Does my autistic child have Prosopagnosia?

Some autistic children may have a condition called Prosopagnosia or Face blindness. The severity of this can vary from being unable to recognise familiar faces to being unable to distinguish faces from other everyday objects. You can read more about Prosopagnosia here.

This is a part of autism that I never really considered. We just laughed when Edward called me ‘Daddy’ and called Daddy ‘Mummy.’ Then he progressed to calling me ‘DaddyMummy’ and’MummyDaddy’

When my children were around the age of two and we used to sit round the table with extended family, we would play a game by pointing to someone and asking ‘Who’s that?’ All of my nieces and nephews used to love playing this game and as they grew older they would quickly improve and recognise family members correctly.

So what happened when we tried with Edward? Well, he just didn’t make any attempt to answer and would either just carry on engrossed in what he was doing or he’d get down from the table and run off.

If we saw his teaching assistant outside of school in a supermarket, he wouldn’t respond to them when they came up to say hello. I believe this was because they were in a place that was out of context and he couldn’t process that information.

When I used to collect him from pre school, they said that he had made a little friend called Michael. One day, we saw Michael and his Mum in Tesco and whilst Edward didn’t say hello, there was definitely a flicker of recognition. Over time, his recognition of Michael has increased. When he sees him now he jumps up and down with excitement and calls him by his name. Whenever we are close to Michael’s house he asks if can go over to play.

Whenever he sees and elderly lady in the street he shouts out ‘Hello Granny!’ I have to remind him that it’s not his granny.

Recently, in the space of a week we have noticed a significant shift in this. We were out with Matthew’s friends. I pointed to one of Matthew’s friends and said ‘Edward, who’s this?’ Straight away, he replied ‘Charlie!’ This made Charlie’s day to have Edward recognise him so quickly.

Then, later in the week, we had some correspondence from Edward’s school. They said that he was able to recognise a photo of himself and look at pictures of other children in his class. When his teacher asked ‘Who is that?’ He was able to identify them correctly.

I am confident that Edward does now recognise me as his Mummy. He might still call my friends ‘Mummy’ but they all have dark hair like me and he doesn’t really look up at them to check who it is.

Edward definitely also recognises my husband as his Daddy and Matthew as his brother.

In conclusion, I don’t think that Edward does have Prosopagnosia. I think that he’s just too busy to bother to take notice of people around him.

Do you have any experience of Prosopagnosia? Have you ever heard of it before? Let me know in the comments below.