(APRIL 28, 2024) In a Good Housekeeping article, Julie Dumas, Ph.D., professor of psychiatry, discussed the scientific reasons behind why parents mix up their kids’ names.
Julie Dumas, Ph.D., professor of psychiatry
(APRIL 28, 2024) In a Good Housekeeping article, Julie Dumas, Ph.D., professor of psychiatry, discussed the scientific reasons behind why parents mix up their kids’ names.
The “cognitive glitch” of calling one of your children by the name of a different family member—even the dog!—is very common, especially during the chaos of trying to get multiple kids ready and out the door on a busy school morning. It’s actually a sign of how organized your brain is.
“The brain is a magnificent computer network,” Dumas says, “and information is organized within an interconnected semantic network of stored data.”
The inability to keep your kids’ or pets’ names straight doesn’t mean you can’t tell them apart—it’s just a brain blip that happens in a split second. Because calling out a loved one’s name is not something you have think about, the brain’s automatic processes take over. “When you’re rushed, stressed or multi-tasking, you rely on these automatic responses to spit out the information you need—in this case, your child’s name,” says Dumas. “For example, my son Emmett’s name is on speed dial in my brain, so I often call my husband and even our cat by that name if I’m racing around the house.”
Calling your child by a sibling’s name is not a memory issue. “It’s neither due to forgetfulness nor aging. It’s more a sign of stress than of cognitive decline,” Dumas says. This mix-up is typically not a symptom of anything more serious. “It becomes concerning when you don’t realize that you just did it, or if other people start noticing other significant memory problems,” she adds.
This topic was also covered in a New York Post article.
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