Colour blindness

[mistermagpie]

My son is 3.5 and I have suspected for a while that he's colour blind. I know he's only little, but he literally can't identify any colours at all, if he ever gets it right it's a guess, I can tell. He can say a fire engine is red but that just because he knows that word is the right answer, he can't identify other things as red or match it to other red things.

His speech is way above average for his age (nursery have confirmed this) so it's not that he can't communicate, he's very bright so I'm convinced if he knew the colours he would say.

Also, my dad is colour blind which apparently makes him being colour blind more likely and now nursery have raised it that they think he is too. They've been working really hard one on one with him (they are brilliant) and cannot make any progress.

I do have an opticians appointment next week, but my question is - if your child is colour blind how has it affected them from a young age? Is it something to worry about long term?

My dad isn't in my life so I can't ask him now but he's got a phd and a very successful career, so his colour blindness hasn't held him back, but I'd like to know if there are things I can be doing with DS now.

Thanks!

Nobody?! I'm surprised as I was told up to 1 in 12 boys is colour blind!

My dad is colourblind and apart from limiting in a career in telecommunications (way to many wires to identify!) he had a very successful life as an engineer. Once bought an orange car thinking it was a sexy red colour.... and has never lived it down.

If you father was colourblind you had a 50/50 chance of inheriting that gene. As you have a son, you then have a 50/50 chance of giving him the affected gene and therefore being colourblind (presuming we are talking about red-green here).

You can check yoruself with simple online tests; we use them teaching KS3 science sometimes. Ishihara tests use numbers but there are also some that use shapes etc.

There are online colour blindness tests you can do with recognising numbers you could try them.

I'm definitely not colourblind and neither is my other son (or my daughter but she would need to have got it from her dads, if I understand it correctly) but I must be a carrier.

It's quite tricky to be sure because the son in question is so young. He's also really silly generally so you can't get a sensible answer out of him!

My dad managed fine his whole life so I'm not overly concerned but I don't know anything about what it was like for him as a child. I would ask but we aren't in contact now!

For most people, colourblind simply means you struggle to differentiate between certain shades of red and green. This is the most common form. Apart from being an electrician or a commercial airline pilot, there's not that much it interferes with.

True colourblindness, such as the inability to distinguish between any colours is almost unheard of. The fact your son can't seemingly name colours at doesn't strike me as regular colourblindness and I would suggest getting a proper diagnosis.

He may be "colourblind" but that usually means that he can't differentiate between red/green colours. Seeing an optician for a test is a good idea.

DH says that the issue isn't so much being c-b as having no colour sense. So it wouldn't occur to him that colours clash or go well together. All his work shirts and and ties are therefore blue or white or a combination. He says he is pleased to be c-b and wouldn't change it because it saves him having to come to see curtains or getting involved in conversations about whether something is purple or maroon. But he is quite contrary.

Just to update here for anyone who commented. I took him to the opticians and she confirmed that she thinks he has a 'quite strong' red/green deficiency.

As she described it in his case, it's not really that he just can't differentiate between red and green and that this is a bit of a myth around the issue (this isn't the case for my dad either and he has red/green colour blindness) it's that in DS's case he seems to see everything as shades of blue.

We will need to go back when he's a bit older and can complete the tests more fully but it did confirm what we thought. On the plus side he could 'match' colours that were the same shade - so he could say a bright red thing was the same as another bright red thing, but for him both of those things were blue. It was quite interesting!

Thank you for posting and updating. My husband is colorblind, his brothers aren't. Apart from sometimes unusual color combinations, it does not really affect me. He often asks me if a particular shirt goes with whatever else he's wearing.
I know any sons my daughter might have have a 50% chance of being colorblind; it really is not a big impediment, especially now that people know to use colorblind-appropriate color palettes in presentations and textbooks, for example.