Sometimes in the morning, Lucas would come downstairs with very unmatched clothing. I would suggest changing clothes because the colors didn’t work together and he would carry on and saying that they looked great. I hate to start the day off wrong, so I would just encourage him to change and if he continued to whine, I’d let him wear the outfit so we could get on with our day. It wasn’t worth an argument.
Yesterday I learned that he his color blind. The nurse at school let me know that she found out during a routine eye exam. I can’t believe that I never suspected it. My father is colorblind, I am a carrier of this recessive gene. Had I known earlier, it certainly would have made things easier a few mornings.
5% to 8% of men and 0.5% of the women of the world are born colorblind. Color blindness is a recessive genetic disorder inherited from mutations in the X chromosome. According to Wikipedia, “Color blindness, a color vision deficiency, is the inability to perceive differences between some of the colors that others can distinguish. It is most often of genetic nature, but may also occur because of eye, nerve, or brain damage, or due to exposure to certain chemicals.” “Inherited color blindness can be congenital (from birth), or it can commence in childhood or adulthood. Depending on the mutation, it can be stationary, that is, remain the same throughout a person’s lifetime, or progressive.”
Wikipedia’s states, “The reason males are at a greater risk of inheriting an X linked mutation is because males only have one X chromosome (XY, with the Y chromosome being significantly shorter than the X chromosome), and females have two (XX); if the women inherit a normal X chromosome in addition to the one which carries the mutation, they will not display the mutation, while men have no ‘spare’ normal chromosome to override the chromosome which carries the mutation.”
Being colorblind is not seeing things in black and white (that can be the case for some people, but is extremely rare). There are two major types of color blindness: those who have difficulty distinguishing between red and green, and those who have difficulty distinguishing between blue and yellow. To someone who is colorblind, the sky is blue and the grass is green. The issue with color blindness is distinguishing between colors, in my son’s situation, red. So green, brown and red look similar in weak light or when the color itself is not intense.
If you suspect that you or someone you know is colorblind, you can do a test online to find out. We had a lot of fun with the test are it was a great way to better understand Lucas’s situation as well as to explain colorblindness to my older son. Looking to the future for your son, some professions are off limits, such as being an electricians, but for the most part, people agree that as far as whether of not it interferes with life, you shouldn’t worry. It’s a pretty mild impediment. Just communiate with your child’s teachers and be aware of the differences. He’ll be fine.
