Michael is color blind. I would say as color blind as a bat but are bats even color blind? I do not know…I was trying to make a blind as a bat joke there and I just don't think it worked.
I've known it for years, but his doctor wouldn't test him until he turned five because "some kids just don't know their colors." He knows his colors, he just can't see them. My father and nephew are also color blind, so he is in good company.
It started about a year ago when he told me "Mommy, I don't see colors very well." And then he told me all colors looked the same to him. And then, when his old preschool used the red, yellow, green traffic light behavior system, he never knew what color he was on. His teachers thought he just didn't care. He actually didn't know. But let's not get me started on them.
It doesn't affect him much, except he constantly tells me things are the wrong color. I grew up with my father arguing with me that blue was black and red was green, so I take it all with a grain of salt. Color blind Candy Land is all kinds of fun, and I challenge any of you to make it through a game without throwing your hands up and saying "FINE IT IS BLUE I GIVE UP."
Michael's latest love involves crafts, he will sit for hours coloring and drawing, and he really loves these bead kits. (not sponsored, affiliate link.) He can sit for longer than I ever thought possible making things out of beads. This weekend we bought him a pirate kit and I had no idea how complicated it was going to be. But he did it, and this child, the child his old school said, COULD NEVER SIT STILL, sat, and made a skeleton pirate out of teeny tiny beads, for an hour.
But I had no idea how color dependent this thing was. So Doug and I had to sit with him, sorting the colors into different bowls and reminding him which color was which. But he stuck with it.
When he was diagnosed as color blind his doctor said he could never fly a plane or detonate a bomb. He didn't say he wouldn't be able to do pre-school bead kits. Now I know.
But man was he excited when he got a color right.
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{ 14 comments… read them below or add one }
How does that affect driving and such? I’ve never known anyone color blind. Fascinating.
Wow, I bet that made preschool really, really hard! You may have to sort his clothes for him when he gets a little older so he won’t embarrass himself with some really poor color combinations in high school!
Oliver is blue/green color blind. It’s more subtle than red/green, but there. He has trouble distinguishing shades of blues and greens, and dark letters on medium to darker shades of blues will be impossible for him to read.
Some ophthalmology students doing a screen at his school (age 3) said they picked it up but his teacher didn’t believe them so we forgot about it. When Eleanor was diagnosed with serious vision issues we thought we should get Oliver checked too. He’s 20/25, but the colorblind thing was confirmed.
My dad was colorblind too. It’s passed through daughters to their sons. My daughter could be a carrier so any sons she has will need to be tested.
How terribly frustrating that the teachers just brush it off! Well, I just think you are lucky to have a frame of reference for it within your family so you know how to deal with the frustration he must feel. He seems to be pretty cool about it though.
I love those bead kits! I’m always begging my daughters to play them with me!
I guess I’d never thought about how hard that must be on the little ones. So much of early childhood education has to do with color systems. The cool part is he’s got you momma. And we already know he’s smart like you, BONUS! Oh and at least one upside. He can’t ever be drafted, you can’t be color blind in the military either.
Whoo the military thing is a big plus side! I know a lot of doctors who are either colorblind or dyslexic. School was hard for them (especially memorizing the veins without seeing the color! UGH!) but they did a lot in spite of their setbacks. Michael is smart, I’m sure he will do great!
Are those bead kits the kind you iron so they stick together? Those are awesome!
Michael is awesome because he made me want to do beadcrafts, which I haven’t wanted to do since … oh, ever. Now I want to make a pirate.
What a sweetheart! It kills me to think of his needs being ignored by those teachers. Grrr!
So many simple accommodations can be made to help him out with the things that require color identification. And I do hope his new school will be all over that! He is old enough to probably start making associations between words and colors for example, so if you labeled the drawing (maybe by putting a letter R or a dot in the center of each red bead on the instructions) and then labeled the bowl with that color bead, well he’d pretty soon be able to spell his colors I’ll bet! And really, spelling colors at age 5 is way more impressive than spouting them off don’t you think?
Anyway, I just want to give that boy a hug! He’s already overcome a lot in his 5 years (and just in the last one or two!) and he just wins my heart over, even without really “knowing” him.
Your son is the awesome. That is all. <3
This post made my heart melt. What an amazing kiddo! (He must have gotten that from his mommy!!)
OMG, I am buying that pirate bead kit right now.
you deserve every .50 you will receive from that affiliate link. in fact, i probably owe you cash if it will keep my kids from squabbling!
There are just grey and write, we may think that they are so sad that never know this colorful world, but it is different for them, they never know there are some other colors in this world!
I have two color-blind twins, probably with the same deficiency as your son. They are moderately severe red-green deficient but haven’t had too much trouble. They’re 11 now, and I really relate with what you said about the teachers (even though I don’t want to knock teachers) because it was an issue for them too. One of my sons colored his sun light green, and his 2nd grade teacher actually embarrassed him in front of the whole class and asked him “what’s the matter with you, you haven’t learned your colors yet?” We actually told this teacher at the beginning of the year he was color-blind. Seems she forgot. He didn’t correct her, just took the comment in and a few kids laughed. Some warm-hearted girls he’s friends with, however, stood up for him and told the teacher “the sun really is green at sunset, don’t you know anything?”
Most teachers are good about color-blindness but few, we have noticed, actually incorporate things to help color-blind kids in their classroom. They are 5th graders now and in all the years they’ve been in school, no one has ever changed the way they label colors in the classroom. My boys have just learned to deal with it and keep it secret until this year, when my son did his science fair on his own color-blindness and won. Everyone was quite curious to see how he saw the world, and he was careful not to show it as a disability but a part of himself (and a part, incidentally, that he would never to “cure”).
Your son is SO cute and this really reminded me of my own boys!!