Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion Synesthesia--seeing colors with numbers or letters

LOL

I just asked my kids:

DS8, awful speller, said that words are small black letters on a giant white space (um, ok).

DD10, very artistic (drawing at the moment) and a crackerjack speller, said that 7 is brown, 4 is green, and the colours of the numbers helped her figure out that 7+7=14 when she was younger. (Chatty DS interrupted her at that point, but I have a feeling she had more to say).

Interesting... So of course now I'm wondering... (lol) How do I get my DS to start seeing more colours and maybe improve his spelling? heh heh

I associated numbers with feelings LOL... 6 was always sad.

Marytheres, my DD associates feelings with her numbers, too.

I always though of evens as being happy and odds as being sad or dark. So 6 was always one of my happy numbers I never associated colours with letters or numbers though... just with sounds.

I am completely shocked! My DS says 1 is red, 8 is red and 9 is red! He says number 3, 13 are green, and number 23 is grean and brown. 2 is yellow, 20 is brown, 22 is brown. Oh and 12 is brown. He says he has plenty of others but he doesn't want to share them right now! Wow! I had no idea... He is very creative.

I casually asked him if he thinks numbers have colours and he said "of course they do" and rattled this all off... I am really surprised that he never mentioned it before.

Here are my notes on DD's numbers. The first set she was barely 6, the next somewhere in the 7s, the last set late 8. This is with months in between without talking about it. As you can see, there is a lot of congruency but not completely so.

1 is a white ice number
white, okay
white
2 is a green grape number
purple, sad
brown
3 is brightish green
green, really happy
light blue, happy
4 is a brown tool number
orange, a little angry
terra cotta, something weird just appeared
5 is a green toad number
red, angry
red, mad
6 is a (no answer)
blue like 7, darker, really really sad
dark blue, upset
7 is a cool water number
blue, sad, a little
regular blue, daydreamy
8 is a purple grape number
olive green, frsutrated
olive green, jealous
9 is a sunny yellow number
bright yellow, really really happy
yellow, really happy
10 is a gray cloudy number
black, super angry
black, super angry (yes, she said exactly the same thing both times)

Hi, I have been wondering about the 'subtitling" of spoken words that I and my daughter have. Sometimes, we can see the words as other people say them. Someone told me that's a type of synaesthesia... is that right?

Ninjanoodle - I would say from that link above it is yes.

In the other thread I mentioned that when I asked my 2nd DD about letters having colours she said "Of course they do" and rattled off colours, until I realised that she was listing a perfect match for the starfall colours, which is how/where she learned the alphabet. I wondered in the other thread whether synaesthesia was influenced by the chart/blocks/book that they learned letters/numbers/days/weeks from as those learning tools and toys are so often colour coded (though clearly not everyone retains the colour association)....

I just asked her again and she clearly has internalised that her synaesthesia wasn't "real" but just from starfall because she denied that she sees colours. But then did produced a list when prompted, which still overlaps with starfall.

I just asked my 34mth old. She says A is green, B is blue and C is short...

DH has a really full on cyclic 3D visualisation of days/weeks/months. Which is listed in the linked website as synesthesia. And also has sound/colour associations.

One day recently out of the blue (so to speak), my 16 year old son told me: "I just figured out why I always confuse Saturday and Sunday! They're both red!"