Twins tend to talk faster and may abbreviate their words or leave out consonants as they pronounce words, perhaps in a competitive attempt to talk over their co-twin and grab their parent's attention first.
Whilst many multiples show no signs of a language delay (which is usually apparent by 24 months of age), occasionally multiple birth children, particularly if they're male, may be slower than singletons to develop language. Typically, they are older when they start to speak and use simpler, shorter sentences.
Expected Speech Timeline For Twins
The study suggests that majority of twins start talking 1 to 3 months after singletons would. What is this? For reference, singletons typically start talking anywhere from 9 to 14 months of age. You could accurately determine that twins could start talking from 10 to 16 months.
Twins are more likely to have delayed speech and language skills than single children.
Twins are regularly reported to invent languages of their own, unintelligible to others. These languages are known as autonomous languages, cryptophasia or idioglossia. Despite current belief, this is not a rare phenomenon. Autonomous languages exist in about 40% of all twins, but often disappear soon.
Young twins are together nearly all the time, and like any two people who spend most of their time together, they learn to rely on nonverbal or shorthand forms of communication. They're able to act intuitively, understanding each other's gestures, grunts, or vocalizations.
The theory behind this "twin language" goes a little something like this: twins are so close to each other and rely on each other so much that they don't have as much of a need to communicate with the outside world, so they make up their own idiosyncratic language that develops only between the two of them.
Some say that twins are always hard (yet amazing), while others say they truly didn't find them to be difficult. A few said that the first two months with twins are easy (being in the rose-colored glasses phase), then reality hits from months 3-6 (when the sleep deprivation catches up), then it can get easier again.
Many twins struggle to cultivate their own identities, while being so similar to one another. And that struggle lasts a lifetime, according to a recent study.
The mean absolute difference between twins is 6.60 (SD = 5.20), the largest difference being 24 IQ points. The frequency of large twin differences is no more than would be expected from the normal probability curve. The overall intra-class correlation between twins is.
Speech and language difficulties occur more often in twins and triplets partly because they are more likely to experience the factors which predispose all children to speech and language difficulties, such as prematurity and pregnancy or birth complications.
At six months:
During this stage, your twins can sit up and play independently. They'll sleep in longer stretches on their own, and you'll also have fewer middle of the night feedings.
Twins catch up in their body size, i.e. they grow faster after birth, but do not yet achieve the same height and weight till they reach 2.5 years of age. We recommend the use of the growth references for twins.
Most bleary-eyed parents would agree that the lack of sleep is perhaps the worst thing about having baby twins. Any newborn is likely to keep odd hours, but balancing the demands of two newborns means that sleep is a scarce commodity for parents of twins.
Parenting multiples is obviously physically difficult—feeding two, handling diapers, bathing two. But emotionally, twins share a bond that can sometimes result in double the challenge; twins have intertwined identities and fluid ego boundaries, which makes parenting them a demanding undertaking.
There are several possible causes for speech and language delays in twins, including unique perinatal and environmental factors. For example, premature birth and low birth weight are more common among twins than singletons (Bowen, 1999).
What are the benefits for the twins? Their buddy is always there. They've known each other since they can remember and that is very comforting. They are also a little more social than the average child since they are used to being with another kid since the beginning.
You Can Only Control the Things Within Your Control
“Having twins is not twice as hard—it's exponentially more difficult,” says Natalie Diaz, author of What To Do When You're Having Two and CEO of Twiniversity, a global support network for parents of twins.
Twins suffer more intensely than single-born individuals when they feel “alone.” Although it is hard to put into words, the intensity of twin loneliness makes understanding and managing such loneliness difficult and sometimes overwhelming for twins.
A third milestone in a twin pregnancy is 32 weeks to 34 weeks. Babies born then generally have an excellent chance of survival, without any major long-term complications, though they might not have full lung maturity and will need to spend time in the NICU.
As a parent of twins, I'm pretty sure that you know the answer to the question “which twin is older?” It is, of course, the child that was born first.
Regarding #1 (co-bedding), the conservative/mainstream school of thought in the western world is that it's best to separate the twins “early on” since they'll need their own sleeping space eventually. The attachment parenting contingent refutes this, saying twins can sleep together indefinitely and are happier for it.
As with any other children, twins will crave attention and approval as individuals. If they don't get it, they will often demand it by misbehaving or acting out. 1 While meeting these needs simultaneously can be challenging, there are things you can do to alleviate competition even before it even begins.
Cryptophasia is a phenomenon of a language developed by twins (identical or fraternal) that only the two children can understand. The word has its roots from the Greek crypto-, meaning secret, and -phasia, meaning speech.
Identical twins may say that they are not attracted to the same people. However, researcher Nancy Segal surmises that twins actually feel the same attractions, but as soon as one twin makes her interest known, the second twin will not pursue the other's object of interest.