color blindness

DawnLilly

I know it's pretty common in boys. He turns 2 June 1st and already does great with shapes and colors. Except blue and green. It's as if there is no difference to him. Is there anything I should(or even can) be doing to help him?

ashiscute

I think he's too young to know if he's color blind.  At that age some kids know colors and some don't.  I would not be worried about it honestly.  My DD struggled with yellow and orange for ages.  

harmonicbabe26

theresat858 said:

Typical color blindness is red-green. It sounds like he just doesn't quite know all of his colors yet.

This. My ex-H was color blind.
At the age of 2 many kids still can't name all colors. My DD is really good with thay but till recently she would call silver and grey - esp light shades - white...

dashofreality

My DS has the same bday:) Super common, since he can recognize other colors it is very unlikely that he is actually color blind. There was one study that showed significant improvement in color recognition when parents said "the ball is green" vs. "green ball". If you get in the habit of saying the color after the object it helps young kids separate the concept. Using color as a modifier is tough for this age.

I believe this study was done on kids around age 4 though. Colors at 2 is advanced so don't worry.

Aurora_Borealis

Yeah, I think it's pretty common for 2 year olds to get their color names mixed up. Especially colors that are sometimes similar. DD mixes up grey and black all the time. Not really a big deal...though she did tell me the other day that my hair was brown and grey, when I knew she really meant brown and black (not that it made me feel all that much better - I'm only about 5% grey, but am quite self-conscious about that 5%!).

A PP is right that the most common color blindness is red-green, though it is possible to have other colors involved. My dad can tell red and green apart just fine, but cannot distinguish between brown and green at all.

DawnLilly

Aurora_Borealis said:

Yeah, I think it's pretty common for 2 year olds to get their color names mixed up. Especially colors that are sometimes similar. DD mixes up grey and black all the time. Not really a big deal...though she did tell me the other day that my hair was brown and grey, when I knew she really meant brown and black (not that it made me feel all that much better - I'm only about 5% grey, but am quite self-conscious about that 5%!).

A PP is right that the most common color blindness is red-green, though it is possible to have other colors involved. My dad can tell red and green apart just fine, but cannot distinguish between brown and green at all.

Thank you everyone! It was the brown/green/blue I was wondering about. DS' paternal uncle can't distinguish between them so I was curious.

Aurora_Borealis

DawnLilly said:

Thank you everyone! It was the brown/green/blue I was wondering about. DS' paternal uncle can't distinguish between them so I was curious.

I'm not sure if it's hereditary. Has YS been to his 2 year pedi visit yet? I would probably bring it up to see if there is anything you can do (though my guess is there isn't).

WiscohioMom

There are some other rare causes of color blindness, but most commonly it is hereditary - however a boy gets it from his carrier mother, so the paternal uncle being color blind would not affect your son, he would had to have gotten it from mom's side of the family tree. (This is a very simplified response, the whole shebang is very complicated and very over my head!). The term red-green color blindness doesn't mean that those people only mix up red and green, though - they often have trouble with similar shades of color, and since blue and green run into each other on the spectrum, these can also be tricky for red-green color blind people. Anyway, I don't think it is anything you need to worry about now, just be aware of and keep an eye on. PP's are correct, kids take a while to really grasp colors and he wouldn't be appropriate for testing until older. If he is in day care or starts school I would let the teachers know your concerns so they can keep an eye on it too, and not be too hard on him for coloring his turtle blue *married into a very colorblind family*