What a Wild Primate Taught Me About Raising Twins

I'm currently lying flat on the rug in our London living room, staring at a patch of ceiling that desperately needs painting, while someone repeatedly hits my left shin with a plastic spatula. Twin A (Isla) is shrieking because her own shadow had the audacity to follow her into the kitchen. Twin B (Freya) is attempting to scale the curtains using a grip strength that frankly defies the laws of physics. The living room smells faintly of mashed banana and Sudocrem.

The absolute biggest myth they sell you at those desperately cheerful NHS antenatal classes isn't about the sleep deprivation. It's the persistent, frankly hilarious lie that human infants arrive in this world somehow evolutionarily superior to the rest of the animal kingdom. They absolutely don't. If you spend any time actually observing a newborn human alongside an infant primate, you'll quickly realize our kids are laughably behind schedule.

The big evolutionary lie about human infants

I was in the clinic last month, heavily caffeinated and panicking because Freya wasn't walking yet, when our perpetually exhausted health visitor brought up an old psychology experiment to talk me off the ledge. Back in the 1930s, this incredibly eccentric psychologist named Winthrop Kellogg decided to raise an infant ape right alongside his own ten-month-old son. He wanted to see who would develop faster in a domestic environment.

The results were utterly humiliating for humanity. The little ape figured out how to use a spoon, walk upright, and open doors months before the human toddler even realized he had feet. The human kid was basically a heavily breathing potato sack while his primate roommate was casually navigating the house.

Dr. Evans (our GP) reckons this is just the great evolutionary trade-off at work. Human brains are so hopelessly complex that our kids have to be born half-baked, physically useless for an agonizingly long time, just so their neurological wiring can slowly connect without overloading the system. So when Isla spends forty-five minutes trying to put a square block into a round hole and then bursts into tears, I try to remind myself that her brain is supposedly doing high-level calculus in the background. It helps, slightly, when I haven't slept since Tuesday.

My life as a sweaty human mattress

Since they can't walk, run, or forage for their own snacks for the first year of their lives, they treat us like moving furniture. I used to feel incredibly guilty whenever I couldn't put either of the twins down in their cots for more than three minutes without them sounding like a car alarm. You read all these parenting books (page 47 suggests you remain calm and establish boundaries, which I found deeply unhelpful at 3am) that make you feel like a failure if your kid won't sleep independently in a dark, empty room.

But apparently, according to folks who spend their lives watching apes in the wild, primate mothers literally never put their young down. They carry them on their chests or backs for years. The physical contact is supposed to control the infant's chaotic little nervous system. They cling to their mothers like terrified, hairy barnacles because putting them down on the jungle floor means they might get eaten. Our kids don't know they live in a semi-detached house in Zone 3; their DNA still thinks a leopard is going to snatch them from the Moses basket.

Once I accepted that I was just a biological climbing frame, life got marginally easier. I bought a carrier, strapped one to my chest, and just accepted my fate as a sweaty pack mule. You need breathable layers when you've a tiny furnace strapped to your sternum, so I picked up the Organic Cotton Baby Bodysuit for them. It's fine. It does the job perfectly well. To be brutally honest, I bought it mainly because it was on sale and didn't have a patronizing slogan like "Mummy's Little Prince" slapped across the chest. The fabric stretches easily over their massive heads when Freya attempts amateur gymnastics during a nappy change, which is honestly my only criteria for clothing at this point.

Tummy time, meanwhile, lasted roughly four seconds in our house before ending in a face-plant and a tantrum, so we just stopped doing it and let them crawl over my prone body instead.

Tickling as a literal survival mechanism

There was a study floating around the internet recently—I think a bunch of researchers at Harvard published it—where they watched wild ape mothers in Uganda. They found that even when there was a massive food shortage and the adult apes were basically starving and ignoring each other to conserve energy, the mothers still took the time to tickle and play with their infants.

I find this deeply validating. There are days when I'm running on two hours of broken sleep and half a cold piece of toast, and the absolute last thing I want to do is pretend to be a highly enthusiastic dinosaur. But play is supposedly how they figure out social dynamics and physical boundaries without actually getting hurt. You endure the energy cost of chasing them around the sofa because it stops them from becoming absolute sociopaths later in life.

If you're staring down the barrel of a very long, rainy Sunday afternoon and need something to buy you five minutes of peace, you might want to browse Kianao's collection of sensory toys just to keep their hands busy.

We actually use the Rainbow Play Gym Set from that collection, and I've to admit, it's brilliant. I used to think wooden play gyms were just beige aesthetic clutter for parents who want their living rooms to look like an organic farm. But the lack of flashing lights and screeching electronic sounds is a godsend for my own creeping migraine. The girls lie under it and swat at the little wooden elephant, figuring out depth perception and grip strength without being visually assaulted by bright plastic. It kept Isla entirely occupied for fourteen uninterrupted minutes yesterday. In twin-dad time, fourteen minutes is basically a luxury Caribbean holiday.

Words versus grunts in our living room

Here's the funniest part of that 1930s experiment I mentioned earlier. They honestly had to cut the whole study short after nine months. Why? Because the ape wasn't learning to speak English. Instead, the psychologist's human son started imitating the ape. The kid was running around the house communicating entirely in aggressive primate grunts and hoots.

I catch myself doing this exact same thing. After twelve hours alone with two toddlers, my vocabulary degrades into a series of interrogative noises. "Ba-ba?" "Num-num?" "Uh-oh." If an outsider walked into our kitchen at dinnertime, they'd assume I was the one regressing. Our GP warned us that human language requires a ridiculous amount of constant, direct vocalization from the adults in the room to seriously stick in their brains. So I try to narrate my day to them. I explain the complexities of the washing machine cycle or the offside rule while I'm chopping carrots. They usually just stare at me unblinkingly and then throw a pea at the wall.

When the teeth arrive

Nothing highlights our shared primate ancestry quite like the arrival of the molars. When the teeth start pushing through the gums, the girls turn into feral, rabid little beasts. They chew on the coffee table. They chew on their shoes. At 3am last Thursday, Freya decided her gums hurt so much that the only logical solution was to bite my collarbone with the intensity of a starved badger.

I staggered into the kitchen looking for the Calpol, genuinely fearing for my physical safety. What honestly saved my sanity, though, was having the right thing for her to destroy. I don't know what kind of voodoo went into designing the Panda Silicone Baby Teether, but it's an absolute lifesaver. It has these rigid, textured little bumps that Freya gnashes her new teeth against like a dog with a bone. The flat shape means she can really hold it herself instead of dropping it on the floor every ten seconds and screaming for me to retrieve it. I keep one constantly chilling in the fridge, one lost somewhere in the depths of the nappy bag, and one in my coat pocket at all times. It's the only reason our furniture doesn't have permanent bite marks.

So yes, they're wild. They're loud, they're physically clingy, they communicate in grunts, and they occasionally try to eat my shoulder. But rather than fighting biology and trying to force them to be civilized little adults by their first birthday, I've found it's much easier to just embrace the jungle rules. Now, if you'll excuse me, Isla has just figured out how to open the Tupperware drawer, and I need to intervene before she builds a fortress.

Before you lose another night of sleep worrying about whether your little one is hitting their developmental targets, grab a lukewarm coffee and check out Kianao's full collection of sustainable baby gear to make this whole primate-rearing business slightly easier on yourself.

FAQ: Surviving the Wild Toddler Years

Why does my toddler completely lose their mind when I walk out of the room?

Because their primitive little brain still thinks a predator is lurking in the hallway. Our doctor basically told me that separation anxiety peaks precisely because they've finally realized they're vulnerable without you, but haven't yet developed the object permanence to know you're just going to the loo. You haven't ruined them; they're just biologically programmed to stick to you like glue.

Is it normal that my kid isn't walking yet but my friend's kid is running?

Absolutely. Freya decided walking was a mug's game until she was nearly 15 months old, while Isla was pulling herself up at 10 months. The physical milestones vary wildly because their brains are prioritizing different things. Unless your health visitor is actively worried, just enjoy the fact that you don't have to chase them down the street yet.

How do I get them to stop biting me when they're teething?

You have to offer them a better alternative immediately. When they bite, I try to say a firm "no" (which they usually ignore) and then physically shove a cold silicone teether into their hands. The cold numbs the throbbing gums, and the texture gives them the resistance they're desperately looking for. Your collarbone just isn't cold enough to do the trick.

Should I be worried if we only talk in 'baby talk' at home?

I wouldn't panic, but you might want to start throwing some real words into the mix. I caught myself calling the television a "box-box" to another adult last week, which was a real wake-up call. They need to hear proper sentence structures to eventually learn them, even if you feel completely ridiculous explaining the plot of a documentary to a one-year-old who's actively trying to eat dirt.