“But that one is really brown, right?”

So, I’ve spent a bit of time reading about colorblindness, and I found this site that’s pretty cool. If you go to http://colorfilter.wickline.org/, there is a spot to type in any website address (so I typed in our blog address – because you can see the photos on our site, and you can also see the pictures on the colorblindness tests from my previous post), and then you can select a specific type of colorblindness (I chose one of the red-green types, since that’s the most common, and probably what Eli has). You have to wait a minute or two for it to load it up, but it will show you what things look like with that type of colorblindness. It’s really interesting to think that this is how Eli sees things – especially since his favorite color is red, and red is so different to him than it is to me. It makes me curious to know if Eli really sees things like this, or if his colorblindness is possibly more mild than this “filter” shows? I’m not sure if I’ll ever know.

When I called the pediatrician to find out about having him tested, she told me that the color vision test really just tests for the most common kinds of colorblindness, and that the results will basically let you know if your child is colorblind or not. [And I believe that the test they do at the pediatrician’s office is the same as the pictures with the dots and numbers or pictures on my previous post – so after doing that at the school and online, I think it’s pretty clear that he is colorblind, I just don’t know the extent of it.] Since it’s not really a big deal, she suggested waiting until we come in for Eli’s 6-year-old check-up and doing it then. I wish that the test would at least tell you if the child is mildly or severely colorblind. And I’m also curious to know which colors and shades of different colors he sees differently than people with ‘normal’ color vision. I guess I just think that it’d be nice to be able to let his teachers at school know that he’s mildly colorblind, but, for example, that he only sometimes has trouble telling certain shades of red and brown apart, and certain shades of purple, dark pink, and blue apart – so that way they could keep that in mind when they have activities and assignments that are color-dependent. But I guess I’m just stuck with letting them know that he’s colorblind, and we don’t really know exactly which colors appear the same to him (except from our own little unscientific ‘tests’ of questioning him about colors around the house). I guess it’s really not a big deal anyways, especially not in kindergarten.

Yesterday we were playing at the school playground where they have a map of the United States painted on the blacktop. Each state is painted a different color, and the colors were just slightly faded. We were asking Eli the colors, and there were two bordering states that were brown and red. He said they were both red. I asked him which one was the darker red and he pointed to the brown one, and he pointed to the red one when asked which was the brighter red. I asked him which one was his favorite color of red, and he pointed to the red one. Then he pointed to the brown one and said, “But that’s really brown, right?” So he can at least tell the difference between the standard colors (depending on the shade and how bright or dull they are), and he has apparently been able to teach himself what other people say the colors are, even if they aren’t really much different in his eyes. It sure is interesting how the body works, huh? 

(Oh, and this morning Isaac was doing a puzzle and he kept mixing up green and red – but it’s to early to tell with him).

So, here are a couple different shots from our blog using this colorblindness filter.  They each show normal color vision, Protanopia (red/green colorblindness, no red cones), and Deutanopia (red/green colorblindness, no green cones).

Normal:

    

Protanopia:

Deutanopia:

 

Normal:

Protanopia:

Deutanopia:

I think that if I saw like this, my favorite color would be blue, since it seems to be the only really bright color. (But I guess I may be a little biased since blue is already my favorite color – although I am I pretty big fan of red too).