Colour blindness in young children..

[messtins]

Does anyone have a colour blind child and if so when were they diagnosed or when did you first notice a problem?
We are beginning to think our DS2 is colour blind. He is 2 1/2 and has real issues identifying colours. He has been very clear what "yellow" is for more than 6 months and seems very drawn to yellow objects, and can also consistently identify orange, pink, black and white. He is hopeless at blue/green/red. We've no concerns about his develpment generally, his speech is good with a big vocabulary and he can speak in sentences. He can count objects up to 10. He knows simple shapes and is good at jigsaws etc and he is physically capable and a whizz on his balance bike. He just seems to either have a mental block on colours or be actually colour blind.
We've only found very limited tests on line that don't involve numbers, but the few we've found he doesn't seem to be able to see the pictures. Does anyone know at what age he could be tested by an optician?

Do you or your DP have a optician? Could you give them a call and ask for their opinion?

My Ds - now 14 is colourblind. It all started with him picking out Opal Fruits (Starbursts are they now called?). He said he'd have the orange one, and then picked out the green one from my hand. He was quite happy with all the other colours at the time.
So - I gently tested him by asking what the colours were of various things over a long period, and came to my own conclusion that he was colour blind.

My Dad is, and apparently it comes down the maternal genes, so if you have it in the family, your DS may have it.

The optician has since confirmed it, and has (for the record, I guess) determined exactly what sort of colour blindness DS has, but basically he is red green colour blind.

That extends into purples and browns for him, too.

When he starts school and has to do colouring in, either label the ends of each of his pencils with the colour, or take him to an art shop and get him to stand in front of the red colouring pencils and ask him to find a 'red' one, and he'll pick one out. I don't understand quite how it is, but there will be various shades of red that he will 'see' as red. Ditto green, brown and purple.

Anyway, probably TMI for the moment as he's only 2.5yrs, but worth remembering!

I don't have a child with colour-blindness but it is in my family pretty extensively. Family with boys (genetically its only on the Y) have been told they wont test until at least 3 as it can be hard to be accurate at that stage. As far as noticing it was around the same age as your DS, but then we all look for it IYKWIM. I second checking with the optician thou as my info is a few years old now

My DS has recently turned three and is only just starting to get his colours right. Before very recently the only one he would get 100% right was white. Now he can do red, blue, pink and black. Orange and yellow are hazy. Green is not there yet. If you confront him with a page with lots of colours he gets very indecisive, but one colour at a time e.g. "what colour is your jumper" he is usually ok with.

I was starting to get worried, but now it seems to be clicking I think he just didn't see it as relevant!!

It's carried down the maternal line - is there any colour blindness in your family? If no, then it's unlikely - he may just be getting colours wrong. DD 3.3 still mixes up red and green sometimes.

I think he is still v.young. I work with preschool children and actually most of the under 3's are not acurately identifying colours on a regular basis.
By all means get him tested especially if it is in your family but if its not i wouldnt worry too much.

Good luck[hsmile]

We have it in our family. I can't see what advantage an early diagnosis would be? You will find out for certain at some point, meantime all you can do is be sensitive and possibly warn playleaders, if he is in any kind of group/ childcare not to put him on the spot publicly for colours. I assume he won't be changing plugs etc. quite yet...

I had the same worry with my DS who has just turned 3. At 2.6 he could only identify pink and red and not much else. Just recently he has been able to identify all the colours. We have colour blindness in our family and I suspect that his colour vision just took a little longer to form (for lack of the correct medical term).

It is possible to test him at his age but you may want to leave it a little longer to see if it resolves by itself.

None of the wires in a plug are red or green for precisely this reason.

My son is colour blind but they only picked it up at a routine optician appointment at age 6. I hadnt really noticed it before that and it certainly hasnt seemed to affect him in any way. My dad is also colourblind.

Sparklyboots your son isn't wiring plugs yet at 2?
I'm not massively worried, it just begins to make sense of why he seems to struggle so much with this one thing.
I'm not sure if there is colour-blindness on my side of the family - my mum is an only child and I didn't know her parents as they died when I was young. I'll ask her if she had any uncles etc with it.
I'll see if our local optician has the tests with pictures - the one I could find on the web he couldn't do. I can do the tests but I find the green/red/brown ones quite difficult so I wonder if I don't see contrasts between those colours very well. Woudl that explain why I have never been able to see the magic eye pictures?
Thanks to everyone who replied.

I'm pretty sure women don't get it - because you have two X chromosomes so if there's one duff one the other 'fixes' it. Men get it because if they've got a duff X chromosome then they don't have a spare one to fix it with.

According to this [http://www.colourblindawareness.org/] it does affect women but much less commonly. I wonder if it's possible to be "a bit" colour blind? I'd pass the tests because I can see the numbers but my DH says they are very clear to him and I feel like I'm peering to make them out, the contrast doesn't appear strong to me.