Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion Colorblindness, anyone?

DS6 participated in an eye study while waiting for his doctor the other day. Turns out he's red-green colorblind (along with 8% of the population). I thought he was lying when he couldn't see the numbers in the Ishihara color tests, and the med student kept asking if he knew his numbers (yes, he does). Oh, yeah.... my brother's colorblind too.

I haven't noticed any difference at all in DS6. It's all quite fascinating though!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_blindness

I am color blind also, which is very rare in females. I'm red/green as well. I didn't even know it until I went into the military and took a color blind test. I have a hard time believing anyone can see any of those numbers in the circles. It just looks like a bunch of dots to me,even when people trace over the numbers to point them out to me. My DS13 is also color blind, but not my DD8.
I do have a difficult time matching clothing and need lots of help from a friendly clerk unless it is a really obvious color match. My most difficult color to distinguish are shades of green if it looks really yuck to me, I know it is probably some off-shade of green.

Some tips for your DS - if your school still uses chalk boards, yellow chalk on the boards are really difficult to see. Suggest the teacher always use white. Also make sure when he is testing that tests do not talk about color. Which ball is bigger, the blue or the green etc. This is really an issue sometimes in social studies with map reading, pr reading charts/graphs in math, etc.

Thanks for the advice! The schools all have white boards now, but that's good advice re: maps. I told his teacher that he was color-blind, in case she notices anything odd. I have never noticed any problems with him identifying colors, though. It's all so strange to me!

I can tell all the basic colors too, it is just the shades of color that really get to me or copied paper with colors, such as some workbooks,etc. As I mentioned I didn't know I was color blind until I was a young adult and don't know if I ever would have found out if I didn't go in the military. I just assumed that everyone saw the same things that I did.

It's all so fascinating to me. The Wikipedia site said the military is laying off of some of the restrictions due to colorblindness, but it's interesting that you can't get a driver's license in Romania and Turkey!

I guess it's just something to keep in mind. Thanks for the tips.

And whose to say that everyone on earth doesn't see things differently?

one of my stepsons is paritially colorblind. When he was young and dressing himself for school he would come downstairs in the oddess color choices and I would make him go up stairs and change again and again (I thought he was trying to be funny) When I found out from school what the problem was I felt so bad that I didn't see it before. To find out for myself what colors he could see I got a color chart with about 50 different shades and when through them with him. If it was a shade he couldn't identify it was always brown to him. Then when purchasing his clothes in the future I would always buy colors he could see and made sure everything match with everything, sounds like a small thing but it became important to him when he started dating

He didn't have a problem getting his DL, The colors they use for traffic lights he could see.

My brother (pg) is colorblind, doesn't seem any of our kids are, however. He was odd about everything just sort of being different shades of brown.

My son is color blind. It kept him from being an airplane mechanic in the Air Force. If you can't tell those yellow wires from the green wires, no one wants to fly the planes you rewired! I didn't know until he was about 6 and went in for his first eye exam.
I had to tell one teacher several times that he couldn't color code maps. I got really steamed when she took off points on a test due to not using the correct color. I think she fixed that grade after I talked to her!

The genetics of color blindness is fascinating. My mother's father was color blind, it kept him from being promoted to engineer on the train. Wow, I just roughly figured that had to have been at least 90 years ago! My mom would have been 94 this year, and he lost that opportunity somewhere around that time.