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Do you know how many children in your class are from multiple births?

The key thing is knowledge. The parents need to feel comfortable to tell the school this child is a surviving twin, triplet or even higher multiple. But the school needs to feel equally comfortable that this is knowledge they need and can handle. For example, are the parents pushing their child(ren) to succeed to make-up for the one(s) no longer there? This is an agenda the school needs to know, not so that they query the parents raising the issue of loss of a multiple, but so that they get a fuller understanding of the family and the child(ren) in their care.

The school may choose to access information such as Woodward to get some idea of how adults who grew-up withoutthat lost their twin feel about this situation. The significance of the loss of a multiple is shown by the number of websites that deal with this for families and for professionals.

Just to give two examples:

"We usually do something special in the class when it is their birthday. The others try to have a 'surprise' but six year olds are not the best at keeping secrets…. It went so wrong with James. He burst into tears. It turns out Mum and Dad had been crying that morning. It's his birthday, but also the day his twin brother, Charles died, a few hours after birth. Do you call it'Charles' birthday'? I feel furious with myself-why didn't I think of this- and a little bit furious with the parents-why didn't they tell me more about this."

"Parents were called to the school as the art teacher was worried their seven-year son old kept on drawing pictures of people in coffins. In the ensuing discussion, it was the first time the school had discovered this boy was a surviving twin."

It is important for the young person to realise they are not alone and that lots of other young people have experienced similar loss.In particular they need to know they were NOT responsible for the loss of their twin or higher multiple. They may find the websites on surviving multiples a useful resource.