What age do you think DCs know different colours?

[Kayzr]

DS2 is 2.7yo and XH is worried he's colourblind because he doesn't know colours yet. Well he says everything is purple. I personally think that he's far too young to be able to know different colours. DS1 is 4 and knows most colours but still needs the occasional(sp) helping hand to know them all.

XH is always trying to find things wrong with the boys and I'm not sure if this is one of those times or if he's right.

DD was trying before her 2nd birthday, but got confused a lot. For her birthday though I got her this and within an hour she had sorted out those 4 colours properly and was matching them etc. Toddlers often learn kinaesthetically, so it's great to have physical aids.

DS is OTOH unlikely to know them any time soon (22m) but then he's much 'slower' with things like speech.

I think it's a bit early to worry - I'm not sure they could diagnose it that young anyway?

As an aside, I think it is actually quite difficult for a child to grasp the concept of colour. They are used to describing things by shape, using concrete terms like dog/ball/plate etc. They are objects. Colour is abstract. If you say "look at the red train" they may not at first realise that red refers to the colour of it - it could refer to any other feature of it - the size, the pattern, the shape etc. Or they may even think "red train" is actually just another term for train. I think that's why the button board was so useful - because the ONLY difference between the buttons was the colour, it made that feature stand out.

I'd be annoyed at your x though, why is he so critical?

Sounds pretty much like my DH, everytime we asked him a colour he said it was Lellow! Turned out he did actually know them and just like saying Lellow! It will come in time.

My dd is 23 months she has some developmental/speech problems. If I hold up 2 different colour cups and ask her to give the red one to teddy she will get it right. She can't say the colours but will pick the right choice and knows red blue and green. Maybe your lad likes the word purple? Just a thought it's a nice sounding word? If you're worried ask HV

Dd1 didn't know her colours until she was nearly 3 1/2yrs. She knew her alphabet at 2yo though. Like you, I thought she must be colourblind as how can a child know their letters but not her colours? But she learnt them very suddenly in about 2 weeks, and learnt ones like turquoise and beige at the same time as red and blue.
Turned out just colours didn't interest her. She was much more interested in reading and writing than in colouring, and still is.

All children are different of course..... but my oldest 3 DS knew colours/shape from about 18 months..... basic 3 or 4 shapes/colours first then an expanding repertoire, by 3, certainly knew all basic colours and shades (pale green, dark green etc). Green/Blue (the pale versions) were the last colours that they learned, leading us to think each in turn was colour-blind, but none of them are! As soon as they knew letters/numbers we did those spot picture tests with them (you Know those ones? if you are colour blind you can't see the number/letter in the picture, you only see the dots).

Youngest DS is 8 months and I already "teach" shape/colour/number awareness..... by teach I just mean talk about colour (etc) as part of play (the RED brick, the green car etc) and also grouping toys together in piles according to colour (or shape), and this is what I did with my older DS. Even at 8 months, he seems to recognise "circle" (looks towards the circle if you say it), but no colours yet...... I think colour vision is very limited at this age.

Your DS2 may or may not be colour blind...... could you try some "colour grouping" games over the next few weeks and that MIGHT give you the answer.

Try putting a pile of different things in front of him and say "lets put all the Green (or whatever) things in this pile", then help him sort them, then do the same for the next colour....... it's important to have different things of the same colour, so he realises it's the COLOUR you are using to sort the objects, IYKWIM. And that a "colour" can vary quite a lot! A daily (make it fun of course!) session working on colour grouping could really make it "click" for him.

Hope that's helpful, not trying to be braggy about my little dears..... just saying what worked for us!

HV is getting very fed up of me calling with the various things I ask about because XH has decided they have asthma, can't walk properly, don't talk enough etc etc. It's getting bloody annoying that I keep questioning myself as a parent.

But I rang and she said she would be surprised to find a child his age that know colours as well as XH is expecting him too.

So sorry that XH is undermining your confidence in this way. Its a shame too that if he is has concerns that he isn't the one to phone up the HV.

My DH is colourblind - it doesn't mean being unable to identify colours, it means being unable to differentiate between red and green. Oh, and it's a male genetic trait so if your DS is colourblind then it came from your XH!

DD knew her colours very early - probably by 18 months, but she's a girly swot! Can't walk so spent the time learning instead!

I can't remember exactly when he learnt them, but ds (2.1) knows them. They're all different though and I wouldn't be worrying :)

My dd's 18 months and at the moment everything is blue - she's obviously right some of the time, but I don't suppose she really knows what it means yet, after all she still calls her dad 'mummy' sometimes

My DS 2.2yrs calls everything green. He can match the colours properly so I'm not too concerned at the moment. My friends / family with kids same age don't know them either so IMO ignore your DH!

My daughters knew their numbers at around 2. Both my boys are colour blind, they were diagnosed early as they knew their numbers early and the test involves seeing numbers hidden in a chart.

A good way to test for red\ green colur blindness is picking raspberries, if they go for all the unripe ones and miss the red ones ...

DS1 knew colours by 18-20 months, but kids pick different things up at different times so I wouldn't worry about it.

I am fairly certain it is not considered a problem unless children do not know 4 colours at age 4.
DS1 knew most colours by the time he was 2, DS2 didn't get them until he was 3 but learnt them within a week after watching Disney Cars and I told him the Car name followed by the colour, it was a long time before he learnt to say green rather than Chick Hick Green but it did mean he knew his colours! DS3 knew them when he was 2 too.

Octaviapink, unfortunately colourblindness in males is inherited from the mother not the father. The 'defective' gene is on the X chromosome inherited from the mother. The Y chromosome, from the father, is shorter than the X chromosome and therefore there is no 'good' gene to counter the 'defective' gene. In a girl the other X chromosome tends to counter the defective gene, unless mum and dad gave a 'defective' X chromosome. Therefore, if a girl has a dad with colourblindness technically 50% of her sons will be colourblind. If a man is colourblind he will pass the gene to daughters only.

"unfortunately colourblindness in males is inherited from the mother not the father"

Not so, LittleMissGreen - what you're saying is that men get colourblindness (because they have no 'good' extra X chromosome to cancel out the colourblind gene) and women don't. That has no bearing on who it is inherited from! If fathers could not pass on the gene then nobody would be colourblind. Your statement is illogical.

Men have an X and a Y chromosome. Women have XX. Boys inherit one X from mum and the Y from Dad. Therefore if the colour gene is defective (from the mother) then they will be colourblind. As girls have 2 Xs they naturally choose the non defective gene and as such they will not be colour blind but may carry a defective gene which they pass on. If it is passed onto a boy he will be colour blind. A girl would have to have 2 defective genes to be colour blind. At least that is what I was told in A Level biology!

Brettgirl is correct. The most common form of colour blindness (red/green colour blindness) is X-linked recessive ie the gene is on the X-chromosome. Boys only get a Y chromosome from their father and so can't get a colour blindness gene from them. They can only get if from their mother. This is not at all illogical, it is the way it happens with all X-linked recssive conditions such as haemophilia and muscular dystrophy.

Matching colours is what matters, not knowing what their names are - ie putting red peg in red hole, green peg in green hole etc

Can he match? If so, he's not colour blind

I thought most would know it before 2 yrs? but have seen people on here saying children havent picked it up til after 3 yrs and been fine so there must be a lot of variation, i would try him with the matching thing also you can get some pics that have hidden pictures in it which are used to check colour blindness prob can print from offline and see if he can see the pictures?

I agree that colour matching is the way forward.

At DS2's 2 yr check, my HV asked him to build a tower of red bricks, then a tower of green etc.

He could do it easily, but still got the language muddled at that age, when referring to colours.

Now, at 2.8 he gets it right about 75% of the time, I'd say.

Thanks Brettgirl and TheDudesMummy for explaining it so clearly - sorry I came across as obnoxious, I was having a bad day!

DS2 used to call everything green (well, "geen" actually!) we were given this book www.amazon.co.uk/Wobble-Bear-Says-Yellow-Whybrow/dp/0192729152/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1310220765&sr=8-2#_ which he really loved . Not sure if Balamory is still on cbeebies, but that was a really good programme for helping the DCs to learn their colours.