When my identical twins were born I jokingly called them 'copy' and 'paste.' I worried they'd struggle to find their own identities.

• When our identical twin boys were born, we deliberately treated them as individuals. • Even their closest friends struggled to tell them apart despite our efforts to differentiate them. • The twins occasionally used their identical appearance for harmless mischief.

When Charlie and Thomas were born, I jokingly called them "Copy" and "Paste" in the hospital — my first official dad joke. But behind that joke was a genuine concern about how society would perceive them as identical twins.

As parents, we set out to ensure that our boys would be seen for who he was and not lumped together just because they looked the same.

Color-coding became our first identity strategy

While many parents of identical twins dress them alike for the cuteness factor, we deliberately went the opposite dir