- Kara Remley Yang and her twin sister were often treated as a unit rather than as individuals.
- When she had twins, she decided that she would break a family naming tradition.
There are a lot of twins in my family: My grandmother had twin brothers, then she had twin boys, her daughter had twin girls, and her son — my dad — had me and my twin brother. Then one of the twin girls had twin girls.
Every time I've been pregnant, people have excitedly joked that maybe it would be twins. The idea of a twin having twins seems to be delightful to my family and my coworkers. Unfortunately for the hopeful around me, all my pregnancies were singletons, but my cousin is one of those twins who had twins of her own.
As a twin and mother of fraternal twins, Kara Remley Yang, is trying to do some things differently than her parents when it comes to raising her daughters. One of them is being intentional about treating them as two individual kids rather than assuming they're a set that always wants to be together.
She broke the family tradition with the names
Once the news that she was pregnant with twins sunk in, she realized she wanted names that would go together but that weren't similar. In doing so, she broke a family tradition — alliterative names for twins. Our uncles were Barry and Brent, she and her sister are Kara and Kaely, and my twin and I are Tristan and Trisha. Her twins are Taylor and Jayda.
Remley Yang grew up in Canada. But she's raising her four daughters — two singletons and a set of twins — in Taiwan, where she and her husband run an international aid organization. Because of this, there are some cultural differences from how she was raised, especially when it comes to the strict academic focus. When she was growing up, school was necessary but there wasn't a lot of pressure to succeed academically. Once the school day was over, she and her siblings would be out in the yard playing. In Taiwan, however, there is a lot of homework and test preparation that parents are required to assist with. She has found that because of that she's having to be more of an enforcer when it comes to school than her parents were.
She wants them to be independent individuals
But where she diverges most from her own parents' parenting is in how she treats her twins. She and her sister had the same group of friends growing up, did everything together, and were seen as a unit, even within the family. "They never called us by name, it was always 'twins!'" Remley Yang said.
"It was always 'the twins' when mom and dad took us out on dates, whereas the other kids got one-on-one time." She'll refer to her middle daughters as the twins when talking about them, but when speaking to them always calls them by their names. And she works hard to make sure each child gets one-on-one time with mom and dad.
Remley Yang also encourages her twins to embrace their own interests. "My mom was always dressing us up in cute identical outfits or the same outfit in two different colors and even doing our hair the same," she said. "I never really dress my twins identically except for when my mom brought me clothes from Canada when they were born."
Remley Yang said that as she grew older, she didn't want to always be identified and defined as a twin. She wanted to grow into her own person. "I'm always trying to teach my girls, the twins specifically, to figure out who they are. When they have opportunities for activities, I try to put them in different ones."
While she and her sister were very similar in the things they did and liked, her twins are quite different. One is outgoing and athletic, and the other is quiet, creative, and happy to be a homebody. She's trying to foster their unique qualities as much as she can. Even so, her twins love to be together most of the time.
And Remley Yang understands that. Even with the frustrations she has about always being "the twins," her twin sister is still her "best friend in the whole world." They've lived on opposite sides of the planet for nearly 15 years but still talk nearly every day and are each other's person to call about anything and everything.