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

[INeedNewShoes]

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 this and it’s acutely embarrassing. I dread having to go to our open plan office and find someone as I can never remember what they look like and numerous times have approached the wrongs person . I really really hope my kids don’t inherit it as it really makes life difficult. I rely on DH a lot as he is great at remembering people/faces. Like others, i’m Actually good at remembering all sorts of details about people (about their jobs and kids etc) so can carry a conversation really well, I just have to get them to introduce themselves first (again!) to remind me who they are!

I agree with PP, Love Island is impossible. They're all the same person! And there are loads of them and they constantly change. How on Earth do people keep track? I just can't get into it.

@Chouetted thanks I’ll try that.

There are about 10 actors I think are Sam Neill.
Matt Damon/Mark Wharlberg/Leo Di Caprio - all the same.

Subtitles! And everyone should have name badges on. All the time. Work badges are awesome.

The worst bit is people think you are ignoring them/rude. Really doesn’t help build relationships. I will remember all sorts of details about people to an almost disturbing level, if people are where I expect them I’ll notice new accessories, small hair changes. And then i’ll unwittingly blank them when I run in to them elsewhere.

Now as a woman in her prime I just tell new people. If I look like I’m ignoring you it’s face blindness, please tell me. A few of them have had to point my own children out to me so that helps them understand. But I wish I’d known sooner that I didn’t just have one of those faces and people were not thinking I was someone else when they talked to me. Resulting in stilted conversation as I politely presumed it was their mistake. And no doubt they all went off thinking I was rude/weird.

But worst of all, by far, is spotting someone, thinking who the hell’s that, and realising it’s you in the mirror

I was constantly wondering who that slightly familiar fat woman was reflected in shop windows when I was heavily pregnant

DH did this twice. He picked up a boy before the nursery staff v. politely pointed out that it wasn’t actually his son. And then on another occasion he got quite irritable with DD who didn’t want to leave the nursery - which wasn’t particularly surprising as she wasn’t his .

I'm the opposite. Can place a face I've seen once years ago, but can barely remember the names of my best friends' husbands and children, let alone more random people.

Face blindness must be awful . I can remember faces that I have seen in passing years ago or seen a picture of on friends fb, just often struggle to remember where I know them from, that to is frustrating!

This is as fascinating as the thread about aphantasia!! I never knew about it until I saw a programme on BBC about it, and then my new friend turned out to have it. I talked about how her DC3 was the copy of DC1 and she said all those facial similarities were lost on her, she couldn't see what makes faces the same or different. I asked her a lot about it, she said of course I can recognise people but it's the same for me as recognising chairs, straight or curved back, low or high seat etc. I thought it was extremely rare, I'm gobsmacked at this thread (I'm a "super recogniser")

I can't believe anyone would say they couldn't tell Di Caprio from Brad Pitt, they couldn't look more different!
So can you tell that someone is hot/ attractive/ugly if faces don't mean anything to you?? It's a mystery for me.

From the point of a regular person who used to think that faces look distinctive to everyone like they do to me(though I agree hair and make up can change a lot) I'd rather know that somebody I know has face blindness or a degree of it, why wouldn't you tell people openly, esp if you are in a social job? (Though can't imagine choosing for myself a job with lots of interaction with customers and clients if I had face blindness)

Following on from the phenomena of aphantasia, does it mean that people with face blindness struggle to picture the faces of those around them in their mind's eye? Can you imagine your own face in detail when you have your eyes shut?

OP, if it was the first time it happened to you, it might be just the hair= sudden change!! It's like I sometimes get someone to repeat the same thing a few times and still struggle to understand what they are saying when they are saying something wildly out of context or suddenly change track of the conversation, your brain needs time to process the idea we are now talking about something random/unexpected.

I already dread September. We have seating plans with pictures in the secondary school I work in. Unfortunately I am unable to match the picture to the child! I never do activities where kids get out of their seats either! Remembering their names by where they sit is a bit of a rubbish strategy, but all of them wearing the same uniform and almost all with the same haircut is really not helping, either.
It gets slightly better as they get older, most Year 7s look absolutely identical to me.

does it mean that people with face blindness struggle to picture the faces of those around them in their mind's eye? Can you imagine your own face in detail when you have your eyes shut?

I do struggle to visualise faces. For some people I can roughly visualise but even that isn't reliable. You've caused me to try to visualise a few close friends and family's faces and some I can picture vaguely and others not at all, but I feel sure that on another day I might be able to picture them.

And, no, I can't visualise my own face in detail. In fact my only facial features I could tell you about without looking in the mirror are my eye colour, eyebrow shape and that I have a smallish nose (probably my best feature!).

Somebody was quering who's baby was in a photo and I glanced and thought
'yeah notsure' and my cousin said (thankfully before I spoke) " that's Freddy (my ds)" and I looked again and sure enough it was 😳

I have terrible face blindness, combined with a total lack of a mind's eye and NO sense of direction. It's a miracle I haven't wandered into the sea or something.

DH gets really, really annoyed because it's like he has some sort of internal sat nav but I can go somewhere I've visited several times and have no memory of it. I struggle to navigate my way around even using GPS on my phone, I get my left and right mixed up, places look different to me in the dark so night driving is horrible, and I've failed to recognise my FIL in the street.

Just last week I was looking for the staff shower on a different floor, checked behind a door and it wasn't there. Walked around the corridor, hit the end of it and doubled back on myself. Saw the same door I'd tried just a minute before and thought, "Oh, that must be it!" and checked it again! It looked totally different when I approached from the other direction.

I can walk down a road, pop into a shop, walk around inside for a while and then, on leaving the shop, go back the way I came instead of carrying on my journey down the road.

It takes a while to recognise that I've seen certain shops before....

The best example was a client who could not tell the difference between the assistant manager and the manager- even when we had their photos on the wall.
Fair enough, they were both males, bald, wearing hoodies with a earring in their right ear.

However, one was black and one was white....

I have done this. Walked past DS at nursery once because they had changed his top to a spare one and I didn't recognise him. I was mortified.

However, one was black and one was white.... 😁

I have some form of this although I'm not sure exactly. Everyone looks vaguely familiar to me. I see people and they remind me of X because of some tiny feature. I can still recognise X when I see them, it's just that I think I've seen 10 other people who 'look like them' over the last week.

Celebrities and people on TV I am rubbish with. And I can't visualise faces in my head even though my other visualisation skills are quite good I think.

OP I never recognise my baby DD, it's always roasting so they strip them all down to their babygros which are inevitably white and they all have soft blond tufty baby hair.

My DS is older now and that's much easier but I do rely on his clothing a lot.

Yup, fellow sufferer here! It is indeed common in us autistics. Normal (neurotypical) people have two areas of the brain dealing with recognition. One is specifically for faces/people, the other is for inanimate objects.
In autistics, the facial one doesn’t really function, so we have to use the “objects” one for people.
Which is all very well, but virtually all people’s faces are the same basic object with two eyes, a nose and a mouth! So we depend much more on things like hairstyle or clothes, and get thrown if these change.
I’ve walked past my own DD in the street when she wasn’t standing quite where I expected to meet her.
Airports are a nightmare. I stand there, smiling hopefully, as a load of apparently identical people come off a plane, and pray that the person I’m meeting will spot me - as I have no chance of recognising them!

I have a degree of this, the absolute worst is people out of context

A lady walked past me about 3 weeks ago while I was standing in a shop (thankfully I was taking a phonecall so didn't embarrass myself) she smiled an acknowledgement to me as she passed and I smiled back, I know I've spoken to her before in a professional context but have been wracking my brains ever since and still can't think who she is, although ironically I can remember her in my mind's eye And know I would know it was her from the shop incident should I happen to see her in the near future.

My DH now has strict instructions to introduce me to people properly and Not just expect me to know who they are

Films: aargh the amount of times a film has been ruined for me as both leading ladies will be similar looking blondes for example, Why do casting people do this??

Strangely I'm currently watching Orphan Black and really enjoying it but I guess they're all meant to look alike 🤔

Conversely I'm great with voices. The amount of times I've been in a public loo for example and heard someone and thought oh that's so and so!

Reading this thread, I think I have a touch of this, and other members of my family have it quite strongly. I was at a school concert recently and was surprised to see a new member of music staff turning pages for one of the pianists. It was my 16yo daughter, dressed up smart for the occasion.

So can you tell that someone is hot/ attractive/ugly if faces don't mean anything to you?

Honestly? Firm biceps, nice bum, excellent dress sense! Black tie helps a lot. Facial features are an element, but are quite a long way down the list.

NB: This also applies to DH, just in case he is snooping .