A Nigerian mother of twins is going viral on TikTok for sharing how she differentiates her twin daughters. In the video, the mother shares that she’s going to answer one of the questions she’s most commonly asked: how she tells her identical twin girls apart.
The mother introduces her identical twin daughters in the video as Kimberly and Kendra. The mother then goes on to say that Kimberly’s nose has been pierced to distinguish her from sister Kendra.
The mom says this is the solution she came up with to help her tell her girls apart.
The mom captioned the video, “Did this video help anyone?”
She starts the video by saying, “So a lot of you has been asking me to make a video on how I tell my twin girls apart.”
She then goes on to introduce her identical twin daughters, Kimberly and Kendra. The mom explains that she had Kimberly’s nose pierced when the girls were 3 months old to distinguish her from her sister.
TikTok users were outraged.
Many seemed to share the opinion that a mother should be able to tell her own children apart without any help or that her daughter was too young to have her nose pierced and that she could have pierced her ears instead.
One user commented, “You could at least pierce their ear instead of their nose.”
“I have identical Twin boys [and]and I can differentiate them perfectly without using object," another TikToker wrote.
Some commenters were convinced that the mother is joking and the nose piercing was just a prank.
One person wrote, “You got these folks mad as h**l over that little sticker they’re beautiful.”
Another commenter wrote, “lol the baby nose is not pierced it's a sticky stud.”
The mother responded to the comments with another video.
The mother posted a video response to one of the comments that referred to piercing the baby's ear instead of her nose.
In the video she says, “So you can see my babies don’t have earring on their ears. Why? Because I don’t like it.” She goes on to say that just because she doesn’t like it doesn't mean she’s against other people doing it.
She ended the video by saying she and her husband agreed to wait until the girls are older and can decide for themselves if they want to pierce anything. In the video, neither of the twins appears to have a nose piercing.
The viral video and commenter responses show how quick strangers are to judge parents online.
The mother replied to a comment on her video response with, “They’re my kids, so it doesn’t need to make sense to y’all.”
A follow-up video was recently posted by the mother, explaining how she really differentiates her twins. In the video she shared that Kendra is the bigger twin and Kimberly is the smaller one.
Whether or not the mother had actually given her daughter a nose piercing, ultimately it would have been her decision as the parent — as the mother was quick to point out in her comment. The viral TikTok video she shared, probably intended as a joke, highlights a hard aspect of modern-day parenting: dealing with opinions and snap judgment from strangers online.
