Many parents of new multiples wonder how their children will be able to develop individual identities when their early experiences and environment are so similar, especially if they look alike. Most parents have seen media accounts of adult twins who still live together and dress alike, who seem never to have become separate people with separate lives. These parents wonder what they can do to prevent this from happening to their children.

When parents call the twinline with concerns about individuality, we assure them that individuation is not something that parents do to twins. Twins, triplets or more are individuals already, by virtue of the fact that they have physically separate bodies and brains. Families can either enhance or obscure their multiple-birth children's individuality, but they need not create it. That has been taken care of already. (Incidentally, parents report that fingernail polish on one twin's big toe helps them tell their babies apart.)

Parents sometimes tell us they feel guilty that in the chaotic and exhausting early months, they are unable to give each baby much individual attention. Again, we reassure them that every time they change a diaper, feed or talk to the babies, they are giving "individual attention." Each child experiences these simple acts with his or her own sensory equipment, storing them away in each one's personal memory bank as feedback from the external world.