A twin mom shared a parenting dilemma on TikTok recently — and got quite a divided response.
In her TikTok video, Kristen (@thefoxsaystwins) details a situation in which one of her 5-year-old identical twin girls was invited to a party and the other seemingly was not. When it comes to her twins, she says, her gut tells her it’s “all or nothing.”
Kristen’s video went viral after people thought her take was wrong.
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Taking a glance at the guest list, Kristen noticed the rest of her girls' class was invited. This gave her an inkling that some kind of mix-up had occurred in omitting one of her daughters.
Kristen Fox sharing twins' birthday party dilemma (left) and the result.Kristen Fox/Tiktok
Kristen Fox/Tiktok
“They had experiences where their kids were identical and a friend didn’t understand they were playing with two separate kids,” she says with a laugh. “I did think about it, because my girls are super identical.”
Kristen ultimately found herself “on the fence” about how to handle the situation. On one hand, she felt inclined pass on the party all together, but knew the girls were interested in going.
“I did get massive hate,” she acknowledges of talking through the situation on TikTok. “People told me I’m entitled. They told me thatmy twins are individualsand they’re going to have their own friends. And look, I totally agree. There will be a time and place where only one gets invited to things. There’s gonna be many times in my life where there’s one invited and one is not, but this is for a 5th birthday party. These kids are so young, and they’re in the same class and they’re the same gender.”
After some debate about how to best handle it, Kristen decided to reach out to the birthday child’s mom to clarify whether one or both of the girls were invited. Commenters criticized her decision.
“People were like, ‘How dare you think about reaching out to the mom to confirm?’ And I think that was the most surprising thing, that a lot of people had negative feedback around my feeling that ourRSVPwas either going to be for both or none. That stemmed from me asking them if they wanted to go, because sometimes kids don’t want to go to these things which is all right too,” she adds.
“I still don’t think it was wrong to reach out. I made it very clear when I messaged the mom that I was embarrassed to even be sending the message,” Kristen continues. “Either answer was totally okay and I truly mean that. It’s just that right now, I didn’t feel like I was in a place to pick up the pieces for the one who wasn’t invited because I don’t think there’s anything I could have done with her to make up for missing a birthday party with her friends that her sister was included in at this age.”
Reaching out turned out to be the right move because Kristen learned the whole situation was in fact a big mix-up.
“I had other twin parents that reached out [on TikTok] and were like, ‘Hey was this from Evite?’ Because they’d had the same problem. Knowing that, I looked it up and it was true,” she explains. “It was actually a glitch!”
“Evite doesn’t let you include the same email address twice,” Kristen explains. “So the mom uploaded the class roster and since both my daughters have my contact information identical, it only went out to one.”
“The whole reason I started a social media presence on them was because it was tough. We weren’t expecting twins, let alone identical twins. It happened randomly,” she shares. “It was a way to get some information out there during pregnancy and help me kind of get through that first year. Then after the girls turned 1, it was like there was nothing available to me.”
source: people.com