If you’re a parent of twins, whether they’re children or adults, are they capable of putting a fast one on you? If one adopted the other’s clothes for some tomfoolery-related purpose and pretended to be their sibling, could they fool you?
And by the way, how -do-you tell them apart? Did you paint a toenail on one baby at first? Do they give off completely different vibes?
I wasn’t a parent of twins, but I knew a few sets of twins growing up, and it didn’t take me long to be able to tell them apart, not by their clothes, or the way they wore their hair, just by looking at their faces. I really doubt they could fool their parents since they see them every day. Aunts, uncles, and grandparents perhaps, but that’s because they see them so infrequently compared to their parents.
Tattoos?
Well one’s a boy and the other is a girl…
I’ve taught identical twins a few times, and never had difficulty. In one case, IIRC, one of them had a small scar near his ear, and at the start of each day, I’d look to see which one had the scar, and then remember which one was wearing what (so I suppose they could have fooled me by swapping clothes in the middle of the day).
In the other case, they usually wore their hair differently, but even when they occasionally swapped hairdos, I could instantly tell them apart, and in fact never even noticed how much they resembled each other until one day when they happened to come to my office hours at the same time. Which is odd, given that I often have a hard time recognizing faces. I think that I was distinguishing them by their mannerisms or facial expressions, since they had very different personalities.
I have a step-cousin who had identical triplets. She painted the toenails differently at first but could easily tell them apart very early on by looking or by their cooing/crying.
Just to be pedantic, not all twins are identical. I could tell my sons apart as soon as they came out of the womb; in fact, you’d have to examine them pretty closely to find the similarities between them.
My twin grandsons. There is a freckle on ones butt. Pulling their pants down in public is ill-advised.
But yes, the oldest twin came from the hospital with a blue toenail. The nurses did it.
That helped Mom in the fog-of-after-giving-birth, early days.
Later one cried differently. One was hungry earlier.
Then personalities came out. One more gregarious. One shy and quieter.
Now at toddler stage Mom dresses them differently.
They have switched shirts on her and preschool teachers have found them doing it.
So they are not above it.
They look so much alike it could fool me easily.
We’ve all been mistaken.
Sometimes I look at them and wonder do they even know which is which.
They are such the unit. A package deal.
I worry for my Son and DIL, when they become teens. That oughta be great fun. 
I teach twins now, they look more like just sisters than twins. The other day, one of them was walking in front of me and another teacher. She was with a girl who is a friend to both of them, The teacher asked me if they were twins. I told her the one was, but the other wasn’t her twin. Then I thought, damn, the friend really could pass for her twin slightly more than the actual twin could.
How about not being sure which twin is which?
No identical twins in my family but I once worked at a place that had identical twin
women as employees. They both had small moles on their faces but in different
locations. Once I noticed this I had no trouble telling them apart.
Many years later I was working for someone who had identical twin brothers.
One was an alcoholic and the other was not. While they looked like identical
twins it was obvious which one had the drinking problem making it easy to tell
them apart.
My cousin has identical twin girls, at around four years one of them started trying to fool her parents. Thing is, unlike her sister, she has a prominent birthmark on her face, so she didn’t get far.
Now that’s funny. IANA parent, but there seems to be a mental phase shift at about age 3 or maybe 4 where they discover the value of deceit. But they suck at it terribly.
That’d be a fun idea for a cute thread: Crap my little kids tried to lie about / fool me about that was just adorable / funny instead.
My older sister once bit herself on the arm so she could tell Mom that I did it to her. Mom was able to tell that the bite marks were from a bigger mouth than mine.
I had fraternal twins. But they looked very close. Often times it was a double take to verify who was whom.
I still have to look real close at early photos to tell the difference, and that works about 95% of the time. The other 5% I truly don’t know in the photo who is who.
They’ll lie so fast at that age.
And be holding evidence and still try to lie.
I’ve taught some identical twins before, and even by age three or four there were tiny differences.
The baby pictures of my daughter and son, born two years apart, are remarkably similar.
The Dahm triplets say their doctor tattooed two of them when they born. Two small dots on one of them, only one dot on another.
I met someone surprised to find out he and his brother were actually fraternal twins and not identical as they always assumed. Don’t now how hard they or their parents had tried to determine that previously. My kids are biological cousins, close in age, and for a short time as toddlers resembled identical cousins a la Patty and Cathy Lane to non-family members. It was only a short time before their features developed in directions.
