When should I tell my child they had a twin?
Parents hesitate to share the loss because they fear passing on their own daily grief or making the surviving child feel like they are not enough. This need to process their trauma first stops parents from telling their child early on. However, surviving children consider this an incredibly important piece of their life and often feel angry or shocked if parents wait until they are older to tell them.
What people tried
Every workaround mentioned in the threads below. We haven’t tested any of them — and nobody here is claiming they worked.
Found another way around this?
Share your steps and trade-offs so fellow engineers don't have to reinvent the wheel. No account required.
When should I tell my child they had a twin?
- 1Making it a normal part of conversation from birth so they never remember a 'big reveal'.Did this help you?
- 2Keeping their ultrasound pictures in a baby box or displayed in the room.Did this help you?
- 3Lighting a candle for the twin on their shared birthday.Did this help you?
- 4Processing your own personal grief as a parent before initiating the conversation.Did this help you?
In their words
Unedited, grouped by where they were said, most upvoted first within each place, each linked to the thread it came from.
“I did feel like part of me was missing. I pictured what life would have been like if my twin lived, and I wondered who he’d have been.”source ↗
“I think I’d have been really angry if my mom waited until I was a teenager to tell me. It is her story and her trauma, but it’s also an incredibly important piece of my life.”source ↗
“at what point in his life do we tell him, if ever?”source ↗
“i feel like he has the right to know he was a twin, but i also don’t want him to feel the grief the way his dad & i feel it, or feel like hes not enough for us.”source ↗
“i still cry about the loss and i think about his twin every day. i definitely need to process it more so i dont traumatize him”source ↗
“She says she sometimes wishes she would have known earlier because it was really shocking at being 5-6 years old and learning this huge thing”source ↗
Where this came up
People with this problem also raised
- 3How to tell an 8-year-old about a new baby and stepfamily
- 6How to tell my child about their biological father
- 10How to handle toddler grief and behavioral outbursts after a loss
- 7Why does everything I learned with my first baby fail on the second?
- 6Why do young children make up such alarming stories?
- 7Older child acting out and getting jealous after new baby