Record number of twins at Readfield
By Scott Bellile
There’s an odd phenomenon creating some buzz at a rural grade school south of New London.
Thanks to some out-of-the-ordinary genetics, this year 10 percent of all students at Readfield Elementary School are twins. Typically the odds of being born a twin hover around 1.5 percent.
Eight sets of twin siblings from 4-year-old kindergarten to fourth grade make up 16 of Readfield’s 149 students. In third grade alone, 35 percent of Jennifer Saucerman’s class are twins.
“It’s fun and it’s a challenge to try and keep them all straight,” Readfield Elementary Principal Kristin Grable said.
The students are: third-graders Blayke and Cale Adamovich, Caleb and Paige Bauer, Kylie and Parker Heise, Jordan and Winter Parker and Drew and Ryan Peters; Owen and Tobyn O’Neill (4K); Kendra and Kenleigh Jaeger (first grade); and Chase and Isaac Osborn (fourth grade).
The good news for the teachers is, one, the parents don’t dress their kids alike, and two, only one set of twins is considered identical: first-graders Kendra and Kenleigh Jaeger. Grable’s memory tricks are Kenleigh is a tad bit taller and she has the “magic freckle” under her eye. (Grable said the Jaegers’ grandmother insists Kenleigh also has “a fleck of hazel” in her eyes. To this day Grable has yet to find it.)
Another relief to the teachers is four of the pairs of twins are boy-girl, so they’re hard to mess up. As for the three sets of non-identical twin boys, Grable still invents tricks like “blue-eyed Blayke” for the Adamoviches and “red-haired Ryan” for the Peterses just to be safe.
The number of Readfield twins hit an all-time high this year when Jordan and Winter Parker joined the school. Otherwise most of the twins have been around for the last several years. Right now New London Intermediate/Middle School has two Readfield alumni twin sets.
“I just love seeing how similar they are and how connected they are but then also how their personalities are different,” Grable said.
The Jaeger girls’ mother, Kim Bosquez, has no other kids, but she told the Press Star twin parenting still isn’t easy.
“Raising twins…Oh my goodness…difficult,” Bosquez wrote in an email. “I do not have any other children to compare, but I do get a lot of sympathies from parents of singles, stating I don’t know how you did it. I also give the sympathy for the parents of triplets+, and state to myself I don’t know how they do it.”
Jami Adamovich, mother of the Adamovich boys, said she thinks Readfield’s phenomenon is neat. As for her boys, she said they don’t seem to find it interesting, they don’t gravitate toward other twins, and they’re showing enough differences now that she thinks someday she’ll think less about the fact they’re twins.
Still, she said, “There is something to be said for a twin bond and it is super special when you get to witness it.”
Grable said the experience has motivated her to research more about twins. What she’d love to find out is what the odds are of the phenomenon occurring at a school that size and if it’s a record.
The Press Star asked Readfield’s first-through-fourth-grade twins what they like or dislike about being a twin. (The O’Neills from 4K were too shy to speak.) Here are their responses:
Winter Parker: “I like that Jordan’s silly, fun, and he really helps me when I hurt, and he likes Minecraft just like me.”
Jordan Parker: “I like to play together and watch TV.”
Parker Heise: “[I like] that we’re not identical … What I don’t like is she can bug me whenever she wants.”
Kylie Heise: “I like bugging my brother.”
Caleb Bauer: “Getting along and playing together.”
Paige Bauer: “We make up fun ideas and we work together to get the plans.”
Cale Adamovich: “We get to do a lot of the same stuff.”
Blayke Adamovich: “We get to do a lot of stuff together, so like in hockey and sports we’re not in different levels.”
Kenleigh and Kendra Jaeger: (in unison) “One always smiles, one doesn’t. One always looks at the camera and one doesn’t.”
Chase Osborn: “We have the same birthday and then have [our non-twin sister] Hannah so sometimes we get a little gift when we have hers.”
Isaac Osborn: “I don’t know.”
Ryan Peters: “The nice thing about being a twin is there’s somebody around to throw the football to.”
Drew Peters: “Sometimes we get into fights, but still, it’s nice having a red-haired twin.”