Father admits he still can't tell his identical twin daughters apart

A dad blogger has sparked a parenting debate after admitting he finds it difficult to tell his twin daughters apart.

Simon Hooper, 35, aka Father of Daughters, took to Instagram to confess he struggles to tell his three-year-old daughters, Ottie and Delilah, apart when his wife, Clemmie (Mother of Daughters) dresses them in the same outfits.

Sharing an image of the adorable duo to Instagram he joked: “I thought I had it nailed – I thought the days of referring [sic] to ottie and Delilah simply as ‘this one’, ‘that one’ and ‘the twins’ were numbered and that I was going to be a parent who could distinguish between my genetic copycats. I was wrong.

“Thanks to @mother_of_daughters dressing them as mirror images of themselves, today I was straight back to square one & spent the next 15 minutes playing a real-life guess who – calling them the wrong names only to receive blank faces & zero responses in return.”

He finished his post by joking that he was considering shaving one of their heads.

“Screw the curls – the need to identify my own children is more important,” he added.

Following his confession many parents commented to share their own tales of twin-fusion.

“My twins boys are 15 and I occasionally get it wrong lol!” one parent admitted. “Their grandparents haven’t got a clue which one is which. They just answer to either name now instead of correcting anyone.”

“I have ID twins as well. The struggle is real. Sometimes I just say ‘who are you’,” another twin parent admitted.

Some twins also stepped in to offer their own experiences of how others get them mixed-up.

“I’m a twin and we used to swim lots our swimming coach had to write our names on our swimming hats as he had no idea who was who,” one user wrote.

“I am an identical mirror twin and I still don’t correct people when they call me by my twin’s name, which always causes problems when they ask how I am further into the conversation. We also still have to ask our mum who we are in baby/toddler photos!” another shared.

But the hilarious post also sparked a debate online when one mum expressed their confusion that the parenting blogger still couldn’t tell them apart.

“Does anyone else find it weird that FOD can’t tell which of his twin daughters is which?” the user wrote on parenting site Mumsnet.

“I get that they’re identical (and they really are visibly so) but he’s their dad! “

The user went on to say she used to babysit identical twin girls and learnt to tell them apart within a month. “It was partly down to incredibly subtle variations in their appearance (e.g. the way their hair fell), but mostly it was their personalities. They were very obviously two different people,” she wrote.

“Maybe FOD’s twins are also identical in their personalities and that’s why it’s so hard, or maybe he’s just joking about it for the sake of being funny on Instagram,” she continued.

“But I must admit I find it weird if it’s something he can’t reliably do, especially as he’s clearly a hands on dad!”

And some parents agreed they found it hard to believe the dad couldn’t tell them apart.

“I’m sure he knows, he’s just playing it for laughs,” one wrote.

“Well I can tell them apart just by looking at them, so obviously he can,” another agreed.

But other users once again stepped in to defend the dad revealing their own examples of identical twin confusion.

“My daughters are identical twins and they can’t tell themselves apart in photos,” one mum shared.

“I can tell them apart quite easily, their facial expressions are different – to me they look very different. But every other person in their lives can’t tell them apart – their father is getting better at it, but still gets them mixed up a lot.”

“I worked with a father of identical twin boys. I asked how to tell them apart. He sort of shrugged and said that sometimes one of them wore glasses, but aside from that, he couldn’t,” one user shared. “He didn’t know which one wore glasses, just that one of them did,” she added.

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