They say a mother is always able to recognize her children even if her offspring are genetically identical.  Surely even Nadya Suleman, the infamous Octomom, is able to tell the difference between each child in her artificially created brood.

But what about the rest of us?  Without a maternal connection to sets of identical siblings, how are we supposed to tell them apart?

Enter one mother in China who had a low-cost solution to this problem: shave numbers into their heads.  Why hasn’t anyone done this before?  Taking a cue from The Island is a brilliant idea, nothing could ever go wrong.

Her thinking: The teachers at school can’t tell the children apart, their friends must be puzzled when trying to distinguish between each kid, so the best way to remedy the situation is to bestow numbers upon the children and semi-permanently brand their heads with said numbers.

 The four boys live in Guangdong Province in China and they do have actual names: Jiang Yun Long, Yun Xiao, Yun Han, Yun Lin (try saying that 5 times fast…I thought “Huey, Dewy and Louey was bad enough).

They say that if you look closely, you can distinguish the boys by their double and single eyelids.  Their mother confesses, “When the children were about one and a half years old, I couldn’t tell them apart unless they wore name tags.  Their father still can’t tell them apart.”  She says that her husband has even mistakenly scolded and spanked the wrong son, unable to distinguish the difference between the four.  In that kind of situation, no doubt the cleverest of the bunch will survive, convincing their father: “It wasn’t me, Pops, it was Number 3!”

Since that incident and a previous one involving the wrong child being scolded by their teacher, their mother began to seriously consider her options to alleviate the situation, driving her to take drastic measure and carve numbers into her children’s heads.  After about 40 minutes at the barber’s, the four boys had a stylish new hairdo with the numbers, “1, 2, 3, 4″ cut into their hair.

Internet users have greatly differing opinions on this matter.  Some applaud the new hair cuts saying, “It’s so cute!” and “Their mother is really clever!”  Others condemn labeling the children with numbers commenting, “Parents just don’t do this!” and “What horrible parenting.”

We don’t know what the four boys think of their new hair-do’s and new “nicknames,” but they seem to look happy at school.  Let’s hope the mother labeled her kids correctly…

[ Read in Japanese ]