Quadruplets with their birth-order shaved into their heads

A family of quadruplets in Shenzhen, China have had the numbers 1-4 shaved into their heads by their parents in order to aid in telling them apart:

'Even now, their father can't tell which one is which.
'Sometimes, he punishes the second one for something the third one has done.'
The boys won't be able to get away with shifting the blame for much longer however with their new easily identifiable haircuts.
'Teachers and classmates can't get confused with the big marks on their head,' their mother added.

Mother gives Chinese quadruplets numbered haircuts (via Crazy Abalone)

(Image: a downsized, cropped thumbnail from a larger image by AFP)

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Heartfruit

I can’t tell this is cruel, brilliant or both.
- http://www.matthewpetty.com/ Matthew Petty
  
  Branding would be cruel.
  - Antinous / Moderator
    
    In my day, they just took a knuckle off a different finger of each child.
    - ChicagoD
      
      Ooh. That’d work.
      - Antinous / Moderator
        
        During the battle for Cawdor Castle in 1511, Muriel Calder’s nurse branded her with a hot key and bit a knuckle off one of her fingers to make her harder to replace. Although, as the Campbell leader at the time said, “As long as there’s a red-haired lass in the Highlands, Muriel can never die.”
    - Just_Ok
      
      These days, kids are always giving a finger to their parents.
    - cservant
      
      So that’s why Luke Skywalker loses a limb?
  - thecleaninglady
    
    Punishing would be cruel. It only teaches children to be afraid of the parent and follow orders without understanding why. Short-term compliance at a tremendous cost.
- http://2012diaries.blogspot.com/ tristan eldritch
  
  Yeah, I was thinking really cute…..and weird at the same time.
  In fairness, the only reason it looks cute is that the kid whose 1 looks like a mohawk is really cute. The other two guys could be weeping for all I know.
http://pulse.yahoo.com/_ZH5LQHHJPERMWNVHCR2Y5GRHHE Jose

Hah! This will only work until the kids wise up and shave their heads completely.
yupgiboy

Tattoos. They need tattoos.
- Just_Ok
  
  what if they’re Jewish?
http://twitter.com/KEdwardK Keith Edwards

Reminds me of “The Five Chinese Brothers,” one of my favorite childhood stories.
Brainspore

Identical Quads are incredibly rare. Even fraternal quadruplets only occur in something like 1 in every 700,000 births.
- TooGoodToCheck
  
  The article doesn’t really get into whether they are genetically identical. I seem to recall that the Olsen twins weren’t actually identical – just similar looking and same age. Dressing them all exactly the same helps to contribute to the impression of sameness.
  - Brainspore
    
    This article doesn’t say but another news story I saw said “identical.” If the parents are still having a hard time telling them apart then that’s almost certainly the case. Parents are usually pretty good at that sort of thing (and I speak as both an identical twin and a parent of twins myself).
jandrese

My question is: Why are they shaved with arabic numerals?
- http://profile.yahoo.com/65CSAR3QATRNKJW4NYNB2BESZE JohnQPublic
  
  because roman numerals are passe
- Brainspore
  
  You try getting a six-year-old to hold still long enough to shave “四” into his noggin.
  - Wreckrob8
    
    Number one would get his Mohawk sideways too. Not quite so cool, even for a six-year-old.
- corydodt
  
  Came here to ask this. It looks like there are multiple different systems of numeric symbols in use in China; perhaps they picked the one with the broadest use. And, according to wikipedia, Arabic numbers are most commonly used when writing is horizontal instead of vertical. I guess these children are more horizontal than vertical.
  - jandrese
    
    Was that a fat joke?
Wreckrob8

Four is unlucky in China because in Mandarin the words for four and death are homophones. Four should be renamed five.
- TooGoodToCheck
  
  There’s a seventh-son type origin story brewing here.
  - Antinous / Moderator
    
    Maybe Octomom and Quatrodad could get a reality show.
    - TooGoodToCheck
      
      I was thinking more like a God of Death type thing, but sure. As long as they’re willing to behave badly on camera and have a tonne of largely pointless drama, I’m sure they could get a TV show
- kansas
  
  Maybe they should be identified by name and not number.
  - Ashen Victor
    
    So you want to shave their names shaved on their heads?
    That would need some mad skills as an hairdresser…
  - Antinous / Moderator
    
    Don’t watch the Charlie Chan films.
- Petzl
  
  I’m surprised they put the “4″ on that kid. Chinese are mad serious about certain numbers being bad mojo, much worse than our “13″ superstition.
eselqueso

At least #1 ends up with a halfway cool mowhawk…
connie1946

There’s certainly nothing potentially humiliating or de-humanizing about numbering one’s children. But I think an easier way of identifying the KWAD KIDS would have been to have them wear color-coded HELLO KITTY costumes until they’re of legal drinking age
- Donald Petersen
  
  I know a 2nd-grade teacher who assigned her students numbers at the beginning of each year, and insisted that each student write this number alongside the student’s name at the top of each homework and classwork paper. More than once, when a child forgot and only wrote his or her name without the corresponding number, the teacher tore the offending schoolwork to shreds in front of the whole class. Sounds like something out of The Wall, but this was in Los Angeles, just a couple of years ago.
  
  There are other aspects of this teacher’s M.O. which I detest, as well.
  - http://twitter.com/cjporkchop cjporkchop
    
    I hope that someday, when that teacher fills out complicated paperwork for taxes or insurance or something, she makes a tiny mistake and the agent tears the form up in front of her.
erratic

how do they know they put the right number on the right kid?
- Donald Petersen
  
  I think, when driven to such a stratagem, one just has to make the assumption and hope for the best.
- danarmak
  
  They weren’t numbered before they were shaved like that. They just took a kid at random and shaved “1″, etc.
http://www.nitinbadjatia.com nitinbadjatia

What if #1 has do do #2?
Antinous / Moderator

In ancient Rome, daughters weren’t given praenomina (given names); they were known by the feminine version of the nomen (clan name [gens]) or cognomen (family name). If there was more than one daughter, they were called by ordinals. Mr. Roscius’s first daughter would be known as Roscia, but his third daughter would be called Tertia (Third).
- Boundegar
  
  I was just thinking about that! It went for boys too… see: Octavian.
  - Antinous / Moderator
    
    In the case of male children, ordinal names were static and had no relationship to birth order.
thecleaninglady

“Teachers and classmates can’t get confused with the big marks on their head…” until the day the boys got their hands on the hair trimmer.
http://daruiburns.tumblr.com/ Dlo Burns

It’d be cooler if they had the symbols for the Four Heavenly Directions shaved in their heads.
beemoh

It’s a good thing that they stopped at four, really.

“Six! Stop do– Wait, are you Six, or Nine?”
“Eight! Stop lying on your side! You are NOT infinity!”
- Brainspore
  
  “I am not a number! I am a free man!”
  - Boundegar
    
    We want… INFORMATION.
    - Brainspore
      
      SPOILER: When Number Six finally pulls the mask off of Number One he sees his own face. But the same thing happened with numbers two through five, so it wasn’t really much of a surprise.
Geoduck

There were twin girls in my high school class who were identical until one of them got in a car accident and ended up with a small but highly noticeable scar right across one cheek. I guess God got tired of confusing them..
- Antinous / Moderator
  
  I grew up with many sets of identical twins. I never seem to have any trouble telling twins apart. Maybe it’s just a learned skill.
  - Shibi_SF
    
    Maybe they smell differently (to you). As in, identity pheromones or something? (IE: Perry smells like bacon, I like Perry! // Terry smells like flowers, he’s “the Other” twin).
  - Brainspore
    
    Whereas I still can’t always tell my brother and myself apart in photos from our early childhood since that wasn’t a skill I ever had to learn.
    - Antinous / Moderator
      
      One difference is hair color and texture. They might be close, but they’re rarely identical. Plus, after a year or so of interacting with the world, fixed facial expressions usually start to diverge.
  - marilove
    
    I think some people are just more observant of smaller differences. I’m an identical twin and some people couple tell us easily, while others never could.
    
    My dad still has problems telling us apart if it’s on the phone, or if we’re in the same room together and he’s not paying much attention, haha.
    
    Also, some people are better at recognizing faces than others. Are you?
    - Wreckrob8
      
      My mother still can’t always tell me from my monozygotic twin brother on the phone.
      
      Certainly by the age of six anything which helped others see us as individuals was cool. Hopefully these kids will be the kids with the cool haircuts (and a cool mum, too), and not the freaky quads.
    - Antinous / Moderator
      
      I usually score > 95% on those face recognition tests. I also notice body language.
      - Jerril
        
        I usually test out <65-70%, and IRL have trouble telling the occasional pair of random strangers apart. Never mind Hollywood actors, who seem to come in standardized formats.
        
        Needless to say, it took me quite a while to realize we had twins working at our second building. Eeep.
http://www.facebook.com/people/Linley-Lee/665497022 Linley Lee

I have a bad time with twins. There were twin brothers who worked at my local chemist, both with the same job. I didn’t realise until I saw them both working there one day. I could only tell them apart when they were next to each other.

I also taugh twins when I lived in Hong Kong, didn’t realise until quite a fair way through the year that they were twins, I thought they were the same kid.
- marilove
  
  Do you have problems recognizing faces in general?
  - http://www.facebook.com/people/Linley-Lee/665497022 Linley Lee
    
    Actually, no. But that would be a good excuse.