Just when Hudson Bend Middle School parents and educators thought there couldn’t be any more sets of twins, six more pairs started sixth grade Aug. 23.

The middle school already had several sets of twins, including triplets, now in seventh and eighth grades.
Nathan and Catherine Johnson, Peter and Christopher Stockton, Gabby and Belle Demco, Dylan and Tanner Day and Bradli and Davis Hills arrived from Lake Travis and Serene Hills elementaries, and Natalie and Nikki Paxton joined them after moving into the district this year.
Their teachers might be seeing double, but ask most of the six sets of twins if they feel special about having an identical or fraternal bond with their brother or sister and they’ll say that it’s no big deal.
Most of the twins shrug off incidents when they are mistaken for their twin and few pretend to be their sibling with some exceptions.
The Davis twins were counterparts in complicity when they were younger and tried to trick their parents by imitating each other.
“When me and Davis were little, we looked even more alike and we would go under the table, switch clothes and try to convince our parents that everything was normal,” Bradli said. “They just pretended they believed us.”
Some bonds have survived the transition to middle school, such as shared interests in sports.
The Stocktons play football, soccer and basketball, the Days hit the baseball around and skateboard together, the Johnsons and Paxtons all like to hit the pool and the Davis twins take their turns tumbling.
“We like most of the same things and have most of the same friends,” Peter said.
However, as they enter their “tween” ages of 11 and 12 and forge their identities and independence, twins’ interests and friends can start to vary more and their hairstyles and tastes in clothes become so unique that Arnold Schwarzenegger and Danny DeVito have more in common.
“I am more a tomboy and athlete. [Belle] is more of a girly-girl,” Gabby said, noting that they still enjoy eating the same foods and playing softball.
The Days exhibit more individual traits.
“[Dylan and Tanner] are polar opposites really but the best of friends and don’t fight often. I think it’s because one is very type A and the other is so laid back,” said their mother, Donna Day, who is an identical twin.
As fraternal twins, both Nikki and Natalie are easily identifiable not only by their appearance, but also their personalities.
“Natalie’s more goofy and silly and I’m the more calm one,” Nikki said who shares a passion for board games with her sister.
The commonalities between twins start to become the exception over time.
Denise Demco, a Lake Travis Elementary School fifth-grade teacher who taught Belle and Gabby in different classes and the Johnson twins together, stressed the importance of fostering independence.
“With twins, they are together so much, they want to be thought of as individuals. As you deal with them in the classroom, you want to give them individual attention so that you are not lumping them together,” Demco said. “As a parent and a teacher, I believe it’s really important that they have their own identity. They also need to know that they are their own individuals.”
Demco played up her daughters’ unique personalities.
“They’re very different. Gabby excels in math and Belle is more the language arts type. They may look alike, but they are very different in what their strengths are,” she said. “They are starting to have their own paths now. It’s early, but I think it’s starting to begin.”
One advantage twins have over other siblings of different ages, she noted, is that they are built-in study buddies.
“They have someone that when they go home, they may have a little advantage in doing their homework. They have two people that they can use to discuss what information was presented in class,” she said.
Some of the twins said they feel like they can count on their siblings to be there when challenges arise at their new school.
Having a sister by her side eased both of the Paxton twins’ fears in not only entering a new school but also a new district where they didn’t know anyone.
“I love having a twin when starting a new school, so I actually know someone,” Natalie said.
“It has been great starting a new school because no matter what happens I have Davis,” said Bradli of her sister.
The feeling is mutual.
Starting a new school has “been a real experience because I know that I have Bradli when I need help or I have a problem,” Davis said.
Demco said that being a twin is not as unusual as it once was before in vitro fertilization became more common and more women began having children later in life.
“No one is in awe of having twins any more,” she said, “especially in sixth grade – they are all over.”
The rate of multiple births appears to have leveled off in recent years, though.
According to a 2009 report by the National Center for Health Statistics, the surge in multiple birth rates over the last several decades may have ceased.
After climbing 70 percent between 1980 and 2004, the 2006 twin birth rate of 32.1 twins per 1,000 births was about the same as it was in 2005.
Excluding twins, the birth rate for multiples declined 5 percent for 2005-2006, to 153.3 per 100,000 total births. This rate had climbed more than 400 percent between 1980 and 1998, but is down 21 percent since then.