Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Age or Ability Specific Forums Pre-school This is a really odd question...

...But I had a question our little DS's (22 months) cognitive milestones...or rather, the order in which he masters them. (I warned you, odd question lol). Anyway, it's hard enough not comparing little DS to his PG DS5 older brother (though we try very hard not too...it helps that they are uber different in personality and interest)..but you can't help paying attention to the things your kid achieves to some extent, I think. The important thing is to try and remember that there is a normal timeline, which is not the totally skewed timeline of DS5. Ugh, I'm digressing.

OK. DS22months is able to identify most of his letters (probably just capital, not sure, he's not a performer, so it's always hard to tell exactly what he knows), at least 1-10, and and count by rote to at least that, maybe a little more, though it gets silly at some point... and maybe is starting to grasp actually counting of objects, a bit? He knows all his main shapes (triangle, circle, square, rectangle, heart, star, oval...) and is insanely verbal. Honestly, the verbal stuff is the most amazing to me (esp because DS5 didn't say a darn thing till he was 2). He's got an uncountable amount of words (like, hundreds, thousands, I don't even know), labels everything, asks questions and says 3 and 4-word phrases with ease. BUT, he doesn't know his colors. Like at all. basically, you ask him a color, and he pretty much always says blue or "there it is!" (which is cute but not helpful haha.) I don't know...I just find it kind of odd. I'm not worried about it, as he seems pretty advanced as is....I don't know if this is more of a normal than gifted trajectory or not - my normal vs gifted meter is so skewed...

The upshot of this thread is...I kind of thought colors was the thing kids learned before letters/numbers/shapes etc. So I was wondering if anyone had an experience with there DC taking longer to identify colors than the other cognitive milestones.

Keep in mind, I am not worried about it in any way - there isn't any color-blindness in the family or anything like that...plus he's still so young. I'm mostly just wondering if this particular order of learning is more common than I am thinking it is. Thanks

M

I have no idea, BUT I've always been amazed to see color learning lessons etc for kids as late as K. So it seems it is something some/many typical kids do not pick up till at least preschool age? I don't remember when mine learned except that it is was very young. Maybe your child is not very artistic/visual?

I found this link, which indicates that the normal range for color learning would be 18-36 months:

http://www.babycenter.com/404_when-will-my-child-know-his-colors_6717.bc

I remember being puzzled by this as well, because DS learned shapes very early (12-18 mos), but seemed to not recognize colors as well. He learned them eventually (can't remember the age). I suspect it's developmental...

I remember DS was saying names of shapes very early, like 1.5 (he was a late talker so it's hard to say when he actually understood things vs. speaking them). I think that the colors came around the same time or a little later...not by much, maybe weeks or a few months. I do remember that DD could accurately count objects close to her second birthday, at least up to around 5 objects. She would see people in a store and say "1,2, 3, there's 3 people." DS was a little later on this, but he is the one who I think has the more advanced math ability, now that they are 8 and 9.

I would say that both knew their colors well before they were 2.5, but the exact sequence of things, I don't remember. I'm guessing that naming shapes would be easier than naming colors for some kids, esp. if you are showing them different shades of the same color, like light blue vs. navy blue are both blue. A square is a square.

edited to add, I looked at DS's eval report for EI and he had just turned 2. It says he was naming shapes and numbers. Doesn't say anything about colors, but maybe he just wasn't doing it at that time. I'll see if it says anything on the eval from a few months later. I do remember that when he was 2.5 he was naming colors like "gray" and the people with EI acted like I was crazy for having concerns about his overall development.

Here's a data point from the same age, although different milestones. DD's talking didn't really take off until she started reading around 23-24 months. I am pretty sure the reading helped her to acquire spoken language, which at the time seemed way different from the normal sequence. She is now 15yo and a delightful teenager…. the odd sequence of milestones did not portend problems.

Another individual data point with a PG kiddo who is now a teen-- she learned colors so young that I'm not sure when it happened, and knew letters that young, as well (including phonemes for all of them by 20-24mo), but didn't read-read until she was nearly five.

Like Blackcat's kids, she had one-to-one correspondence very early-- definitely before she was verbal enough for us to KNOW that she had it. But looking back, she understood object permanence from a few weeks old (peekaboo and 'hide the object' games were just strange and not entertaining to her once she was about 2mo), and that is a related thing, apparently. She was certainly counting objects up to 5-10 by the time she was 12-15mo when she began demonstrating the skill verbally, at least on occasion.

She was another one that it's hard to judge precisely when she possessed the skill or developed it, because she was such a black box. Skills came out of nowhere, and generally with total mastery, so I understand exactly what Marnie is saying there.


Shapes definitely came later than colors and numbers/counting for her. Not sure that it means much, as she definitely has v-s ability to spare, but also has that mathy abstract thinking.

I also have to wonder how much educational programming/materials your younger child has been exposed to via the elder sibling-- DD really lacked a lot of exposure to certain concepts until she got seriously ill at 15mo and we began allowing (okay-- encouraging, really, because she had to stay quiet and rest for about 90% of her waking hours) educational television and videos.

Once she saw things like Sesame Street, those schooly things took off like they were headed out of orbit.



On the other hand, we know an agemate of DD's that would have looked more verbal than she did when the two of them were 18-24mo. In fact, they were in childcare together and were twin-like in many ways-- both VERY verbal for age, very bright, and highly socialized. The other child, let's call her Z, is someone that we kept (kinda) in touch with when they moved away for 3y on sabbatical-- we ran into them again regularly when the two girls were 8yo.

The difference between them at that age was downright staggering. Z is what I'd term "bright, maybe MG." It was shocking-- I recall being baffled and wondering "What on earth happened to Z??"

She looked quite gifted alongside of DD when they were both toddlers and preschoolers, mind. Looking at the two of them at 2yo, I actually recall SAYING to my DH that Z was "very much brighter" than our DD-- and both children were radically different looking than all of their other peers in that setting.

That's a difference that I chalk up to "enriched home environment" which both children possessed in abundance (all parents terminally-degreed, similar household income/patterns). The difference at 8yo, however, was in LOG-- and as noted, it was downright staggering to me.


Enrichment alone (and he'd definitely have that, having a PG older sib) can appear to be a higher LOG at this age.
They don't all even out, I guess that is what I'm saying-- but at the young ages, it's really tough to know exactly what is massive enrichment (not saying that this is wrong by ANY means)-- just that this can result in a picture which is nearly indistinguishable from a fairly high level of giftedness in toddlers and preschoolers, if one is just looking (casually) at achievement or milestones rather than rate of acquisition or other more direct 'tells' of high cognitive ability.

If I try to recall what the other girl was like at that age, and focus on what was different about them from other children, and what differentiated the two of THEM from one another?

DD was more-- regulated. That is, she was less verbal (mostly), but she also didn't chatter aimlessly when she DID talk. She was very attuned to her surroundings-- eerily aware in a way that Z was not. Aware of the sensory detail, yes, but also far, far FAR more attuned to the adults and other children around her. Both girls were moving out of parallel play into interactive play, but DD was well and truly already THERE.

It wasn't so much differences in skills-- it was a certain sense of self-awareness that differed.

Also, the rate at which each child tried/failed/mastered intellectual tasks was different, now that I look back on the two of them. DD didn't tolerate failure-- she would back completely off and STOP rather than fail-fail-fail at something. It was like she took two steps back and just observed and thought deeply. It was quite striking.

Some of that could well be personality, but I don't think it's all of it, as the two girls are both pro-social and highly introverted. I don't really know what MG or HG development looks like, and I do know that if you've seen one PG developmental arc, you've seen one-- but this might be food for thought.

Howler Karma, you always bring such fascinating insight to the table. I love the above quote, seen it in several iterations before and it always hits home.

Environment always plays some part I believe, though little DS doesn't like to be taught or assessed in any way. The rare occasions I try to actually sit down and figure out if he knows something, he mostly just chucks the stuff I present and yells at me. So then we go back to playing pretend kitchen or listening to music instead, lol.

I suppose he'll get it when he gets it. And until then, we will enjoy (or at least, not worry about) the idiosyncrasies. :P

Although I can not recall exactly when both of my kids learned colors (definitely well before 3 - DD is 2.5 now, although in the 3 year old room that DS was in, they do a "color of the week" theme every week, and not all kids knew them yet), from what I can recall, DD learned colors (and more of them) at a younger age than DS. And that was partially because it mattered a lot more to her - she cared about the color of her clothes and objects (by 2, I stopped trying to put her in red shirts because she would scream "No red! I don't like red!" - for some reason, red provoked that reaction the most then). She learned early that if she wanted to control what color markers/crayons she got and so on, she better know all the words for them. DS could care less what color his clothes are, as long as it was with graphics or patterns he liked. So it was not until later that he started to make it clear that he knew a wide range of colors.

Of course, that meant from a very early age, we have backseat drivers chiming in (it is hard to explain to a 2 year old why you can turn right on red sometimes, but not other times...)

DD (now 12) did some things freakishly early (like speaking and walking) and others she pretended not to know how to do for years (reading). Then other things she seemed incapable of doing long after she should have (puzzles), but we never knew if it was inability or distaste. Her development was such a mystery. And we had almost nothing to compare her to.

I remember when she was maybe 18 mos old she had a set of nesting plastic cups in several colors. One day she sat and grouped them, first by size (larger v. smaller), then by color (blue, yellow, red). But she took forever to get the difference between brown and grey down.

Maybe a dumb question (or at least one you've already considered), but, is there any color blindness in your family?