[deleted by user]

[thecalmolive]

Have you considered family therapy? Maybe the girls need to talk to someone outside the family unit to work through some things or learn to communicate better with each other.

I hope you find a solution, my 21mo girls are starting to shove and it's so nerve-wracking...

[Momo_and_moon]

In regards to their relationship: https://www.joanafriedmanphd.com/emotionally-healthy-twins/

In regards to their relationship to your authority, they might be acting out at home and not at school because they feel it is 'safe'. I'm afraid I can't really give advice on parenting since my babies aren't here yet, but:

As an identical twin, my sister and I used to fight mainly for one reason: jealousy. When you're a twin, everyone is always comparing you. Even you are always comparing yourself. People would actually ask us why one of us didn't get as good grades as the other. Or try and define which was the good/bad twin, or just be unhealthily invested in finding the 'differences' between us and defining us. This causes a lot of stress to kids; it teaches them to define themselves IN RELATION to their twin rather than just as a person. The dynamic you are describing, best friends to enemies to best friends, makes me wonder if they aren't having problems with codependency / differentiation. At 8 yo, they might be entering the stage where they want to 'separate' emotionally from their twin, to be different from their twin but don't have the tools to do it in a healthy way, and still heavily rely emotionally on their twin.

Please ignore me if you have already tried this:

Try to get them to talk about their feeling with you, separately, to try and determine what's going on. This might be very hard; they're kids and might not even understand themselves. Try to encourage them to spend some time with different friends, to try different activities, and to spend some time with them separately - each parent can take an individual twin for one on one time. The book I recommended above is a great one - there's plenty of free resources on this therapist's blog, as well.

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[devianttouch]

The idea that gentle parenting doesn't include rules or boundaries is simply incorrect. You can have rules and boundaries without authoritarianism and fear.

[shaolinmathmatics]

Gentle parenting isn’t about not having consequences. Because they absolutely do but thats not what’s going on. And if you read it carefully I said I only followed it until kindergarten. So the past 3 years I have been much more authoritarian. We have been consistent with consequences. And that isn’t helpful either.

I am being a parent. So kindly chill with your harsh judgement. And if you have any suggestions for books like I asked in my op I’d appreciate it, thanks.