Blue Is the New Black

Steve and I have been working on teaching Bry colors for about a month now. It seems that he's starting to get the concept that objects have attributes other than their names, but he's not 100% clear on which color name matches which set of pigments. Sitting down with Bry and trying to consider objects from his perspective opens up a world of complexity that I'm guessing I haven't appreciated since I first learned colors myself. Or at least since I got that physics degree and learned about all of the really crazy attributes about things that can't be seen. Looking at a truck brings up so many possible descriptors that it becomes hard to decide the best way to teach them all. Do you focus on the type of truck it is (pickup vs. dump)? Or its color (blue, red, arctic mist)? Or its different parts (wheels, windows)? Or do you notice that its wheels look like circles and its bed looks like a rectangle?

Hmm, tangential much? Back to colors.

Bry can differentiate red, yellow, green, orange, blue, pink, purple, and white objects with about 80% accuracy (a number I just totally made up). If we ask him "What color is the _____?" he often answers, "Boo" (blue), no matter what color the object actually is. But if we ask, "Where's the red car?" (out of a group of different colored cars) he usually picks out the red one. Other times, he'll randomly point out an object and say a color. More times than not he's right on this, although every now and then he'll say "yay-yo" (yellow) for orange, or "deen" (green) for blue, and so on.

We've been curious since Bry was born whether he is colorblind. His uncle Tim is, meaning I have a one in two chance of being a carrier, and Bry has a one in four chance of being colorblind. So far it seems that he's not, since he can distinguish pretty well between red and green and between blue and purple. Hopefully the fact that he's not colorblind will mean that he's better at picking out matching clothing combinations than his uncle. On the other hand, if his daddy's skills have any influence on him, I probably have a long road of teaching ahead of me.