After a busy few years raising babies and toddlers, chances are you and your family are at the stage of thinking about school for your multiples. Although you have had some time to understand the issues relating to multiples at school, read a range of materials and talk to other parents who have already encountered the school years - how prepared do you feel?
Wherever you live in the world, many of the issues relating to raising multiples are the same. As multiples progress beyond the toddler years and enter school, they experience a whole new range of issues and parents are faced with new challenges. Class placement is one of the biggest dilemmas faced by parents of multiples.
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How do we ensure we are catering to the educational needs of our multiples?
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How do we navigate our multiples through the education system?
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Will our school allow us a voice in the placement of our children – will the multiples be kept together or will they be separated?
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How do we encourage their unique bond while treating each child as an individual?
One of the challenges faced by parents of twins, triplets and more is to foster the unique development of each child while encouraging the unique bond between their children. This concern also applies to teachers with multiples in their classrooms; however the challenge within the school may be complicated by preconceived opinions of educators, the number of students in the school, and the number of twins, triplets or more involved. People generally assume that the natural approach is to separate twins. Keeping them together is seen as some kind of concession and really can’t be the right choice.
This is an international issue. In 2012, the International Council of Multiple Birth Organizations (ICOMBO) focused on a theme for International Multiple Birth Awareness Week of “School placement of multiples – to separate or not?”.
"The most recent research on the placement of multiples in school states that the best policy is a flexible policy, where the needs of each child are evaluated prior to making the placement decision. It is also important to re-evaluate the needs of same-age siblings if their educational needs are not being met, and not waiting until the following academic year."
John Mascazine, Ph.D., Assoc Professor of Education, Ohio Dominican University
In 2013, an Australian research study looked into the decisions parents were making about the class placement of their twins* in the early years of schooling and how they were arriving at those decisions. The study shows that most parents, in the absence of any risk, were deciding to keep their twin children together in the same class, many parents reporting that they had not seen any evidence of a need to separate them.
Making the decision: together or apart?
Parents tell us that there are several important things to consider when making their decisions: evidence from their own children’s relationships, what the children wanted, understanding that treating their children as individuals is important and that separation doesn’t have to be a single change event but can be a gradual and flexible process. In fact amongst our study families, many parents who placed their children together indicated that separation is something they would consider in the future. Twin children had important contributions to make in the decision about whether to stay together or be separated. Some children have strong feelings about their relationship with one another and parents indicated that it is important to take the children’s views into account when making the final decision. Whether parents chose to keep their twins together or apart, the opportunity to be individual was reported by parents as being most important in their decision.
However, separating them at school in the early years isn’t the only way of achieving individuality. One parent commented that in keeping her children together in the same class she was providing them with the opportunity to “grow as individuals, side by side”. Parents should feel confident that teachers can facilitate and encourage individuality between multiple birth children within the context of the same classroom, and have the right to ask teachers and schools what their approach will be in regard to promoting children’s individuality.
This is what we know:
- There is no universally correct choice: what is right for one child is not necessarily right for another
- Change is normal: what’s right for one year may be different the following year
- There is no official education department policy in Australia about the treatment of multiples in school: decisions should be made on a case-by-case basis
- The view of parents is as important as the view of educators.
*230 families of twins and 109 families of single-born children from across Australia provided information about their children as they transitioned to school. Over a two-year period, from preschool through to the first year of formal education, data was collected about the children’s language, behaviour and social experiences both at school and at home.
