Synesthesia- colours/numbers

[DinosApple]

DD has told me she sees colours in her mind when she sees or hears numbers.

Naturally, this came about when doing some maths homework and she got frustrated saying she 'hated 6, it's a dirty shade of yellow', so I asked if that happened with any other numbers. Turns out they all have a colour.

Has anyone else got experience of this? I've only googled - and discovered such things have a name and there's lots of versions of it.

She's 9 and has struggles with maths. I'm wondering if there's some magic colourful way to help her with things like memorising times tables!

There is some evidence that synesthesia can be linked to some specific learning difficulties eg dyslexia. Her difficulty memorising times tables could be linked

My husband has a form of this - experiencing numbers as 3D shapes and describing them as smooth/spiky etc. They can also be soothing or make him feel uncomfortable. He loves maths and went on to study maths and stats at uni. So it’s not necessarily linked to struggling with maths.

DD1 has number-colour and phoneme-colour synaesthesia. It does mean that she sometimes has unusual ways of working in maths that don't match the teacher's but she's good at it - working about 3 years ahead of chronological age so not gifted but quite able.

I have time-space synaesthesia. Timetables can be a bit of a challenge if they don't match my internal vision of time, but I'm really well organised!

I experience a lot of smells as colour. Also I can't properly explain it, but sometimes I experienced emotion as colour. The colour isn't describing a traditional emotional iyswim but as in I feel green but can't articulate what green exactly is other than green... I doubt that makes sense to anyone other than me

I do with numbers, the alphabet, days of the week, years etc. Sequences basically. As well as colour, it's very much about light and shade for me.

I don't see colours but every letter of the alphabet and day of the week is either odd or even to me and has been since I was a child. Also when counting I have an imagine of the numbers in my head from 1-100 and 1 is at the right hand side with 100 on the left. Rather than being in a straight row they go in a really weird pattern up, down, round etc it's hard to explain. Also had this since I was a young child .

I have number/letter-colour, ticker tape and time-space. I thought everyone did until I mentioned it to my mother and she thought I'd gone batty.

This is what I mean by how I see numbers in my head. My writing isn't very clear on the painting app but it gives an idea

DD has it with colours and words.

My sister has colours for numbers too! She remembers phone numbers by colours.

That's interesting twosun, DD's G&T. Her dad's dyslexic and dyspraxic though.

I can taste colours. I thought it was normal because of the 'taste the rainbow' skittles advert. Why else would they say that if you can't taste colours?

Mentioned to my mum that I really liked the taste of the hot pink outfit a gladiator was wearing and she looked at me as though I was mad.

I don't know how to link it to learning though.

My DS 'sees' different pitches and tones of voice as colours, although we didn't realise until this summer (he's 11) because he assumed everyone did and had never mentioned it. It came out when he was learning a keyboard piece for school and he described a note as 'the orange one'. His grandmother and cousin both have synaesthesia as well - his cousin in particular has it much more full-on, with numbers, sounds, colours, textures etc. She's a musician and grandmother is an artist.

I see days of the week as colours and tastes and I can taste certain words.

Thank you all, that's really interesting! It's not something I have so I really appreciate all the various descriptions.

Yes, DD has dyslexia and dyspraxia, she's a whizz at reading, but writing is her particular blind spot. Maths isnt terrible but below average. She's very easily distracted (in everything) but if colours keep popping into her head doing maths no wonder she struggles to concentrate!

I've just had a conversation with DH. Turns out that 7 is yellow in his head and he can taste green! We've been together 15 years and I had no idea.

He explained it as things tasting green but aren't necessarily that colour. He didn't mean fresh, just the colour. That's the only colour he can taste though. (He's colour blind with red/green and probably dyslexic too.)

Fascinating reading and I will chat to DD to see if we can work out the best way for her to learn.

Thank you so much all!

What type of flavour is his green? My green is a kind of earthy taste, just curious if it's similar.

Yes I have this although for me 6 is postbox red so a favourite of mine. 8 is shitty brown so not fond of that. I also see 2 as light blue and 5 as royal blue so different shades of the same colour.

I had this as a child but grew out of it I think.

Goody I'll ask him when he wakes up, he's dozing.
He just said it tasted green...

Proud yes DD has 2 shades of yellow and two blues.

I can recommend the book Born on A Blue Day by Daniel Tammet. Lots of detail about this and your daughter could read it also. I'm mentioned in it as he was my childhood neighbour!