When my twin boys were in second grade, one of them began having an occasional earache. One night he was in great pain, and my husband took him to the emergency room, where he was prescribed a painkiller.
In the next few weeks, we noticed a problem in both boys’ behavior. They often didn’t respond when we called. At first we thought that we were simply getting the cold shoulder. As twins, they often innocently played games on us. We tried to be patient and love them through this time.
But one night, just when the “I’m going to ignore Mom” treatment seemed particularly strong, I remembered the earache from a few weeks earlier. A thought occurred to me:
Perhaps that one son couldn’t hear me. I touched one boy on the shoulder (the one without the earache) to ask if he’d heard me and why he hadn’t complied with my requests. He admitted he had heard me, and he began preparing for bed as I had asked. I realized that as a twin, he had been mimicking his brother’s behavior, living the popular saying, “Monkey see, monkey do.”
