How I Taught My Son Colors When He Saw Them Differently

What I learned as a mom when I discovered my son was color deficient.

In kindergarten, I learned that my son was color deficient.

Learning that was heartbreaking for me as his mom. I kept thinking about what this might mean for him and how I could help him learn without making him feel like there was something wrong with the way he saw the world.

I needed to find a way to help him learn

Once he could read, I found something simple that helped us: I taught him to read the names printed on his crayons and markers.

That gave him a way to learn what colors were called even when he was seeing them differently. If he was looking at a color and seeing something different from what I expected, he could read the name and learn what that color was supposed to be.

I also taught him shapes and encouraged him to learn through creating.

Then the little things started making sense

Before we understood that he was color deficient, there were moments that left us confused.

His dad is an electrician. One day he asked our son to bring him the red hammer. Our son never came back with it. We thought maybe he wasn’t listening.

After we learned about his color deficiency, we looked at each other and said, “Makes sense that I never got the red hammer.”

There was another time when my son told me, “my mom has green hair like my teacher.” My hair was blonde. He was seeing it as green.

Those moments changed the way our family thought about color. We started asking him what he saw before telling him what we expected him to see.

Creating helped me, too

There was something I didn’t expect in all of this. Creating gave me something purposeful to focus on. Instead of constantly thinking, “My son has this issue,” I could put those feelings into something positive.

I wanted to create something that could help my son and other moms and children who were dealing with color deficiency.

That idea became A Rainbow of Shapes

In 2008, I created A Rainbow of Shapes.

The book brought together colors and shapes in an imaginative, approachable way. It wasn’t meant to be a medical book. It came from a mom trying to help her child learn.

The original back-cover description says:

“An imaginative approach to help children with color deficiencies by using the primary colors of the rainbow in various shapes.”

That is still the heart of why I created it.

What I learned as a mom

My son’s color deficiency changed the way our family looked at something as ordinary as color.

More importantly, it taught me that sometimes helping a child doesn’t mean changing the way they see something. Sometimes it means finding another way to help them understand it.

That small idea from 2008 became a book—and eventually became part of the story behind KidsWonderArt.

Read the full story behind A Rainbow of Shapes: KidsWonderArt Story

Looking for a simple color activity? Visit Creativity & Learning for free activities for little learners.