Twins Day, for those who haven ’ thymine had the pleasure, is a school day when kids pair off with a friend and dress alike. normally it ’ mho part of a week of theme attire days, your crazy hair days, pajama days and the like. The reason is normally to promote drug-free livin ’ ( Crazy hair symbolizing “ You ’ five hundred be ‘ craaaaazy ’ to do drugs ” ) or a more cosmopolitan idea of school heart, but for a lot of the kids, it ’ south equitable fun to dress up .
And for a batch of kids, twins day is great fun. There ’ second plan, shopping, the challenge of finding a cool double image to inhabit that day. ( The reasonable twinning option of wearing matching stuff you both already own never seems to fly. ) Kids memorize lessons about negotiation and compromise ( “ Orange shirts ? in truth ? ” ) And it ’ s fun to have a best friend, to belong .
But for those who don ’ t have a best ally, who don ’ metric ton belong, Twins Day good makes their outsider condition more obvious.
alone in a sea of colored pairs, a non-twinned pull the leg of gets the message “ No one cares to cast their bunch with you. You are alone. ” ( That we are all, in a sense, alone in this global is an interesting philosophical concept and something we all will grapple with, but it seems fiddling grave to hand a preschooler this finical experiential crisis. )
Twins Day besides is hard for families who struggle financially. One year my daughter was a twin with a female child from a affluent family. My conserve had good had to close his business. At Justice, a trendy apparel and accessory shop, their kin was gleefully pulling stuff off racks, adding accessories and even a match jacket while I stood there knowing I did not have the courage to tell them that we couldn ’ metric ton very afford all this. We bought it all. They wore the farce one day .
I say do away with the unharmed mend thing .
A costly supporter of mine disagrees. She says her kids suffered on Twins Day ( what is Twins Day without suffering, in truth ? ), but it gave them a casual to talk about it and work through it .
She says we can ’ triiodothyronine coddle our kids out of disappointment. I ’ thousand sure lots of you agree.
I agree that we can ’ t—and shouldn ’ t—try to protect our kids from every little injury .
And I agree that challenges are the way we grow and that learning to respond to hood situations makes us stronger .
But. Twins Day teaches these lessons to the identical kids who already know they don ’ metric ton equip in, that they ’ re poor. The popular kids, the kids with money, will learn, again, that they do belong .
I don ’ thymine think this teaches them anything valuable, in fact, possibly the contrary—that they deserve to be in the include group while others don ’ triiodothyronine. That their fun is more valued that other kids ’ ache.
People try to find Twins Day workarounds. Sometimes teachers let the whole class be twins or offer that option to the leftover kids .
One class when my daughter was in elementary educate, she and her acquaintance offered co-twindom to anyone who wanted it. I think they ended up with about 8 kids. It seemed better somehow, but placid. Why were third graders having to be the ones to make a school-sanctioned activeness kind ?
silent, sometimes our children do come up with pretty capital solutions on their own. I loved this exchange between students on the PACER Teens Against Bullying web locate. ( pacerteensagainstbullying.org ) .
{ Cookie * monsta } Our school has had Twin Day for years. A bunch of people love it. No one has whined about it before .
{ theMAN37 } But, kids do get left out. That can ’ t feel good .
{ stephisticated } No pull the leg of. evening though my best friend and I constantly pair up, I feel pretty bad for kids who don ’ thyroxine. It barely makes them stand out even more, and not in a good way. If I feel badly and it ’ s not even happening to me, think how it feels to be them .
{ baditude } Don ’ thymine be pathetic. If person international relations and security network ’ deoxythymidine monophosphate paired up, that ’ s their trouble, not anyone else ’ mho .
{ stephisticated } But that ’ s fair it. It ’ s not their problem ; they are being set up. Why should Spirit Week, which is supposed to pull students together, do something that hurts people ?
{ AllSmiles } I agree. I don ’ triiodothyronine want to be a separate of something that hurts early people on purpose .
{ theMAN37 } I ’ megabyte with you. Down with Twin Day. There ’ sulfur got to be something better. I vote for Dress Like Your Parents Day or ’ 80s Day .
{ incognito } OMG, that would be so funny story. I ’ meter going to suggest that to the Student Council for following year.
“ I don ’ triiodothyronine want to be a function of something that hurts early people on aim, ” says the wise AllSmile .
Twins Day does hurt people. And no, we can ’ deoxythymidine monophosphate excrete pain. But we can make certain that we aren ’ t the ones actually creating that hurt .
Jill Hamilton ’ s exploit appears in Salon, Cosmopolitan, Jezebel, Esquire, OC Metro, AlterNet, The Orange County Register and DAME. She has besides written for Rolling Stone, Entertainment Weekly, The Los Angeles Times, and MAD magazine. You can email her at jill.longbeach @ yahoo.com or follow her on Twitter @ ParentoftheWeek .