Search this website:

Stereotyping and its implications in the family and at school

While most multiples will fortunately not need help, its importance cannot be ignored when there are differences and one may go right through schooling "behind" the other(s). Both teachers and parents need to work together to ensure that all multiples get help where appropriate without making reading success the whole focus of their schooling and their life outside school. Attention is obviously focussed on the child with difficulties and his/her needs. The ones who are succeeding must not be ignored. It is too easy at home and at school to highlight what the less able twin is finally achieving and to forget that the other(s) has done all this and more. Some parents and teachers may make a point of not congratulating the most able multiple on their successes, feeling that by doing so they are emphasising the weaknesses of the other(s). The danger of such an apparently compassionate action is that the more able child will get the message that you never get praised, no matter how hard you try. All multiples need to know that their successes are recognised.