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.

@Superscientist thank you for sharing this. Part of the reason i asked the question was to better understand the impact that being colourblind could have. Having looked at the representations of tritanopia it made me think that the world would just appear so confusing to me let alone a two year old. Especially when so much of what we show toddlers is full of colour contrasts. I hope i haven’t come across as flippant or dismissive.

i’m not sure if this is something that could be linked… but she also has exceptionally severe motion sickness (literally vomits her body weight within 5 minutes of a car journey and even puked on our last flight as we were landing).i’ve heard that can be related to vision issues so was wondering if there might be something to it. (I do have a bit of tendency to join too many dots though)

@CuriousEgg it could be visual. Motion sickness is that link between vision and how the brain and ears interpret movement. I wouldn't say that it is linked to colour blindness though. It is a lot more common in children than adults. A third (33%) of 2-12 year olds suffer from motion sickness and this is the age group with the highest rates of motion sickness

I have double vision due to poor convergence of my eyes. This can give me motion sickness when watching anything in 3D for example or doing stuff at work that involves things moving. I'm ok with cars and things

I have a colleague who is colourblind (and in science where we use colour a lot as the post above). So I have an app on my phone called SimDaltonism that allows me to see what colour images look like for him so I can adjust my colours so something that works. It is very helpful to understand how colourblind people see the world.

when my dc was 2, I taught her colours by gathering different toys of the same colour. So a pile of 5 red toys ( from different sets so different shades of red) and 6 blue toys etc. a couple of games of organising by colour and she got the idea.