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 have walked past my ds1 now age 24,in the street.more than once. i have got way to pleased to see the wrong child more than once.fortunately ds1 finds it funny.

Me too. I realised it at university, but didn't know there was a name for it until I read about it years later. I failed to spot my own boyfriend in a crowd until he spoke to me, thought a guy who sometimes wore glasses and sometimes didn't was two guys called David, for a whole term... really socially crippling. I forget my husband's face when he's away on business for a long time (but I do recognise him when he returns). When I first had babies, I used to recognise new Mum friends by their prams. It was a nightmare when all the children started walking! Now, I have become sensitive to cues that a person recognises me, so I just act like I know them, until the conversation comes around to something that triggers recognition. After about 5 meetings I tend to have them fixed in my mind, but I really hate getting started in a new social setting - new job, new neighbourhood, new school etc.

And I too failed to recognise my own son coming out of school on his very first day. He walked up to me and said "you were supposed to wave at me so the teacher knew to let me go!".

And then there's the time I felt like a racist because I thought that the Chinese woman with a toddler in the swimming pool was the same Chinese woman with a toddler I spoke to last week, and she said "Oh, there's another Chinese lady who comes here sometimes, you must think I'm her" and I didn't know how to say "I don't think you all look the same, honest!"

But I am quite honest about it if I get into an embarrassing situation these days, and it's surprising how many other people admit to it, when I do.

I don't have face blindness but I was definitely confused a few weeks ago when I went to collect DD and she was in a different outfit. It took me far longer than it should have to recognise her.

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???"

Leo DiCaprio, Matt Damon and Mark Wahlberg all in the same film, it was difficult

Dissociation can cause difficulty recognising people too. If you were wandering along brain focused elsewhere not expecting to see your child at the sinks that's the kind of situation where dissociation means you don't recognise someone familiar to you.

Ever reached the end of a car journey and realised you don't remember any of the drive? Or become so lost in a daydream you don't notice anything around you? Or engrossed in a book and not heard the phone ring? That's dissociation.

I do this a bit

I think there is a cultural element, or I've heard there is anyway; we recognise people by gross (I.e. larger) features such as hairstyle, hair colour, ear shape, general body size and don't particularly scrutinise the rest. Therefore if any of those things change, or they share the features with others, it throws us. I read once that the Chinese pay far less attention to hair colour/style but are very good at spotting small facial differences; hence why we may have more difficulty than they do in telling people apart.

I suffer face blindness and have on several occasions failed to recognise members of my own family.

I have a type of migraine where I literally can't visualise peoples faces.
I forget what my own children look like. It's not nice.
Under normal circumstances I'm usually OK, although if I've only met a person once I don't always recognise them the next time I see them!

Should clarify: by 'we', I meant people like me, which is a white person. Which you could probably predict as only privileged people assume everyone is like them!

Sorry. I'll get my coat.

I once proudly watched my baby in the nursery Christmas nativity. I was sobbing away to the wrong baby for the whole thing. Then I looked around to make sure no one had noticed. I was sat at the back (but I would have probably still got it wrong if I had been at the front.)

I used to have problems recognising pupils out of uniform at Parents' Evenings when they were all dressed up in civvies.

I don’t recognise faces either. It’s a survival mechanism. The short cut is stance, gait, demeanour and clothes. That way I recognise people from afar in an instant. I do mix with a lot of people. It must take up a lot more memory to remember all the facial nuances. I guess it’s fairly normal.

Prosopagnosia runs in my family and we have heaps of stories like this, you’re not alone! Examples:

• We all used to spend the summer at my grandparents’ seaside home (often without our parents). My aunt had four boys, and the middle two looked very similar - particularly as the older was small for his age so they were about the same height. My mum arrived one summer when we’d all been there for a while, getting tanned and more blonde and shooting up like weeds as kids do up in the summer. She tried to identify all the boys bouncing around the front garden, eventually giving up with one of them and asking “and which one are you?” It was her own son 😆

• My great-grandfather, a vicar, was the most notorious. At a wedding reception he introduced a couple to each other, not realising he’d just married them. He also once spent an hour at a party talking to a woman in a hat, and told his wife afterwards what an interesting lady he’d met at the party... she was well aware, as she was the one he’d been talking to 😆 My mum has other stories about him, I don’t remember them all.

csa26 - I love that about your great-grandfather enjoying talking to his own wife for an hour at a party! Brilliant, and consistent!

He also once spent an hour at a party talking to a woman in a hat, and told his wife afterwards what an interesting lady he’d met at the party... she was well aware, as she was the one he’d been talking to

Whoah. And he didn't pick up from what she was saying that it was his own wife??

Last summer I completely failed to recognise DS2 when he came out of school with flat hair compared to the spiky top he'd gone in with He was even waving at me across the playground!

I sympathis OP, but I have the opposite problem- I am a super recogniser. I can remember faces of people that I have met only briefly but many years ago. So makes me come across as stalkerish - I may meet someone and say " oh yes you worked at Tesco 15 years ago" and I they happened to check my groceries though twice perhaps. They will give me strange looks.
Or sometimes I forget context, and treat people as though I know them, even though we spent 15 minutes chatting because we both missed the same bus eight years ago.
Quite embarrassing. I have learned to ignore people I think I "know".!

I used to work in an environment where we all wore hard hats. I would often meet someone outside and the 2 hours later sit down to dinner with them and reintroduce myself and they all thought I was bloody nuts.

Hair off the face can make a massive change, don’t worry about it 💐

Someone I used to work with and saw / spoke to most days always wore her hair down. I'd never thought about until the day she came over to speak to me with her hair tied up and I had absolutely no idea who it was for a good few seconds until I'd placed her voice. It was so weird.

Did you need glasses as a child, op?

Im face blind and have a terrible memory for names.

Basically im useless

Face blindness.
Its actually quite common and It can extend to not recognizing your own children.

It tends to happen more though when you're not expecting to see someone somewhere. For example the first time I picked my nephew up from Nursery. He looked at me for about 10 seconds (which is quite long if you count it out) as if to say. "Who's this weirdo". He then must have realised who I was and came running over with his little arms out.
I think it was simply the fact that he didn't associate me with his nursery.

I definitely haven't got face blindness but I used to do this frequently when my DD was in nursery. Particularly if they'd changed her clothes or I hadn't dropped her off - it would take me a while to pick her out in a crowd

I have found my people!

I’m very open about being face blind so it no longer embarrasses me. Haven’t recognised my daughter on two occasions (once when she was a toddler, once last year when she was nine). Weirdly I have never not recognised my son.

I can’t follow films either as I generally have no idea who is who.

i didnt recognise my mum once when she changed her hairstyle