I think my 2 year old might be colourblind.

[CuriousEgg]

She's not quite 2 yet - almost 23 months.

Her language and comprehension is pretty strong. she understands almost everything I say, has lots of words and has started using three word sentences in the last couple of weeks (mostly basic instructions like, 'mummy, come outside.') she even counts to ten pretty accurately most of the time. However one thing that has surprised me a little is that she really seems to struggle identifying colours.

If i ask her what colour something is 9 times out of ten she will say pink or purple. If i ask her to point at a red ball on the christmas tree she stares at it looking completely lost. She seems to have a hard time with yellow and green as well but will name all the animals in a picture book and even surprised me yesterday with 'butterfly'.

Obviously I'm not super worried as she is doing really well in all other respects but I'm just wondering if there is actually a way to test a 2 year old for colourblindness or is an optician likely to laugh me out of their office if I ask them to check it out?

Also if anyone has any experience in young children with colourblindness and wants to suggest things i should think about doing to support her (if my suspicion turns out to be correct), it would be much appreciated.

Most of them do start identifying just one or two colours and then get them ‘right.’ Ds said everything was yellow for a month or so.

https://www.color-blind-test.com/color-blind-tests/color-blind-test-for-kids/color-blind-test-for-kids-shapes.html

They normally say children who aren’t colourblind should be able to identify all the colours by the age of 5 so your daughter has a while to go until then. I doubt an opticians would test your child for this until that point. Especially a girl as it’s a sex linked chromosomal disorder only about 1 in 200 girls have it compared to around 1 in 12 boys. So only around 5% of colourblindness occurs in women and girls. I would wait a few more years and if she is still having this issue then take her to get tested.

Ah yes. I remember the months where everything was yellow. Or red. Or indigo. And for a short while any colour except the colour it actually was. 🙄It's all a phase.

She's 4 now, and definitely not colourblind. She draws too many rainbows not to be. She had her first eye test (regular one, no worries about her eyesight) a few months ago. She was tested on colours by tracing the coloured numbers in a differently coloured circle. If she were colour blind she wouldn't have been able to see the number.

She's not quite 2. Most children identify colours between 2 and 3 so no need to worry yet.

It might just be that she isn't sure of the names yet. Put some multi coloured objects out (you can buy small objects for sorting) and just start her off sorting by colour without necessarily saying the colour names then you will know if she can distinguish between them.

This type of thing:

www.amazon.co.uk/Counting-Dinosaurs-Dinosaur-Montessori-Educational/dp/B09YV1VZBK/ref=asc_df_B09YV1VZBK/?tag=googshopuk-21&linkCode=df0&hvadid=606682160055&hvpos=&hvnetw=g&hvrand=11878411010316254001&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqmt=&hvdev=m&hvdvcmdl=&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=1006627&hvtargid=pla-1678113739329&psc=1&mcid=c85fb3ebc29539f7b9d52e1a91a1d685

Oh my goodness, I don’t think you need to worry yet!! My son is 2 in a couple days and he doesn’t not know one colour! I would be thrilled if he told me the wrong colour if asked that question. In fact he doesn’t know my name (Mummy) or anyone’s.

She sounds like she’s thriving - don’t worry at all.

I have a 2 year old. For about 4 months, she insisted all of the colours were green.

I have a child the same age.
It didn't even occur to me to teach him colours til DH said it literally yesterday. He doesn't know any colour words, never mind pink and purple!

I think it's too early to worry

I remember DSis at that age. Blue was yellow and yellow was blue.

As a PP said, it's unusual for a girl to be colour blind.

I mean she is in normal range for saying everything is "pink or purple" she isn't even 2 yet give her a few months and she will get it usually by 3they have their colours locked in I wouldn't worry just yet.

Being a girl it's very unlikely that she is colour blind. 10% of men and 1% of girls are colour blind as it's an X linked disorder

My daughter didn't recognise colours reliably until 3. My partner has quite bad colour vision. He was diagnosed when he started school due to a family history he was tested. The test is similar to adults but asked to identify shapes rather than numbers

Not many two years olds reliably know their colours and she isn't even two yet. You're worrying unnecessarily.

Stop asking her what colour stuff is and tell her instead. That's the quickest way to teach her.

Is her father colour blind?

I think this is likely to be very typical language development as this kind of thing is quite common. That said , I do have a colourblind child, and although he communicated it perfectly from a very young age, I just kind of dismissed it as stuff in the ‘weird things toddlers say’ category.
In girls though colourblindness is rare. Is there any colourblindness in your family?

this tell her rather than ask her. Say things like mummy has the blue ball or whatever.

Interestingly in small children it becomes quite obvious when they learn to draw , or it did in our case. Not because they drew things in odd colours , as this is normal , but what is really obvious from my little ones first drawings is that he’d begin a line in one colour, and if the pencil would go blunt or something, he’d pick up a completely different (to his eyes the same) colour for the continuation of a line.
gorgeous rainbow pictures which I treasure.
He did this years before we figured out the issue.

She’s still very young and colours are a more abstract, difficult concept for children to learn compared to things like animals and other nouns. It’s not unusual for little children to get confused when naming colours, it’s more likely she doesn’t grasp the concept yet than it is she’s colourblind.

If you’re really worried maybe play some colour matching and sorting games with her (eg: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Counting-Dinosaurs-Dinosaur-Montessori-Educational/dp/B09YV1VZBK or https://www.amazon.co.uk/Orchard-Toys-Blue-Lotto-Game/dp/B000A42CFC/ ) to see if she is able to visually differentiate between colours even if she can’t label them yet. Obviously bear in mind she also might not have grasped the concepts of matching/ sorting yet so you’ll have to start by modelling and teaching her this before you can use the activities to assess whether she is differentiating between colours!

I remember with my son at two everything being ‘boo’ and wondering the same. But eventually he knew all the colours.

Funnily enough it turned out that he is slightly colourblind but that was not an indicator (he confuses green and red) and we didn’t find out til he was ten.

Maybe. I struggle between blue vs green, and beige vs grey. So I know im colour blind even though I've not been tested. It's not caused me any harm in life at all, beyond having to ask whoever's with me/shop assistant when I'm buying carpet or paint, to just double check I'm seeing the colour correctly

This thread has been helpful for me! My nearly 2 year old son has a really good vocabulary and like the OP has started putting words together for simple sentences but colours elude him.
I did wonder about colourblindness as his Dad is as well as many family members on his side of the family but as far as I’m aware nobody in my family is so he shouldn’t be but obviously it’s on my mind so it’s good to hear colours aren’t really something they should be confident in just yet.

Sounds like the specifics of language she’s not understanding. What you describe is related to understanding the words you’re using in an abstract way out of sight line.

Not common for girls to be colourblind. It’s inherited through the females, sons and brothers.

A lot of colours is language. My partner is colourblind and part of this means he doesn't always have the language to describe colours or understand the colours I describe.

Shades of beige is one, green, turquoise, aquamarine blue another.

What a lot of people don't realise is that your whole visual spectrum can be affected so red and brown or blue and purple can appear to be the same. My partner can see changes of colour so meat looks rare and he doesn't see ham go green! It's really fascinating!

My son is very colourblind. At two, he was quite confident in colours, he just got them wrong. So for example, declaring completely different colours were the same. It wasn’t a surprise as my dad is similar (females carry it, so it effectively skips a generations and women with colourblind fathers are likely to have colourblind sons. Not sure what happens in the rare cases of female colourblindness).