Does your 2.5-3. year old recognise colours?

[Evasmum12]

Hi, my dd is 3 in December, and I'm not convinced she knows any colours atall. Her vocabulary is very good and she knows most shapes, but if I ask her what colour something is she either says 'green' or 'colour' or says what the object is.

I've tried making a game of it, saying tell me the colours and you get a sticker, but mixed in with questions about shapes and animals so she dosent get funny about it iyswim. She can name all the shapes and animal but with colours she guesses or just says green then names colours till she gets the right one.

Should she know all the basic colours by now? Should she know 'red car' 'blue balloon' etc? She will describe things, but never by colour.

Advice please!

My daughter will be 3 end-October and she has only just started to name the colours (not all of them). She can usually manage green, yellow, red and orange.

I think they eventually just click with it.

Thanks for replying tubby, does your dd seem better at other things like naming objects/animals etc or is she on a similar level for everything?

It seems to be the one major thing she can't grasp. I'm not a pushy mother, I'm just thinking about colour blindness.. she has glasses and eye patches to correct a squint so I'm wondering if it's a possibility. I'm probably over thinking it I know

He knows then mostly although he gets green/blue and red/orange mixed up sometimes. He'll be 3 at the end of November. DH says he remembers having difficulty with green/blue so he reckons that was around 7 ish. I suppose I should admit he learnt them from wombi on the iPad .
He doesn't know shapes yet. Seems not to understand the concept. A circle is a wheel, but never a circle, anything else shape wise he just says what colour it is, what it is or changes th subject! I'm sure it'll click one day.

DC4 didn't crack colours until he was nearly 4yo. (Sigh). I seriously wondered if he had some kind of bizarre visual deficiency because he could not understand difference between green & yellow. Absolutely fine now (4y+7m). DC1-2 understood virtually all colours soon after 2nd birthday, maybe before.

Can't remember anything that DC3 did .

One of mine was way over three before she got it. I think it is a hard concept for some to grasp. I would be saying "this is red" and she would say "no mummy it's a crayon" like I was a fool.

I wouldn't worry about it, if she is colour blind I don't think it will really affect her much at the moment anyway, not in any meaningful way. Also colour blindness tends to affect one or two colours, so she'd be mixing up (for example) blue and purple rather than not being able to see any.

DS knows all of them... But will only use them accurately when he wants to For example, if I ask him, "What colour is this car?" and he's reading a book, he may well reply, "Pink!" without looking up (Pink is fall back colour here).

I also read somewhere that colour / colours is one of the hardest concept for them to grasp, so try not to worry about it too much, she will get there with it :)

Feeling a bit more reassured now, thanks for the replies!

house sounds about right!

One if mine called everything yellow at this age and one has cracked it. Shame the same could not be said about her and bed is for sleeping......

My DS didn't get it till he was about 3. He too used to say everything was green

Now he knows his primary colours and can point out mine, DH's and DD's favourite colours. His favourite incidentally is green.

I'm sure she'll get it soon, she sounds like a smart cookie.

Bertie, that's what I thought too, and she does, but only as often as she tells me pink is green or blue is yellow, so I think it's a general thing.

Thanks Sir, my dd will say whatever she thinks I want to hear if I leave her alone after too!

It seems picking a colour and sticking with is normal lol.

She is Scot, surprisingly so after they told me she was waay behind at her 2 year assessment, and she was very prem so they expect her to be slightly slower at picking things up. She has come on loads after starting nursery, I wish I'd done it a year earlier.

Ds knows hiscpurs but only because we talked about colours iyswim. So looked at cars and said there's a red one, green etc. then I guess he realised what green etc meant and it went from there.

But if you just asked what colour something was without him knowing what the concept meant, he wouldn't have had a clue!

My dd (just 3) knows her colours but not shapes. Her elder siblings knew their shapes ages before their colours.

A good tip someone once gave me - teach colours using smarties. Every time your dd accurately labels the colour of a smartie, she gets to eat it. Immediate reward!

Iswym iggly, I try to use colours as much as possible when describing things to her, I'm the one walking down the street enthusiastically saying the colour of every parked car to a completely uninterested child but she hasn't got it just yet. At least I now know it's pretty normal, and I'm being a bit pfb

That's a good idea neo, I'll try that

I have one thats 3 in december and as far as I know he doesnt know any colours (hes almost non verbal so can be hard to tell) but my ds1 at that age had known them for ages

DD knew all her colours by 18 months. Including peach, turquoise etc.

My niece is nearly 3 and she knows 2 colours. Green and Not Green. I think she's rather clever tbh. Saves a whole load of effort. DB asked her the other day what colour her pencil was and she deadpanned "only you could care about a thing like that". Marvellous frankly.

My son (3 in December) does know his colours but it's because he loves the book Brown Bear, Brown Bear, we have read it over and over. He can now recite it. However there are lots of other things he can't do, that I would like him to do, play nicely, use a potty or toilet etc. All children are different I am sure she will know her colours soon enough.

Thanks everyone!

Oh, don't get me started on potty training! Still not managed a single drop in the potty, although the other day she said to me "I've done a poo in the house mummy, you have to find it". (she hadn't, but I spent a long time looking, little bugger)

Ha ha at the poo hunting!

Ds is 2.2 and has speech delay so I can't actually understand what colour he means as they all sound like Veeeeee when I ask. SALT said sometimes they can tell them apart but haven't grasped the labels yet. Have you asked her to hand you the orange one or put all the red ones in the box?

Potty training is over rated...

DS is three in November and likes to sit on his potty as a different reading seat, or use it to carry things around the house in.

Off topic sorry op but I wondered when you brought ds to salt double yew if you don't mind me asking. Getting concerned about my 21 month old dd and need perspective.

Lucy, I'd being saying to the HV I was worried he wasn't talking much and they kept saying wait til he is 2. They have actually changed the check to 2.5 years here but 2 wks before he was two I was seeing them about something else and put my foot down. What they look for is 1) Has atleast 50 words 2) can put 2 words together 3) can be understood by strangers. They agreed to refer him as he only just about had 1) but not the other two. We are lucky that SALT waiting list is not too bad here, only waited about 6 weeks. I understand from MN that is a lot longer in other places so worth getting your name down. This is a good site.

My ds is same age.
No clue what color is what....I am not worried.