Just had the most amazing conversation with 6yo ds1. Synesthesia

[mawbroon]

We were talking about accents and he said he would like to live where my sister lives in England. I said that he would develop an English accent if he lived there and then asked if there was anyone in his class with an English accent.

He said that yes there was, and that she had an orange voice. I asked what he meant by an "orange" voice and he said that when he hears her voice, he sees orange. I asked if everyone had a colour and he said that they did, and he went on to list all sorts of people and the colours of their voices.

He and I are both yellow, dh is brown, ds2 is pink, apparently because he has a cute voice (he's 2.5yo).

His favourite colour of voice is yellow, and voices go black if they shout. Crying is blue and so it went on.

I find this absolutely fascinating! Anyone else have this, or their dcs?

Not experienced it in real life, but there's a great kids picture book about the condition, "Here comes Frankie" by Tim Hopgood, probably a bit young for a 6yo, but some lovely illustrations. Apparently some famous musicians had this condition.

That sounds fascinating, mawbroon, lucky you!

Haven't had this discussion with my DS yet, but think I will. He often refers to people as 'the pink girl' or 'the green man' etc.,

And he is utterly obsessed by the colour red. If you are a red person, he loves you :-) He definitely 'sees' in colour!!

My friend and her ds have this with numbers. Apparently it's a sign of intelligence.

Interesting about the music connection as my friend is a musician.

I need to ask him if music does it too TeaAndSlanket.

I did ask him if he saw people as colours SchoolAnxiety, but he said no, just their voices.

Think I will google to find out more, it is fascinating but I imagine it will be totally normal to him.

Think there was a thread on this a few months ago. My eldest and I see numbers in colours. I live the idea of accents and people. Lovely.

How lovely

I've heard of this before and yes there was a recent thread sittinginthesun.

Had a conversation my my 4yo ds about what colours the days of the week were in his mind. The most interesting thing he said was that Wednesday was yellow and had a crack in it like a spiders web! Surreal but so like me (artist) poor soul :o

Here.

Your DS sounds amazing! Wonderful to hear that!

I have always been very jealous of people with this.

Have you read The Man who Tasted Shapes? A REALLY unusual form of synesthesia.

A high proportion of all creative artists have this, the incidence is much higher than that in the rest of the population.

Inspired by a MN thread I felt more normal?!?! and asked a few non leading questions. DH was 'what????' & DD2 too young but turns out (as I suspected!) DD1 'sees' numbers, names etc in colours too.

But, different colours to me??

Is this usual?

DP has synesthesia. He's a musician and producer. Exciting!

i see numbers and days and months as colors. Months also sort of have flavors too. Or I kind of know what flavors they should have. (September and January are delicious!)

I had this. I remember my sister looking at me finny when I asked if she thought Lincoln and York were both yellow too. Years later we saw something about it on Tommorrows World and she said, 'hey, that's that colour vision thing you've got'. Mostly though as I got older it seemed to lessen and I felt that most things were yellow, so it wasn't so exciting. I'd do wonder if my kids will feel colours in words too though. My husband will probably think they are weird if they do.
I also always picture a year as three sided shape with the months in certain positions around it.

I have had a look at some of the old threads on this. I definitely need to chat to ds1 more about this but without putting words in his mouth.

I am musical, but don't have synesthesia in any form at all. But ds1 is showing no signs of being musical at all. He isn't terribly artistic either, he prefers to draw technically correct things like helicopters and rockets. His attention to detail is quite good for his age I think.

Wonder if ds2 has it. He's too young to find out I guess.

Mrshotrod - lots of things are yellow for me too. It's the strongest colour in my mind. 3 is yellow, as is York. Lincoln is interesting - more a light blue.

Also, if someone says, thinks of a certain word, like "house", for example, I see the word written out in black edges writing, often coloured in a certain colour, rather than a mental image of the actual object.

The brain works in mysterious ways.

I've just had another chat with ds1 about this and it seems that it's only voices and music that affect him.

Apparently music is the same as voices. Low pitch is brown and higher pitch is yellow.

He says that he sees it as dots, but the first time he noticed it, it was with the girl in his class with the orange voice. He said there was orange coming out of her mouth.

And after we had talked about it for a while, he said "I don't want to talk about this any more", so I will have to leave him be I think.

Do you think I should let his teacher know?

How wonderful :)

Here's a link to the Synaesthesia association, which might be of interest.

I think Oliver Sacks has written some interesting books on these type of subjects.

I know of someone (FOAF) who tastes colours - eg yellow tastes of crispy chicken skin.

How fantastic! If he doesn't already play an instrument I'd suggest that you start one ASAP!

He's not showing any signs of being musical at all flussymummy. He can't sing a note and has never shown any sign of being interested in playing anything although he does enjoy listening.

I have synaesthesia, every sound has a colour and texture. Quite sad that my DCs don't seem to share it because it's so useful in so many fields: logic, art, memory. It can be frustrating though. Sometimes I can leave a conversation utterly nauseated by the way someone pronounces a word if it corresponds with something icky. For example: "car"= light green, mucus texture in most voices!!!