Children are a wonderful source of entertainment. They truly are! We learn from infancy how to interact socially with each other. When my children were just newborns, they could delight people for hours with their smiles and their giggles. Many parents, I have noticed, put mirrors in the cribs for the babies to make faces at and interact with.

Being twins, my girls would often stare at each other for hours, making faces and laughing at each other. We were very fortunate in that even though they were premature by a month, our girls were both normal weight and came home together within a week of birth. Therefore, they were able to share a crib, and later a bed, during their prime developmental stage. In her article, "The Development of Social Competence in Children," Sherri Oden states that infant will take part in "social exchanges" by a "reciprocal matching process." Reciprocal matching is a process in which an infant will try to "match or copy each other by approximation of each other's gaze, use of tongue, sounds, and smiles." Our girls did this constantly. They still do actually.

It's easy - for me anyway - to interpret this behavior as a special bond. We have even started calling it that "twin thing"! It is almost as though they share the same thoughts...

They - all the preschoolers -- are still at that stage where everyone is their best friend. Sometimes it takes a half hour to pick them up in the afternoon because they all have to hug each other goodbye! Oden writes in agreement that children at this age do not differentiate between a best friend and an acquaintance or even a stranger. However, I have noticed that at church, they do have their favorite people they tend to seek out.
When we get home the girls have a little free time while I prepare dinner. Often they will play out what happened at school that day. Sometimes they get so lost in their imaginative play, that they call me by their teacher's name!

Daycare always makes mothers feel guilty to some degree. When the girls were first born, I took a third shift job waiting tables so that they did not have to be in day care. Once they stayed awake during the day, I started having my mother watch them. Now they are older and love the time with all their new friends.

A recent study by the APA, American Psychological Association, found that young children left in day care were not as close with…