![]() I followed up with a conference (without Andrew) and pointed out some of the areas in the classroom that might be a problem. I did at least want her to understand right away if Andrew told her he was confused. I didn’t expect her to get busy changing all the color-coded material in the classroom. When Andrew started kindergarten, I wrote a letter to his teacher to let her know that he was colorblind, and explained some of the ways that he could confuse colors. Andrew was put at ease because we treated as an interesting circumstance, and not as an earth-shattering condition. Andrew was happy that they thought it was “really cool.” It was important that we kept the discussion light. When the family was together, we talked about it casually.Īndrew’s older brother and sister asked him questions about it. I let Andrew know that there were many people who were colorblind, including his grandfather. I told him that if he was ever confused about colors, he could just say so, and ask for help. I told Andrew matter-of-factly that he had a special way of seeing colors. How many times already was he told he was wrong when he chose a color, or completed a pattern, or moved to a space on a game board? It might not seem catastrophic to an adult, but to a child these repeated situations can be disturbing.Ī colorblind child has no frame of reference to say, “Maybe I can’t see that color,” or “Maybe those are different colors that look the same to me.” A child’s natural reaction would be, “I must not be smart enough to know that.” Recognize that it had the potential to do some serious damage to his self-confidence. I was never concerned that colorblindness itself would be extremely limiting for Andrew. The most important goal for me, and for any parent I think, is to have a happy, confident child. If you don’t know your child is colorblind, this kind of artwork can be puzzling. Sometimes those rosy faces he loves to draw are actually lime green. For instance, he can tell you the fire truck is red, but if you ask him to draw a picture of it, he could easily choose a brown crayon.Īndrew made me a Valentine with a beautiful heart colored with forest green. But those obstacles seemed to pale in comparison to the extremely color-oriented world that Andrew was going to face in kindergarten.Īndrew can usually recognize a vibrant red or green but not lighter or duller hues. And he occasionally needed some immediate assistance in determining the color of a traffic light. He was restricted from choosing paint colors. Very few publications were written in layman’s terms, addressing the day-to-day issues of the colorblind. Traveling through libraries, bookstores and the Internet, I tried to extract practical information from the maze of scientific books and articles. I began to learn more about color blindness. I wanted to know if Andrew would be at a disadvantage when he started kindergarten. Were an integral part of the early education curriculum. From my experience with my two older children, colors I was relieved to know that Andrew had a seemingly minor vision problem, and not a learning deficit but I wasn’t sure it didn’t matter. When they were finished, the doctor informed me that Andrew was red-green color deficient, or colorblind.Īs I was trying to remember all the questions I wanted to ask, he was saying, “It doesn’t matter. These shapes would apparently not be visible to the colorblind. The optometrist showed my four-year-old a book of pictures with shapes. ![]() Our pediatrician didn’t have a color vision test, and referred me to an optometrist. “Now that you mention it, that could be it.” ![]() “Do you think he could be colorblind?” I asked his teacher. This is a guest article by Karen Levine, she is the author of the book All About Color Blindness: A Guide to Color Vision Deficiency for Kids (and Grown-ups Too). Were these signs of a learning disability, or was it something else? I was already concerned that he couldn’t always identify colors correctly. When my son Andrew was four years old his pre-school teacher told me that he was having trouble understanding simple patterns. ![]() Guest Article: A Mother’s Journey into Colorblindness
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