Four year old doesn’t recognise people

[BillywigStings]

My four year old son seems to have trouble recognising faces/telling people apart.

It was a bit amusing at first, how he would spot someone with the same hair cut as daddy and run at them shouting “DADDY!” which would make me so embarrassed. He has done this a few times now with me and my husband, mistaking strangers for us and greeting them mistakenly. However he recently had us worried when looking through Facebook photos of our friends and pointed at a young, dark skinned Pakistani friend of ours and insisted it was “grandad” and as far as we could tell he saw the dark hair and beard and decided it was his white, fifty something grandad. He was completely serious.

Looking through photos, he did not recognise his uncle (who to be fair he similar colouring to him and only 5 years older (9) ) and thought it was himself.

He saw a photo of his other uncle and thought it was a man who worked in a local shop we are friendly with.

I don’t know if you have heard of prognoplasia (spelling?) but it’s when people’s brains don’t process human faces in a normal way and can’t recognise faces, and instead often use other ways of telling people apart - through distinctive clothes or hair styles. Now I don’t know if my son has this, but it rings alarm bells because I have similar problems to my son, and was recently looking into why I am this way.

Both of us have terrible eye contact - I myself have social anxiety and hate looking anyone in the eye and my husband insists that this is what is wrong with both of us as he says you can’t recognise someone if you don’t look them in the eye. I argue that I do look people in the eye but I just don’t do prolonged contact so it shouldn’t affect my ability to recognise faces...and yet I frequently forget what people look like unless I know them quite well.

I intend to keep a close eye on my son and if he continues to do this, book a gp appointment for the two of us (as I feel I have a milder version of his problem because my mother never mentioned me doing this as a child but I definitely have problems now). I feel I need to pinpoint whether he’s simply not paying attention when he looks at people or if there is a serious problem.

Just curious if anyone else has had this problem with their child

I have this. My condition has improved over time.I’ve trained myself to stop using workarounds and to just let my eyes rest on a face and let my brain soak it up.

Could be prosopagnosia (face blindness) but there are other possibilities - have you had his eyes tested?

Has he been to the opticians?

He hasn’t been to the opticians no...have not even suspected he might have eye problems so I’ll definitely get him an appointment.
@amoregentlemanlikemanner glad to find I’m not alone, I’ll need to try to do that too. I used to be great at art as a teen and I now never forget those people whose faces I sketched lol, down to tiny detail. Maybe this all started when I gave up art haha!

Prosopagnosia is fairly common. I have it. Mary Sieghart, former Times columnist, has it eg when she meets people out of context she can't place them. She wrote of the time she sat next to someone at the opera and was startled when he greeted her by name ... it was only later she realized it was the managing editor of the Times. Some of it may be due to general lack of interest in people, or perhaps that's a consequence. At the opposite end of the scale are the super-recognisers. However not recognising a close family member does seem odd. Try the optician route but otherwise pursue via your GP?

As others have said, I'd get his eyesight checked before you look at other conditions. It could be that all he's seeing is a 'blurred male' face rather than specific features.

Can he tell male from female or does he call women Daddy as well?

"I used to be great at art as a teen and I now never forget those people whose faces I sketched lol, down to tiny detail."

very interesting!! I think we may be not perceiving because we aren't looking (in my case often taking in too much sound-based detail).

But I can remember Laurel and Hardy's faces singing "The Blue Ridged Mountains of Virginia" from when I was seven ....

....as others have said though, do rule out the more day to day stuff eyesight-wise won't you?

I was going to say Prosopagnosia as well when I read your post. I would take him to the GP and see if it is just that he needs glasses or if he cannot distinguish faces.

Sounds like facial blindness to me, I'm another one that has this to an extent. As your child is 4, are they due for a pre-school eye test soon?

This has just been discussed on BBC a news. I have it to a degree. It's not related to eyesight it's the brains inability to reassemble facial features for the purpose of 'remembering'

Yes my son has this he's diagnosed Autism his paediatrician said it was delayed facial recognition, it's quite sad and embarrassing when people don't know you and your child goes up to them thinking their his mum, because they may have the same hair colour and the same coloured top on, and the stranger looks at you as if to say omg why does your child not recognise you and probably think negative of you, I cried when it first happened but understood it when his specialist explained it to us, me and dad decided to get a tattoo, now he knows if ever he gets confused he looks at the arm and knows instantly, it can be very distressing for them too, they become confused and disoriented

Look into binocular vision (which can be diagnosed by a behavioural optometrist).