Learning colours and shapes

[Hulababy]

At what age, roughly, does child learn about these? I ask as my DD, 20 months, seems really uninterested by colours despite me talking about the with her allt he time when colouring, looking at things, playing with playdoh, etc. My friend's little boy knew his colours at her age but wasn't sure whether he was just 'early' with it.

I am not worried with her development at all. She has fantastic language skills with an immense vocab list and is talking veryclearly in sentences. She counts to 10, is alert and bright, etc.

I am just curious as to how I can help her with these things? Any ideas Mumsnetters?

Gosh, can't you tell that I have been at home with DD for a 2 week break!?! Maybe I need to go back to work instead

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DS2 knew them before 2 I think but he was fairly unreliable. What happens if you ask her for the blue crayon and stuff like that?

My ds is also 20 months and he doesn't know colours yet despite me going on about them all the time. He can't even count to 2 let alone 10 so I think your little one is a genius! However he is ace at climbing, running, jumping and kicking a ball. They really are all different aren't they?

I figured maybe friend's boy was just doing it early. I suppose all children learn different things at different ages. His vocab is nothing like DD's but he knows his shaoes and colours really well at 2 years 3 months. DD is 7 months younger than him.

The trouble I find is that my friend is VERY competitive about everything and is always asking me what DD is doing or not doing. She was most upset when DD walked at 10 months I just find it all a bit much to be honest and wish DD was 'allowed' to do things at her pace without her godmum trying to compare so much.

NewThinnerDrahgon - if I ask her for a blue crayon she will give me just any random coloured on. The only colours she consistently gets rigth are pink and yellow and she has known them for about 3 months or so.

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I will have a go at that with her I think, might be easier without the words. WE have hundreds of mega blocks that I am always falling over - can put them to more use now. Thanks for the idea.

Northener - the counting is a very recent skill since our lift broke a week or so ago. There are over 100 betwwen the ground floor and our apartment and we count them in blocks of 10s each way. We go out everyday so she is getting a lot of practise!!! Mind, she never ever says 1. She is getting quite good at counting things now but likes to count her toes best - no idea why but it keeps her amused, especially if you pretend to miss one out.

dd has gradually learnt them over the past couple of months (she's 28 months) although still not reliable. She especially mixes up green and yellow although can come out with very accurate observations from nowhere such as "the sky is very grey today isn't it ? ". I think ds who was less interested in colouring and playdoh etc was pretty accurate at this age but not as coherent verbally.

I'll just keep going on as I am doing then and I guess she'll pick them up when she is ready.

My ds (28mos) is brilliant at colours and shapes. He knows all his colours and knew them before he was two - purple, pink, grey, white, black, blue, yellow, red, green, brown, orange...the lot. BUT he can't jump, kick a ball, doesn't sort anything, doesn't build with bricks, can't go up and down steps without help or going on his tummy.... they really are all very different.

Completely different. Ds was counting to 100 and knew his alphabet, colours etc at 2 1/2. Dd is 2.8 and while she can count to 10, she doesn't know her colours. She just isn't interested in the way ds was. I'm sure people must thing ds was indulged and dd neglected, but I'm just following their leads.

My dd is 26 months and talks all the time, makes complicated sentences and has a massive vocabulary. But she has NO IDEA about colours. She spent nearly two weeks asking me 'what colour is this?' about ever single thing she saw but still cannot tell me what colour anything is. The only one she gets right is green and that's because she thinks everything is green so there's a fair chance that she'll get it right occasionally! Both paternal grandfather and maternal uncle are colour blind but I am told the likelihood of dd being the same is impossible. We shall see.........

Cha- Unless her father's colour blind as well it is impossible.

Both my boys have known colours, shapes, numbers and letters and useful things like divided by symbols before 2 but neither can talk at all yet (well ds2 can say yes, no and faster). DS2 will be 2 in a couple of weeks, ds1 is 4 and a half. Believe me knowing colours, shapes, letters and numbers doesn't get you very far in life. Even if you do know what a trapezium is. Being able to ask for a drink or to go to the toilet is generally far more useful.

Jimjams is 99% right -- red-green colour blindness (the main type of colour-blindness) is on the X-chromosone, Cha's DH only has one X chromosone to contribute so if he isn't red-green colourblind, his daughters won't be, either (red-green colour-blindness is recessive, and you won't get it if you get one good X chromosone that isn't colour-blind). It's possible that Cha's DD will have inherited one colour-blind gene from Cha, and therefore Cha's DD would be at higher risk for having children that were colour-blind. There are advantages to colour-blindness, though; in general, in place of the missing red-green cones, c-b people have more rods in the eyes, which means they have better night vision than average. Anecdotally, they often have superior long-distance vision, and seem less likely to wear glasses in life at all, overall.

But there are other types of colour-blindness, and I'm not sure on which gene they reside, except that I understand yellow-blue colour-blindness (very rare) does mostly occur in girls.... But a person can have cognitive difficulty (rather than a physical inability) to recognise colour blindness, which means some people will have trouble with (say) blue & green all their lives, although it isn't down to a structural 'defect' in the eyes.

DS learnt most his colours just before, 2yo, but noticed that most of my friends' kids (and indeed my own DD) didn't start to get it until a few months after 2yo. And Shapes or Counting!? More like 3yo; DD is 2yo and tries to count, but only does it by rote, copying you. DD sorts things by colour; DS never did.

SB34: Just my sniffy opinion, but I wouldn't think a child under 3yo should be playing with lego (too small); duplo is ok (if over 2).

cha

dd has been through phases of calling everything green whilst learning the other colours - she will still default to either green or yellow if unsure.

blue-yellow is found in equal numbers of boys and girls. Not sure of the genetics of it, but they usually have other problems like liver disorders. Sorry that's all I can remember!

Not sure what kind of colour blindness dp's dad had as he is dead now, but my brother has more than the red/green kind, though not sure what other colours he mixes up. Just know that Mum labeled all his pencils before he went to school because he couldn't tell any of the colours. There is colourblindness throughout the male side of my family so it does seem likely that I carry the gene. Not that it has hampered anyone particularly - apart from a rather eclectic taste in clothes...

Ok, I stand corrected on blue-yellow being more common in girls (I must be remembering wrong or read an incorrect source). But I think what I said about better night/distance vision is definitely true -- it's a colour-blind friend who works for the John Innis Institute who told me that the trade-off is more rods in the eyes, and he & the long list of other C-B men I know all have superior long-distance vision.

Yeah that would make sense zebra. Don;t know much about blue/yellow but a student asked me about it once so I had to find out quickly

Only problem with colour blindness of course is if you want to be a pilot.

None of the colour blind men I know (there are a few in our family) where glasses either.

My grandfather is colourblind and was a pilot, though. [Long family story about my dad & his twin being sick in the back of a biplane flown by grandpa...] Maybe rules are stricter, now; but they fly almost entirely on instruments nowadays, though, so I would expect it to be easier, not harder.

My C-B friend who works for John Innis wears glasses for close-up life, but says his long-distance vision is extraordinarily good. Friend says that someone has worked out the maths of trading off colour vision for better night vision in hunter-gatherer societies, and it works out to be similar to the proportion of incidence of colour-blindness in the general population.

Finding the CB info really interesting. Both my dad and Dh's dad are red-green CB. My FIL's sight was always great, 20/20 vision until his late 40s. He now has glases for driving, watching TV, etc. My dad, however, has always worn glasses for distance.

Zebra, Lego make even bigger lego than duplo which is for 9m+. Apart from using it to scratch his eczema I can't see how else it would harm my ds. Could it be this is what Cha is refering to? Sorry not on thread.