Mistakes I Made Raising “Almost Twins”

Heidi Suydam
Average Alice
Published in
6 min readMay 5, 2020

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two teens in a field of wildflowers with bouquets of wildflowers covering their faces, practical parenting tips
Photo by Daiga Ellaby on Unsplash

“Are you twins?” A question asked countless times through the years to my two blond headed beauties, one brown eyed, one blue. Similar in so many ways.

“No but we should have been.” My brown eyed girl often answers.

My mom heart breaks every time.

2 years apart, so very different but raised as two peas in a pod.

They shared a room until they were 10 and 12.

We home schooled until one entered 11th grade and the other entered 9th, so pre-covid shut downs they were enrolled in school for the very first time.

Which means until the ages of 16 and 14 school took place around the kitchen table with most subjects taught together until math and English couldn’t be any more. Even then History and Science continued to be lumped together.

Extra curricular activities — all done together.

A few times our youngest ventured out and tried some new things but due to our family being invested emotionally, financially and spiritually in a ministry based performing arts theater group the girls always returned to dance and theater — together.

Friends — all shared. Yep. The same friend group.

Even when one of them made friends separately, the other became friends with them…

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Heidi Suydam
Average Alice

Founder of #thesosblog | Content Writer | Graduate Student