Separation Anxiety

I was keeping it a secret from the boys.  I didn't want to tell them because I didn't know how they would react.  I was going to wait for the letters to come and then make a big deal out of the excitement of meeting a new teacher.  I held on to this secret for months.  When the news broker, however, I wasn't even home.

Let me explain...

A little while before the kids were born a friend of mine who is a twin sent me a really heartfelt email.  She told me how she and her brother were always "the twins" and were together all the time growing up.  Finally, after 18 years of being together, she went to college and he joined the military.  For the first time they were separated and she said she had an identity crisis.  She didn't know how to function without her brother at first.  So she encouraged me to really allow my twins to have their own lives and be individuals.

During this last year of school we started to notice so many differences between the kids.  Skills like reading, music, sports, math, socializing, etc. are developing and I saw my kids comparing themselves to each other.  I knew it was time to separate them.  They, like every other child in the universe, have strengths and weaknesses but being a twin they have built in competition at school and at home.  I didn't want them comparing themselves with each other so Derek and I decided it was time to put them in separate classrooms.

A few days ago, while I was working, the letters came with classroom assignments.  By the time I came home the boys had learned their teachers' names and room numbers.  They seemed unfazed.  The next day they were telling someone in the library about how they would be in different classrooms in the morning but the same classroom (if all goes as planned) in the afternoon.  In a few weeks we get to visit the classrooms and meet the teachers.  Maybe reality will sink in that they will be separated when we see where each of them will be, but for now they seem to have accepted that this is just the next thing that happens.  It seems like, for now, I am the one with separation anxiety!  I predict the first week of school might be a little rough for all of us.  But that's OK.  That's why someone invented chocolate.