a takeout dinner, "Do you want pizza or pad tai?" It's always
a split decision.

Now, obviously, I could do all the decision-making, but that
wouldn't help my kids learn to make choices. They *do* each
decide what to wear and what to drink with dinner, but that's
about it. When it comes to choosing a video to watch, reading
books, planning an outing, etc., they don't really get to do
much choosing.

Any suggestions? BTW, splitting them up so that each gets
their own choice isn't an option; I'm a single mom.

Thanks,
- marty
(mom to alex & andie, 3-year-old girls)

This is an issue whenever you have more than one child, not just with
twins, but it IS a bigger issue for those of us with multiples!

As my kids got older, there were times when they had to come to an
agreement: as in, I'll take you out to dinner if you can agree on a
place; otherwise, we're having PBJ's at home.

However, when they were younger, I would do one of several things: I
might ask them for their input, then make the decision myself (and I was
always clear about that: I might say, we're going either to the park or
to the beach, and I'm going to decide where we're going, but I'd like to
know what you think. If all my kids agreed that they wanted the same
thing, it wasn't a problem.) If it was something I KNEW they'd disagree
on, I didn't always offer them a choice -- I just told them what we were
doing. And for some things, they took turns choosing. We actually kept
a notebook for a while, listing who had decided what for various things,
because otherwise I lost track. Being able to take it out and show them
that, yes, indeed, last time we went out to lunch A decided where to go,
so this time it's B's turn, helped a lot.

Since I have 3 kids, we COULD do a "majority rules" choice, but I didn't
like to do that very often -- especially if one of them would ALWAYS be
the minority! Taking turns choosing worked better.

I can't imagine being a single mother of twins, though I know you aren't
the only one!

Good luck!
--
Children won't care how much you know until they know how much you care