Color blindness can be confusing and potentially upsetting for parents of young children, who may not have the vocabulary to express what they perceive. Color blindness exists along a continuum, and it is difficult to determine in young children. One way to identify it is to create an identification game using colored cards. Boys are more likely to have an inability to distinguish between green and red.
A child doesn’t care if the world they see wears the same beautiful colors that others see, but parents probably do. Being colorblind as an adult isn’t necessarily a big deal; adjustments can be made, and most of the time, the true color of a thing is accidental. For parents, however, color blindness in young children is both confusing and potentially more upsetting. Because young children may not yet have the conceptual skills or vocabulary to express what they perceive, determining if a child is colorblind can be a daunting task. A significant symptom is a child who has learned to classify objects by number and type, but does not consistently identify colors.
People who aren’t colorblind might mistakenly think it means the inability to see any color. Indeed, color blindness exists along a continuum. Some colorblind people see the world in black, white, and shades of gray. Others cannot tell the difference between red and green or shades of red or green. It is especially difficult to determine color blindness in young children, much less where on the continuum such a visual deficiency might occur.
Many color-blind adults reflect on their childhood and realize that they weren’t even aware that what they were seeing was different from what their teachers and classmates were seeing. This is especially true for those with only mild color blindness. While this is comforting for parents dealing with color blindness in young children, it doesn’t erase the desire to know what the child is actually seeing.
A parent who has worked with a child for a period of time learning colors might notice if the child consistently calls everything red or green by just one of the terms. Another clue is a child who arbitrarily announces, for example, that raspberries are green and the leaves of trees are red, so he changes them. Color blindness in young children is often identified in this way. The odds increase dramatically if these children are boys because 99% of children with an inability to distinguish between green and red are boys.
One way to try and determine if a child is red/green colorblind or just plain confused is to create an identification game. Using colored cards with a range of shapes on them in contrasting colors can help a parent or teacher understand what the child is seeing or not seeing. If a child doesn’t see a red circle drawn on a green card or tells you that a red circle drawn on a yellow card is really green, that’s a strong indication that color blindness may be present.
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