Teaching my DC colors- Calls everything green

[Anonymous]

Is this just a developmental phase or something of concern? I do not recall learning anything about this in any of my childhood development classes. He is 23 months old. I've worked with him A LOT trying to teach him colors. He calls everything green, even after I just correct him, he will tell me "no, green.

[Anonymous]

He might have a form of color blindness. More common in males then females.

[Anonymous]

Color blindness. At 21 months he should know at least 5 colors. I babysat an 18 month old Monday that knew red, yellow, blue and green. Get him to a specialist now that it is early may be corrected.

[Anonymous]

I just read up on this as DD also has a hard time identifying colors. She's also 23 months old. What I read is that identifying colors by name is an advanced skill that is developed at 3-4 years old and you should not test a child until before kindergarten.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I just read up on this as DD also has a hard time identifying colors. She's also 23 months old. What I read is that identifying colors by name is an advanced skill that is developed at 3-4 years old and you should not test a child until before kindergarten.

That's ridiculous. 3 year olds can read books but they can't tell the difference between red and white ? If they are colored blind they can't. Otherwise, they can.

[Anonymous]

For boys, ask whether colorblindness runs in the mother's family. If her brothers, uncles or other males relatives through her mother's side are colorblind, it's possible. If there's no history, it's possible that it's achromatopsia. "About one out of 40,000 babies never develops cones, seeing only in black-and-white throughout life. This is called achromatopsia, or rod-monochromatic colorblindness."

For girls, it's very, very, very unlikely that they get the genes for red-green colorblindness, as mom has to be carrier or colorblind and dad MUST be colorblind. You would know if either parent was colorblind if you've been working with them for 2.5 years.

Yes, telling us the NAMES for specific colors is an advanced skill, as is reading. There's no way for a child to tell us the name that is common in whichever language for a specific color unless they are taught. There is no way for a child to learn to read without first being taught (and reading to a child who is advanced enough to follow the words is still teaching that child to match the word to a combination of letters). We take a lot of the advanced skills that we use a building blocks of our daily lives for granted, but young children are just learning.

By the way, asking to have a child under 2 evaluated is rather premature, don't you think?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I just read up on this as DD also has a hard time identifying colors. She's also 23 months old. What I read is that identifying colors by name is an advanced skill that is developed at 3-4 years old and you should not test a child until before kindergarten.

That's ridiculous. 3 year olds can read books but they can't tell the difference between red and white ? If they are colored blind they can't. Otherwise, they can.

Um, how many 3 yo can read books? It's a feat if they can spell their name!

[Anonymous]

Are you sure he isn't just being defiant/obstinate? If you are quizzing him when he just wants to play and ignore you, this may be his way of trying to shut it down.

[Anonymous]

I've never met a 3 year old that could read, but have met 2 year olds who can tell names of multiple colors. I wouldn't be concerned just yet. Keep working on it with him.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote: Are you sure he isn't just being defiant/obstinate? If you are quizzing him when he just wants to play and ignore you, this may be his way of trying to shut it down.

op here. I thought that this may be a possibility at first, but he often points out objects and says they are green.

[Anonymous]

Maybe he just likes green for whatever reason? My 2 year old recently learned and really likes the word for crocodile in Spanish and now calls lots of things crocodile knowing full well they are not.

[Anonymous]

My nanny kids, twins, had this problem around age 2 also (for them everything was blue). I had been implementing several color based activities with them for months but nothing was working. Eventually, I resorted to bribery: after their nap they woke up hungry. I'd give them 3 cheerios to eat, and then for every object they correctly identified the color of they got another cheerio (or sometimes we used grapes or pieces of cheese). Of course I helped them out with a lot of hints at first, but by the end of the first week they were successfully identifying colors more than 50% of the time and by two weeks they'd learned all the basic colors and very rarely got one wrong. I'm not particularly proud that I resorted to bribery, but MB and DB were very pleased that they learned their colors!

[Anonymous]

My kid calls 50% of objects panda, and another (anything food related) pasta. Relax. Maybe practice naming colors a bit more.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote: Are you sure he isn't just being defiant/obstinate? If you are quizzing him when he just wants to play and ignore you, this may be his way of trying to shut it down.

op here. I thought that this may be a possibility at first, but he often points out objects and says they are green.

My 22 month old DD calls everything "the blue one" my older DD (3) knows all of her colors, but definitely didnt know to name her colors at 23 months. This post made me laugh, i was afraid my older DD was color blind when she was 23 months too

[Anonymous]

My 22 month old calls most things "purple" if you ask her what color it is. Only recently has she identified "blue" buses.

My kid can match up colors, but doesn't have the words yet for it. I wouldn't worry about it. If you're really freaked out, bring it up at the 24 month appointment with the ped. They will probably tell u it's normal.