My more astute readers may have noticed that not much has been happening on this blog for the last 12 months. This is not because my children have matured into such angels that I no longer have anything to write about, but more to do with the fact that I have written my first book, which has just been published. It is, of course, on my specialist subject, twins. The book, “It’s Twins! Now What?“,  looks at the first year of raising twins, from pregnancy to their first birthday.  It is based on lots of interviews with fellow parents of twins and is designed to be a practical, honest and sometimes humorous companion in that tricky first year. Should you know anyone who might find this useful, please do tell them about it.

We have a keen sense of right and wrong in our family.

It is a simple concept: Wrong is what other people do.

As a pioneer of this attitude, I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised that it has caught on so quickly with the boys.

The other day Alec, aged five, raced into the room, his face contorted into a familiar combination of extreme injustice and tell-tale glee. “Harry and Kit have stolen the Christmas sweets,” he said, his voice wobbling.

“Now there aren’t any for me to steal.”

And with that a wail filled the room.

Harry and Kit of course knew nothing about the raid, despite brown mouths and a stash of wrappers under a sofa cushion.

The founder members of the Always Right Club

To master the art of never being wrong you need a few techniques. One is to insist that this is absolutely the first time you realised a rule was being broken. (The “Really? He needs his own ticket?” approach). This is most effective when followed up by an immediate deflection of blame onto the accuser. (The “Well, why isn’t there a sign about it?” rejoinder).

When I caught the boys attempting to slide down the stairs on a massive Ikea cardboard box they used this technique to perfection.

“Why?” asked Harry. “We were only having fun.”

I reminded them of one of the few rules we try to enforce: No playing on the stairs for fear of injury, disfiguration and, most importantly, wallpaper damage.

“You never said we couldn’t surf on the stairs,” he replied, accurately.

It is an approach Harry, aged eight, uses quite often. Having spent 10 minutes lying in the shower cubicle making indelible hand prints on the glass, I quizzed him over whether any washing had taken place.

“Yes,” he said, unconvincingly.

“With soap?” I asked.

“Aww, you didn’t tell me to use soap!” he said.

I am currently drafting a pre-shower contract with a terms and conditions tick box to save us all a repetitive lecture every bedtime.

It also helps if you have a scant to non-existent grasp of how to behave in certain, if not all, social situations.

As I sat reading with Kit one day, he was suddenly sick all over me, himself and the sofa. While I shouted to my husband to come and help, Alec and Harry appeared at the door.

Before I could ask them to go and get some towels, Harry said brightly, “Do you want to do the Conga Kit?” Not deterred by his silence, Harry and Alec did an energetic conga round the room and disappeared.

When I pointed out that it might have been nice to ask if Kit was alright before partying around him, Harry stared at his vomit-encrusted brother.

“How was I supposed to know he was ill?” he said.

The worst thing that can happen to those of us in the always right club is to be falsely accused of wrongdoing.

“Mummy!” Kit wailed recently, clutching his head. “Alec hit me and kicked me and pulled my hair.”

Alec looked indignant. “I didn’t kick you!” he said.

Luckily more than one person can be right at the same time, which helps enormously.

Yesterday another raid on the Christmas sweet mountain was reported. My heart sank.

“Mummy, where’s my chocolate reindeer? I was saving it,” asked Alec.

“Oh”, I said vaguely, “Was that yours?” And gestured towards the kitchen windowsill, reindeer’s last known resting place.

“No,” he said firmly. “It’s gone.”

There was an awkward pause.

“Did you eat it Mummy?”

He was right, of course. I did.

Well how was I supposed to know he still wanted it?

After a few minutes in Alec and Kit’s company, strangers have a tendency to turn to each other and nod excitedly.

A secret language!

It’s not a secret language, I correct them. Anyone can join in – it’s just that, well, only Alec and Kit understand it.  More knowing nods. Mother in denial.

Alec and Kit, four, are bright, funny, and vocal but until a year ago had barely a handful of recognisable words between them. Instead of conventional English they deployed a series of grunts and actions to convey their everyday needs.

Communication became an elaborate pantomime of songs, signs and codes with me, my husband and Harry, seven, cast as chief translators for a uniformly baffled outside world. Often we, too, were stumped, desperately trying to decode a sound while Alec or Kit roared it with increasing frustration.

At times, the pantomime bordered on farce. Every time Alec or Kit wanted to say ‘spider’, they would sing “twinkle twinkle little star”, ‘big’ was “ooh”, ‘little’ was “aah”, “la la” meant either ‘yellow’, ‘wee’ or ‘over there’ or sometimes none of those things. Added to which they learnt a few Makaton signs so would suddenly pretend to milk a cow if they were thirsty (the sign for milk) or make the sign for cake if they were hungry. Naturally, it was sometimes hard to keep up and, for anyone outside our immediate family, impossible to follow.

Speech delay among twins in general and identical ones in particular is not unusual. They spend more time in each other’s company than most siblings and often their natural baby babble becomes self-reinforcing when repeated back between themselves. It is estimated that 40 per cent of identical twins have some form of autonomous language in their early years.

All of this I knew, even before Alec and Kit were born, plus I had the advantage of having a speech therapist in the family (my sister) and still here we were, with a communication crisis. The boys were progressing in so many ways and yet their language was so basic compared to their peers. I fretted constantly about the effect this was having on their overall development.

The boys themselves seemed largely oblivious to the problem. They showed no interest in imitating language and stuck stubbornly to their version of words  – often, frustratingly, converting other children and even adults to their way of saying things. Alec and Kit insisted on playing lengthy games of I-spy, even though they could only say one colour – “la la” again – and had to point to show the object they had in mind. They brought book after book to be read, yet never attempted to copy the sounds they so obviously enjoyed listening to. Their attitude seemed to be that this was our problem, not theirs.

To compensate for their lack of vocal range they developed comically exaggerated facial expressions. A fully made up clown could not have looked sadder than Alec in full grump mode.

Alec and Kit started to have speech therapy sessions two years ago. The initial therapy was largely aimed at me and my husband and gave us various techniques – such as describing scenes using simple language, not asking questions (which tend to elicit one word answers) and repeating back words as they should be said rather than correcting the child. The advice was to speak in sentences a word longer than the boys were capable of, which, at that stage, was two or three words. But the boys’ comprehension so far outstripped their language that this felt absurd, almost patronising.  The boys’ hearing was tested and found to be fine but progress still seemed slow to non-existent.

Starting part-time nursery at the age of three finally produced a break through. Their teachers – admirably unfazed by the challenge – reported that they were “tuning in” to Alec and Kit’s language. My heart sank. A mass conversion to “Aleckittish” seemed on the cards.

However, by Christmas, their teachers were commenting on progress which we too were noticing at home. At last the boys wanted to use the same language as everyone else and were trying to copy words – a small but profound step.

Gradually, they started to be able to say numbers and simple words such as “car” or “book”.  One day after nursery the boys were upstairs playing. Kit brought me in a parcel. “Happy Birthday, Mummy,” he said. It was his first sentence.

At their fourth birthday almost a year ago, it was hard not to compare Alec and Kit with their articulate, chatty peers. Despite all the progress they had made, they still did not use each other’s names – they had different words instead – and their sentences remained short and hard to understand. We kept reminding ourselves of how far they had come, but it was impossible to ignore how much work lay ahead too.

Once words started forming there was even more of a battle to be heard at home. “Excuse me! Excuse me! Excuse me!” Alec would shout until all conversation around him stopped. When we asked him what he actually wanted to say he would sigh and say despondently: “I’ve begotten”.

Now that the boys have started “cepshun” their language and confidence continues to improve. We still have roll-on-the-floor-why-can’t-you-understand-me moments and at the current rate of progress it may yet be a few years before Alec and Kit’s language is on a par with their peers but at last it feels like they will eventually catch up.

Luckily the boys are better at dealing with it than I am.

Recently Kit was trying and failing to explain something. Alec did an exaggerated shrug. “Kit,” he said. “Even I can’t understand that.”

And with that they both sprinted off to build some Lego towers.

We are off to the circus. This is almost as much as a surprise to me as it is my children. I have successfully dodged the circus during its annual visit to our park for some years now, and, had it not been for a third installment of Madagascar, I might have got away with it.

But despite impressing upon Harry, seven, and Alec and Kit, four, that there would be no canons, knife throwing or inter-galactic trapeze work the momentum towards this year’s Big Top became unstoppable.

I have to admit that as family treats go, the circus nestles just above Build A Bear and a trip round the Hello Kitty archives on my list of priorities. I can’t help but feel the traditional circus may have had its day. But, and I need to keep reminding myself of this, today’s trip is not about me. Or even paid for by me (generous grandparents to thank here), so really, I should just shut up.

Entering the tent is dramatic, and I am encouraged. There is a slight haze in the air, a buzz of chatter and a cosy, cave-like ambience. After a lot of  experimenting, we find four seats which, with only one child on my knee, allows us all to see the ring.

“Can I have a light saber?” asks Harry. “Look, they are giving them out free.” When I cast doubt on this interpretation he heads off to ask the seller himself. He returns looking determined.

“Can I have £5?” he says.

A man leans over us to pass three portions of popcorn to his children. “Can I have one?” Harry asks him. (This from the boy who claims he is too shy to say hello to his friends in the street.)

A moment later he is clutching a vat of popcorn and looking smug. I’m not sure if I should be proud of his new found confidence or appalled by his willingness to accept, no – demand, a treat from a total stranger. Almost certainly the latter. I sink lower into my seat.

Five minutes before the show starts, a woman asks if I can budge up the children to allow her and her partner to sit together. I am torn between innate politeness and the fact that if I do so I will be paying £11 for Kit to look at the back of someone’s head for two hours. I explain my dilemma, possibly a little tersely.

“Wow!” she says. “You won’t move.” She then pointedly sits on the steps next to our seats. Having made my stand I know I will now spend the entire performance feeling guilty. Damn that woman. And me. And the bloody circus.

Anyway, before the woman’s bottom has had a chance to numb, the show has started. A Cuban acrobatic troupe wearing American tan tights and leotards with flames stitched to their nether regions is enthralling the crowd.

Over the next few acts we see a van driving over a man (it’s ok, it is Strongman Hercules), a woman suspended by her neck from the roof and an elderly gent encouraging some budgies to operate a toy car. I am not looking forward to the questions at the interval.

The first half is rounded off by the roar of engines as motorbikes and a quad bike screech in, skidding, revving and, erm, wheelie-ing, before departing in a fog of exhaust fumes and Brazilian aftershave. I hope the budgies are still on their perches backstage.

The interval is spent saying no to demands for candy floss, horse-shaped balloons, plate spinning kits and having a photo taken sitting on said quad bike.

Harry has grudgingly allowed Alec and Kit a handful of popcorn each from his misappropriated vat of shame. On pain of having it removed and returned to its rightful owner he increases their rations. He is still only a quarter of the way through the tub.

As the second half gets underway, I glance over at the boys. They are enthralled. Alec has his hands clasped together under his chin. When the act finishes he bursts into double-quick applause.

Next up, horses. What? I am shocked. Not so much by the fact that they still feature in a 21^st century circus, but by their handler – the Big Top’s answer to Hilary Devey, except slightly less natural looking. The crowd gasps, and for the first time I join in.

Aside from the obvious ethical issue,  there is something odd, and rather pointless,  about watching a horse lumbering round a ring roughly three times the size of a darts board. I look across at the boys. “Amazing!” mouths Harry.

The final act is a genuinely thrilling motorbike stunt which leaves me weak with fear that the boys will one day attempt to follow suit. The riders mass at the front of the ring, raise their right arms and, in unison, flex their biceps to a standing ovation.

It is fair to say that Alec, Kit and Harry enjoyed the show. A lot. I decide to leave my musings about a circus’ place in modern society for another decade or two.

The next morning my bedroom door bursts open and the boys run in, all wearing their PE kit.

“We’re training to be Hercules,” announces Harry. “Will you come and watch?”