I didn't recognise 2 year old DD when I picked her up from nursery

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DD is 2 (26m) and still has quite short hair so I've never had cause to put clips in it.

Today when I arrived to collect her she wasn't in her room so I went to another room they sometimes collect all the children in at the end of the day. En route I passed the kids' toilets where one of the staff was in the doorway helping a child wash their hands. I said hello, then 'how are you'. She looked at me slightly quizzically and proceeded to tell me about this child's day. I then looked and realised said child was wearing the same outfit as DD went in this morning, then a few more seconds and I realised it was my DD but literally had to go through the process of noticing the clothes then looking more carefully at her face before I twigged.

The staff had put a hair bobble in her hair to tie the front back. She looked completely different.

I know that if I pass someone in the street out of context I tend not to recognise them but I'm staggered that this extends to not recognising my own daughter straight away simply due to her hair being different.

I feel a bit bad about it and definitely feel embarrassed as the staff must have realised.

Is this remotely normal!?

I don't have face blindness - I'm at the other end of the scale and have unusually good facial recognition skills (I've been tested several times on this very thing).

However, DD2 took part in a dance show where the kids all had identical, 'extreme' hair styles and I couldn't pick her out of a line up!

It's much to do with just expecting one thing and thus not seeing another, in many cases.

Same problem here... went to a cricket match last week and really struggled to identify my friend’s son between them all. They all looked to me like little clones.

I also had an interview who involved a first interview, a night at the pub to see how I clicked with the small team I would join and a second interview. Found the main interviewer in a wedding a couple of weeks later, he came to me and went through the usual chitchat, at some point he just looked at me and said You don’t have a clue of who am I, do you?

But the worst one was that during one night out I started talking to this guy who seemed familiar (and was kind enough to follow the conversation as if he knew me!), we then said good bye and I just told my friend, I don’t remember his name or where I know him from but he is a really nice guy!.

She just looked at me, told me “you don’t know that guy Tan... that was Louis Walsh from x-factor”

Prosopagnosia - face blindness

Moi aussi!

Not as bad as many people, but if ANYTHING about someone changes - hair, they get glasses, new lipstick, facial piercing - I really embarrass myself by not knowing who they are - until they speak and I know the voice.

Ah OP, happens to the best of us...I am often not wearing my glasses and am also not that observant. Once went to put my arms around a bald rotund man from the back, you can guess where this is going can't you?! Also claimed another child as mine.
I would have burst out laughing and said Oh My Gosh it's YOU i did not recognise you sweetheart, you look fabulous with your hair up
I doubt the staff member will give it a second thought tbh.

And me. I completely failed to recognise DS2 when he came to meet DH and me on a dog walk - I wasn't expecting him. I too recognise people by things like hair colour/type of glasses so if they change I've had it.

I used to do that all the time when I went to pick up my daughter from (no uniform) school. I had to remember what clothes she'd been wearing that morning before I could pick her out from the myriad brunette pre-teens with pony-tails!

Minor face blindness here aswell. Such a pain!

Hair does make a big difference. I remember walking straight past dm a secondary when someone had done my hair a different way.

More recently when dd2 did her first ballet show, dh came up to me in a panic saying he'd lost her. I looked down to where dd2 was hanging onto the end of his t-shirt and pointed at the small girl wearing tutu, hair in a bun and with only one arm. He did a double take and said "Really?" He'd not seen her with all her hair scraped back into a bun before.

DS (16yo) joined a new group at school and by way of introduction he told them - "You know I am ASD (his words!), but in addition - faces mean nothing to me!" He does recognize people by the way they walk, their clothes and by the settings they usually are in.

I’ve got this (I think fairly mildly) and I bloody hate it! Acquaintances and colleagues who greet me and who can tell I just don’t recognise them. So embarrassing as I worry they think I’m a) deliberately trying to be rude or b) just found them unmemorable. Oddly enough I’m actually pretty good at remembering details that people tell me - of their lives, families etc. - it’s just recognising them first.

Yep, I have this but there is one thing about it I have found to be very advantageous. I’ve had my heart broken a couple of times and both times I threw out every photo of the person and within days I was struggling to remember what they looked like! I honestly think I got over it quicker because I couldn’t picture them in my mind.

When DS1 had plastic surgery on his nose as a part of reconstruction from a cleft , he came home the spiting image of one of his friends ! It took me days to stop being super polite to our guest 😆

Thank you for all the responses! I feel a bit better now.

I've always known my facial recognition isn't great, now I know it's terrible!

But you lot have (mostly) made me feel better about it so my plan of action is to always make a mental note of what DD is wearing to nursery and hope that said outfit survives until the end of the day!

I once walked past my then 20-year-old daughter in a supermarket without recognising her, I couldn't figure out why this vaguely familiar looking young woman was shouting "Mum ?!?!" after me.

When baby 2 was born they were put into the nursery ay night and we went to collect them in the morning, I always had to look at the labels on the cots!

I don't think I have face blindness but I often used to miss dd coming out of school. All in same uniform, mousey hair, colourless face.

She is 19 now and I was convinced I saw her walking down the road but when I got home she was here. Again they all seem to wear a 'uniform'. Skinny jeans, long straight hair or a pineapple.

I don't know about face-blindness (although I suspect I may have it to an extent), but rather too often when I think of my DH, whom I've been with for 10 years, I sometimes struggle to see his face, rather than an ex from 18 years ago, who I was with for 9 years. I've never told him this, of course

I sat outside my dd's youth club waiting for her to come out. Saw a young girl with the same (unusual) bag as my DD and said to my friend that it better not be dd's bag ( she's always losing things). As the girl approaches I realise it is my DD with her hair down.

Oh god thats me!
I walk past people I know all the time!
There have been times I’ve walked past my own kids at school-if it wasn’t for the others telling me it was them I’d never have known
If they ever had their faces painted I’m screwed
Best bit is I work in customer care-my job is getting to know people and if they don’t walk up to me and start chatting away I haven’t the faintest idea who they are

Dh looked at a photo of dd and friends as toddlers and said ‘I’ve never seen her in those pyjamas’. Yes, that’s because your dd is sat at the other end of the sofa and that’s a child you’ve never met!

i have facial blindness mines because of my FND and I've managed to look straight at my DH who was with 2 of our 5DC and walk straight past them,that gave me a bit of a fright so I can understand it worrying you OP.

Hopefully for you it was just because like a pp has mentioned you weren't expecting your DD to look any different from the morning when you dropped her off.

I have this too. I was always worried I was going to pick up the wrong child from nursery as I rely so much on hair colour and style. I have also failed to recognsie DS and DH. (Incidentally I find it really insulting that people think it is necessarily racist not to be able to tell Asian people apart - I have several Asian colleagues who all have straight black hair and I find it REALLY hard to tell them apart because I rely so heavily on hair colour to differentiate!)

I couldn't follow the film The Departed at all, because I thought the Matt Damon character and the Leo DiCaprio character were the same person. I was thinking "What the fuck is he doing now???"

It's 100% normal for me. I either don't recognise people or see someone and think it's someone else. I once called my sister because her photo was on the front page of The Times with an article about student life. It wasn't her.

Some people are worse for me than others and photos are much worse than moving images. DH can't understand why I still can't spot Madonna in a photo. I swear she must be a chameleon as I never have a clue who she is in photos.

I have face blindness too. Have sometimes not recognised my own children and often have no idea who I'm talking to in the supermarket. I just tell people I am face blind now but not everyone believes me :(