Colours: learning them

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My dd will turn 3 in January. She's very much on track with development, we've no concerns and neither have nursery.

However, she's totally clueless with colours. She never gets one right unless by chance. Nursery has picked this up, as have we.

We've got books about colour, wow said the owl, etc. We've been talking about the colour of items for a while.

We took her for an eye test, she's a bit long sighted (0.50) and couldn't see the items on the black and white card (neither could I!). The optician said that she wouldn't be colour blind unless it ran in the family, which it doesn't.

Are we just being impatient? Or could the optician be wrong?

Have no real advice, only a comparison as DS will be 3 in February.

He has been a bit hit and miss with colours, but in the last couple of months he's much more consistent (ly correct!).

Maybe keep building them into everyday life, what colour's that car, that Lego, that puzzle, etc and see if she improves?

Give it time. They all do things in their own time.

DS is great with colours, has been since before he age of 2, but can he count? No, not for buggery. Not even to two. I'm not worried though as he's bright in other areas.

It doesn't matter if she can't name the colours at 3. What you want to know is can she see the difference between colours. So can she put red objects on one group and green objects in another . It doesn't matter if she calls these colours black and purple . Make it a sorting task and not a naming task.

One of our children didn't use the names of colours when he was 3 , he used the names of the trains in Thomas the tank engine. So he had a James jumper ( red ) and a Henry cup ( green ) . It was just a phase.

Nothing to worry about. My little girl is same at that age. Nursery have no worries either. It will come soon

My DGC is 2 and a half and doesn't know the colour names either, we just keep repeating them so I'm sure it'll come.

I would not worry either
Also, colour blindness in girls is extremely rare and it should run in both families

Dd1 didn't know her colours before she was 3.6yo. I suddenly realised one day that she didn't know her colours-but knew her alphabet and numbers. They were what interested her, not colours.
But when she did learn them she learnt them all-including things like beige and turquoise, in about 10 days.
Dd2 (who liked colours) learnt them much earlier but only one colour at a time and didn't learn the more complicated ones until about the same age.

My DS was the same, struggled with colours long after knowing numbers etc. Optician at the time (3 ish) said his colour vision was ok, at 6 he was diagnosed red-green colourblind. Much less common in girls but not impossible. AFAIK nobody else in our families is colourblind. Nothing you can do about it anyway, keep naming colours and either it will click or you'll realise there's a problem once they are old enough to reliably test.

Red-green colourblindness is carried on the X chromosome, for a girl to have 2 faulty copies the father would have to be colourblind and mother a carrier. Blue colourblindness is not sex chromosome linked and occurs equally in men and women. Colourblindness in girls is 1 in 200, it's not that rare.

We're really working on teaching her colours. She's pretty good at matching (although she said her white t shirt was the same colour as her pink one...!). Hopefully it'll suddenly snap into place.

I don't think there's any colour blindness in our families.