How Extroverted Parents Can Cope with Introverted Twins

The issue gains rather serious emotional shadows when the cardinally opposite personalities are the members of a single family, and when they are your children–looking for the ways to live in harmony, not harming each other, becomes an urgent life task. Although it is complicated enough not to turn the upbringing process into a constant struggle of opposites, various solutions for making parent-children interactions an interesting adventure, exist. If you are ready to get to know more about them, continue reading this article.

For the beginning, let’s appeal to the essence of the issue, and clarify who are extroverts and introverts, and locate the reason for their difference. Thus, calling the person, extrovert, psychologists mean the expressive people who tend to demonstrate their feelings brightly, emotionally, who feel themselves as fish in the water when holding an active social interaction. Usually, they could not stop sharing their energy, thoughts, and considerations with others.

If you are a bright extrovert, you happen to hear from people “there is so much of your person” in any surrounding. At the same moment, the majority of the emotions and aspirations of introverts are hidden inside of them. It is not easy to grasp the true meaning of their “silence” or to provoke them to express any of their feelings. They need to be a little distracted from active social life, and prefer passive kinds of activity in contrary to extroverts.

One can see with unarmed eyes that these two are sentenced to a gap in mutual understanding. For extraverts, such tandem can be deathly boring and irritating–all their efforts in shaking the introverts up will be vain and unsuccessful. Introverts can also feel themselves constantly “attacked” and “pressured” when interacting with extroverts.

Just imagine you're a happily married couple with diamond rings on your fingers, and you are rewarded with the double life bonus having two introverted twins. We should say you are at risk, and should have virtuoso parenting abilities to carry responsibility for upbringing two self-sufficient personalities. Indeed, there is nothing impossible in life, you just need to make more efforts than the other parents. So, how you can cope with this?

The first thing you should do–to move the tumbler in your head in position is, “allow diversity.”

The biggest mistake of the parents is thinking that their part of life is more relevant. Being guided by such consideration, they often evaluate the potential of their children as the wrong one if it differs from their own. The earlier you become aware that your twins should not be an identical copy of you, but have the right to their individual way of thinking and living, the faster your interaction will move towards the harmony.

Don’t be afraid of being a child.

An authoritative adult manner of communication is not an effective tool to cope with extraverted children. You should have enough courage to become a child who is studying life matters from the beginning. Listen to your twins when they have something to say, observe their reactions, try to understand their expectations and needs.

Be sure, any exploring process brings enlightenment. It will require your refusal of immediate and intuitive reactions, which mostly reflects your life issues, while developing emphatic listening to reveal the reasoning of your children.

However, we do not mean you have to destroy your personality totally, and sacrifice it in honor of servicing children, in any case. Your twins should know that you are different, and should treat you decently. To succeed in this, do not be lazy to explain your behavior or spontaneous reactions, especially if you see that they can harm your children. Do not be ashamed of asking for forgiveness. Remember, the introverts are extremely sensitive persons, regardless of their reticence.

Have you heard anything about planning?

Evidently, you have heard, but as a true extrovert you were, most likely, spontaneous in the previous life before your twins were born. Now, planning should be a good family habit since it is the most effective way to balance parent-children temperaments. By preserving spontaneous ways of life, you risk unintentionally overloading your children with activities, since your perception of fatigue is a little different. Planning can help you to rotate that activity you like, and that one suitable for your children, avoiding excessiveness for both sides.

Be informed: loneliness is not a tragedy; silence is not the protest.

Being an extrovert I know as nobody else, the true meaning of the silence of the closest people: for me, it serves as a sign that they avoid me, because I have harmed them. I try to ask about the reasons immediately, and provoke the discussion. The problem is that adult person could say “Just give me a time to be alone,” while children often are not able to formulate their inner needs clearly.

So, you should know that when you perceive loneliness and silence as discomfort, for your introverted children it is the way of renovation, and preserving individual comfort. Consider this, and try to provide them with time and space to be alone. You can design a special space, something like “hiding place” in your house. Thus, you will know that when your child hides here, you should not bother him/her. Moreover, if you have the twins, they, most likely, would aspire sometimes to hide one from other too, not only from you.

Be serious! Upbringing introverts is not a joke.

Sure, it is a joke, but partially. Extraverts tend to be jokey persons, and they are not afraid of laughing at themselves. The introverts perceive personal jokes as criticism. So, be attentive to preserve your funny character, and use it safely when you interact with your children. Just do not undermine their feelings by joking on extremely personal issues.

Find the time to free your emotions.

You see, being a good parent for the introverted twins implies some emotional restrictions. Your true emotions could scare your children, at least at their early ages when they just teach to perceive the world as it is. Indeed, your suppressed emotions could result in an explosion. So, you need a time out. Find the time to be yourself–it is a single way to be an excellent parent.