My 4-year-old gets his colours confused. Could he be colour blind?
It is unlikely that your son’s difficulty in correctly naming colours is because he is colour blind. It is not unusual for a 4-year-old to have this problem.
Sophisticated testing has shown that the ability to distinguish colours develops quite early. The problem for the toddler is being able to attach the right name to the colour. A 4-year-old is 3 times more likely to make this error than a primary school child is.
Development of colour naming shows wide variation between individual children and generally occurs earlier girls than in boys. My wife still corrects me on the names of colours I use!
Colour naming problems are much more likely to be the reason than colour blindness in your son and this will become better with time.
Colour blindness can be tested at this age. Not all doctor’s consulting rooms have the booklet that is needed to do the testing. So, it would be a good idea to check if your doctor has the equipment to test for colour blindness before making an appointment.
Remember that the problem is more likely to be difficulty in naming the colours rather than in seeing them and that the naming process will come with time.
Children learn what they are taught. I used to think that my older children were all very smart because they knew their colours early. Their mother pointed out that when they said a word incorrectly (EG “ird” instead of “bird”) I would reply “Yes there is a brown bird”. I did this so they would hear the word correctly but not in the way that was a put-down. An unintended result of this was that they learnt their colours early.
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