The mum didn’t remember me.

[Getfromoutmeroad]

Weird, slightly awkward incident.

Dd started school last year, I saw a few mums at pick, exchange pleasantries etc, there isn’t really a big group of mum friends there, which I’m fine with as I have my friends outside of that, most of them with kids who Dd is friends with.
Dd had her birthday party at the end of the year, I invited all the class, lots came and it was a nice day. One of the mums I’ve said hi to came, my Dd likes her son, I chatted to her at the party, offered drinks etc, she was nice but didn’t join in massively, which is fine and I totally get it.
Saw her the last few days, said hi etc, then today my Dd wants to walk out with her Ds, they walk out holding hands which was very sweet, so we start to chat and then she asks if my dd started this year or if she was in school last year 🤷🏻‍♀️I was a bit surprised and confused and said that she was here last year.
Now I’m thinking I must be so unmemorable 😂how can you literally forget a person whose party you went to
Felt so awkward

I feel like I'd remember someone of o went to their child's party and talked to them but maybe she struggled with her memory or faces or just went to a lot of
parties?!'

No it isn't odd at all. She could have memory issues and nobody would know.

My memory is shocking as I had a mini stroke, I will not remember people I don't interact with on a regular basis. My memory used to be sharp as anything.

Very poor facial recognition is a real thing. I suffer from it as do 2 of my siblings. I recently asked a good friend if it was my adult DS just ahead of us in the park- it wasn’t but I couldn’t be certain.

I also recently met someone for the ‘first’ time and shook her hand and she looked rightly awkward and reminded me she’d been to dinner with us a few weeks ago. I was really embarrassed.

Like a pp, I can remember thongs I’m told and dates and all sorts of things but faces are hard. And faces out of context, well don’t go there.

So no, it’s not personal and she may have other issues altogether but she sounds friendly so don’t hold it against her or feel you are dull.

I realised after a second that you were using your MN username as a stand in for your actual name but on first read thought you'd introduced yourself to your own son. And you'd somehow only met him a few times

What about people like me who have a real disability with face recognition? With me, it NEVER happens that I would recognize their face 'even if I don't remember quite who they are', because visually recognizing their face is the LAST thing, rather than the first thing, I would know about them. Once I know who they are, I will probably know who all their children are, where they went on holiday 5 years ago, what their favourite foods are, or anything else that they might have mentioned in conversation. I have NEVER in my entire life experienced a sense of visual familiarity without knowing who the person was. On the other hand, I have quite often recognized a person by their voice, mannerisms, the general context, etc., and still not had that sense of visual familiarity. It's unfair to get offended at what is a genuine disability, just as it would be unfair to get offended at a partially sighted person for failing to see you, or a hard-of-hearing person for failing to hear you.

I have some face blindness. Nowhere near total, but out of context I struggle to place people and am reluctant to use their names because I don't remember their faces. Don't take it personally, @Getfromoutmeroad . This sort of thing happening is a nightmare scenario of mine - not recognizing someone I spent a nontrivial amount of time with.

It’s a thing, face blindness or prosopagnosia. I have it and it’s awful, I cringe to think how many people I’ve upset the way you have been. I could spend hours talking to someone at a party and not recognise them afterwards, I really can’t help it. I spend half my life talking to people who’ve met me while trying to pretend I know who they are.

I am a super recogniser of faces, my mum is fairly face blind. I easily remember things my best friend can’t remember much at all.

just because you can doesn’t mean she can. We can’t judge people by the same standards and there is a huge variation

I'm really bad at remembering people, it's not deliberate, I used to try so hard at work to remember people at meetings (maybe 10 people in the room that I didn't know), but I would totally have no idea who they were a week or two later. My DH remembers people he saw fleetingly years ago, I guess it's something that varies between people and me and DH are on the opposite ends of the spectrum. I also have trouble with names, hello and then a big void where the name should be, so embarrassing.

It's common enough that it's not "odd". I am not trying to be unpleasant to the OP, but other school mums or random people like that are so low on the list of priorities, I don't remember half of them either.

People look familiar, but I don't really know if I actually know them, or if they look like someone I know.

I attended an exercise class several times a week for a few years with the same person. I saw them in a different context (business meeting) and didn’t recognise them from Adam!
that's really common!

I have severe face blindness. On top of that me and my son are standing out because we are different races and everyone remembers us. I hate it. I never know if I should know someone already.

Honestly, she only met you briefly at one event and you and your DD are probably one of many, many pairs of mums and kids she's met over the past year at birthday parties etc. If she only really met you that one time, and has taken her child to lots of other kids' parties as well, there's no real reason why she'd remember you and your DD clearly. I'm sure you're no more unmemorable than the next person, but neither is the other mum being weird/flaky.

It must be nice to remember all the mums you've exchanged a few pleasantrieswith a while ago, every single one.

I have one child. She had a few close friends at school, some lasted a bit longer than primary. I remember a few of them, not many. Their mums? Not a chance. Back when dd was at school, I'd've remembered you if I'd really really liked you or really really disliked you, or if your child was such a good friend with mine that we made at least some joint outings. Otherwise not. It's partly because that, despite appearing to be pretty ormal and being able to carry on a long and involved conversation most of the time, I have awful memory problems from MS. I quitepossibly wouldn't remember the long and involved conversation either.

I'm not sure I would remember someone I met briefly like that. Also I struggle with recognising faces sometimes, I have to meet someone several times before I am 100% sure I will recognise them again.

I voted YABU, although it’s happened to me - I’m the rememberer and people usually forget me. Or possibly they pretend to as it’s easier to start afresh if they’ve forgotten what we were talking about. If it’s awkward, I just politely remind them and then all is well, and we pick up where we left off.

We don’t know why, brain fog? A lot on her mind? You changed your hair?!

I wouldn’t have taken it personally, but would’ve jogged her memory about your DD’s party.

My friend once had a bf who couldn't recognise his own mum or anyone else for that matter. If she parted her hair different side, or wore a different coat he though she was a stranger. Prosopagnosia.

But actually, I WOULD expect them to at least recognise my face

But you understand that it's not personal, surely? You know that not everyone has the same kind of visual memory, and that we all process that sort of information differently? It's not some kind of snub if someone doesn't recognise your face, and neither are they being careless or off-hand - it's simply that they don't remember faces very well. Some people are pretty much completely face-blind, and that's at the most extreme end of the scale, but millions of people just don't have a particularly good visual memory and there's nothing they can actually do about that. Getting offended by that is a bit like getting offended by someone, eg, having mild asthma.

It's highly unbelievable in all honesty

There are only 30 kids. You remember who had a party because you had to buy their child a gift, write a card and remember the parent name so you can say, Hi Rita, thanks for a lovely party! Little Betty had s great time

It's a joke in my house that I would have made a great spy / intelligence agent. No one remembers me. I am completely and utterly unmemorable or else people tell me i look like someone else. I'm like 'generic person'. It's not the worst thing, they'd remember me if I was hideous 😀. My dh never remembers people, he actually wonders if face blindness is a real thing for him but he is distinctive looking so everyone remembers him. So you can imagine how many times as a couple someone blanks me, greets him, he looks at me, I greet and name drop the other person and we all pretend it's not socially awkward.

I used to be like you. It goes as you get older especially if you have a job where you're meeting multiple people each day and getting told 100 pieces of information throughout the day that you have to remember or act on. Then you find yourself repeating the same story to people you realise you've already told it to. You realise your brain is just a filing cabinet and gradually get stuffed with infornation as you go through life till eventually it can't cope anymore and just churns out crap.

Sometimes if I encounter a lot of people in a short space of time I don’t always remember them either and especially if I’m stressed at the time, I wouldn’t be too offended by it and from what you wrote it didn’t seem like she was pretending not to remember you, maybe she is just a very stressed, tired mum who is also a bit scatty
I think there is also a facial recognition condition where some people just don’t remember faces, maybe she has this

I suffer with this. I can meet someone in the morning and not recognise them later in the day (gets awkward with clients sometimes!).

I have done this and it's really embarrassing. Nothing to do with the person being unmemorable, everything to do with me being awful with faces.

I’ve had people be offended, convinced I was ignoring them (why I have no idea).

I haven’t even seen them, probably because I was lost in thought.

Find it strange people can take things so personally. My brain pattern would be more “oh they obviously didn’t recognise me” not “oh no, why are they ignoring me”.