March 06, 2008

My son is a genius. Of course, I believe this because I am his mother. But it is true. Deacon always amazes Andy and me with how quickly he can pick up new concepts. He has all his letters and numbers down cold. But there's one area that he isn't so bright with and that is colors. Deacon has quite a few books on colors and even though he loves to read them, he just can't grasp which color is which. Then it started to make me wonder, what if he is colorblind. So Andy and I started to watch him closely as he interacts with crayons, paints, and books. We were always quizzing him on colors and he was always getting them wrong -especially red and green. He often says that the red crayon is green.

My father is colorblind. So is just about every male in his family. So I knew it was a possibility. Actually, I came to find out that my sons have a 50% chance of being colorblind. I don't see this as a disability though, my father is an accomplished chemical engineer who usually had no problems with his colorblindness. Occasionally, he would ask for our advice when dressing himself.

So here's something interesting: new research suggests that women who carry the colorblindness gene but aren't colorblind actually have an extra cone in their eye. This could mean that I actually see more colors than the average person. The funny thing is that I would never know what normal is to compare it with. And likewise, colorblind people won't know how normal people see things either.

I found this post by a guy who is red/green colorblind like my dad and possibly Deacon. There are more picture comparisons on there. I found it quite interesting.

I think there may be a song in here somewhere.