There’s no shame if you misname.
Mixing up your children’s names (or even calling your kid the name of your family dog) isn’t necessarily cause for concern, one expert asserts.
Dr. Samantha Deffler, an associate professor of psychology at York College of Pennsylvania, told Good Housekeeping that it can simply be a “cognitive glitch” that is “natural” and “very common.”
“Moms, especially moms,” Deffler previously told NPR. “Any mom I talked to says, ‘You know, I’ve definitely done this.'”
The psychologist led a study surveying more than 1,700 people, finding that more than half of the participants had experienced their name being confused by a relative, and 95% “were called the incorrect name by a family member.”
“I worked on this study before I had kids,” Deffler told Good Housekeeping. “And now that I’m a mom, I make the same naming mistakes that my mother did.”
The brain stores information like folders on a computer and thus, choosing the wrong name is like opening up the wrong file within a folder.
“We found that naming errors typically happen within a category, so the wrong name being used is in the same group,” Deffler told Good Housekeeping. “It would be weird for a mom to call her child by a name outside of that family category.”
It’s why your mom may call you by your sibling’s name — and also why your current flame might accidentally slip and call you by the name of their ex.
See: Ross Geller saying “Rachel” instead of “Emily” at the altar during one of the most famous episodes of “Friends.”
But don’t fret, the momentary mix-up isn’t necessarily a sign of cognitive decline nor aging, assured Dr. Julie Dumas, an associated professor of psychiatry at the University of Vermont.
In fact, It’s more likely a sign of stress, she noted.
“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,” she told Good Housekeeping, adding that it’s only cause for concern if you don’t notice the mistake or if you experience other memory problems.
Experts recommend slowing down and focusing on who you’re talking to in order to say the correct name.
“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,” Dumas added.