How to tell if my child is colourblind.

[HarrysMummy17]

My 4 yr old ds has always mixed up red and yellow. I used to think he was just confusing them but now I'm wondering if he's colourblind? How would I know?

Google for some tests I would think. If they can see the number they’re not colourblind, broadly.

eg www.colorlitelens.com/kids-color-blind-test
They get a simple test at school or before school if you’re in the uk though. Or they did until a few years ago.

Excellent, thank you. He's just turned 4 this week and won't start school until the August after. He's 5 as we're in Scotland so I'm guessing he'll get an eye test next year.
I'll see how he gets in with the tests.

It's quite common for boys in particular to struggle with naming colours even if they can see a difference. One of my boys was nearing school age and not reliably recognising and naming colours and I was worried but a few simple tests confirmed that he could tell the difference and I was reassured it would come with time - it did, he's a teenager without any sight or learning issues. This is the same child I took for a hearing test TWICE - again, he's fine turns out he was either ignoring me or tuning out

Print some of the colour tests.

In U.K. the opticians is free for kids, not sure about Scotland, but book him in when they’re open.

It’s usually hereditary. Is your dad colour blind? My dad is, all the boys born through women on the that side of the family are colour blind. So if I was to have a boy, he would also be colour blind.

@mymadworld thank you for the reassurance. He mainly struggles with red and yellow and sometimes blue and purple. We mention it to nursery when they go back and see if they notice anything too

Thanks @GreenTulips. I'll see about getting him booked in when we can!

@Knobblybobbly
As far as I know my dad wasn't. I'm sure I would have known if he was! It just crossed my mind after always having to correct him when naming red/yellow things. Hopefully he's just confusing them!

My Dad’s colour blindness is red/green. Yellow is the only colour he is totally confident with actually! He says they red and green look very similar to him, basically brown. Luckily it has never hindered him in any way, besides his colour choices when getting dressed! And wiring a plug.

It always amazes me when they get those colour correcting glasses on Facebook videos, and they know the correct names for all the colours. How do they know what green looks like if they’ve never seen it before? I’d love to get my dad some, he’s over 70, can you imagine seeing red and green for the first time in your 70’s?!

In Scotland you get an appointment sent out from the local eye clinic (usually at your local hospital) for screening at or around age 5. They test for vision, stigmatisum/squints, 3D vision, non binocular vision and colour blindness.
That said I'm not sure what is going on with the screening program due to covid19 right now. So doing an online test will help put your mind at ease they are quick and easy to do as you just type the number that you can see. Depending on which type of colour blindness you have (or not) you will see a different number.

Pretty sure my 6 year old is colour blind. most of the boys in my side of the family are ( although not all, my 5 year old isn't) doesn't really affect him much, just seems to get shades of colours wrong every so often,, eg thinks purple is pink, orange yellow ect

Might be different in different areas but the vision screening my children had when they started school didn’t include testing for colour blindness. I was shocked by this since, at that age, teachers use colour a lot to teach other things e.g my DS2 was being given colour-by-numbers maths worksheets of pictures with sums on...colour any section with the answer 3 in red, any with the answer 5 in green, any with the answer 6 in brown... of course he got it all wrong, nothing wrong with his maths he just couldn’t tell the red, brown and green pencils apart!

The vision screening found he might need glasses so we were referred for an eye test at the hospital and I asked them about his colour vision. They tested him with those numbers hidden in coloured dots (ishihara test) and he couldn’t see any of them.

Red/green colour blindness is the most common type and affects all colours that red and green are part of. So purple is often confused with blue because they can’t see the red in the purple, orange and yellow gets confused, yellowy greens get confused with yellow, darker greens and red look brown. My son can’t see baby pink at all, just looks grey. I first noticed when he couldn’t tell the difference between the red, yellow and orange balls in his ball pit. My brother is colour blind and my grandad was too so always a chance I’d be carrying the gene, I’ve got one boy with it and one boy without.

There’s a few men in my family with colour blindness including my ds. As a tip for later on, I always bought him crayola crayons as they have the names of the colours on them and I would reduce the selection to just the most obvious colours (no salmon, russet or ochre). It helped a lot in school

DD1 struggles with naming colours.

Get a big bag and go around the house collecting things in different colours (i did yellow, red, blue and green). Plates, cups, bath toys, wtv!!

And then make a game of separating in different piles.

If he struggles too much, maybe he has an issue.

'Yellow' is a more difficult word to say than 'Red'. 'Purple' is also harder to say than 'Blue'.