Double trouble

Gymnastics competition season is on. I planned to show the gymnastics bags we made for the kids to motivate them for the competitions but I will do that later. I first want to raise a concern.

We do not tend to dress the twins identical, their hair is cut differently and we do not usually refer to them as ‘The Twins’. Nevertheless it is inevitable to compare some of their actions especially as they both participate in gymnastics competitions. They are in separate classes at school, but in gymnastics they evidently have to compete in the same level and the same age category.

At the prize-giving ceremony Omar usually ends up lower than his brother on the individual apparatus and so in the overall ranking. Most children don’t like losing but it is even harder when your brother carries the medals home and you can only look and crave to have some too.

On top of that Elias cannot enjoy his wins as he feels bad that his brother misses out on the medals and he feels bad beating his brother. So either way I end up with two sad boys. Even for us as parents and their sisters it results in ambivalent feelings as on the one hand you are happy Elias won something, and at the same time you do not want to praise him too much as that is rubbing it in for the other one.

Luckily they had their last competition today and we can go back to regular training without worrying about this double trouble.