Sometimes the moments that make no sense at the time become the moments you understand most clearly later.
Before I knew my son was color deficient, there were little things that happened that I simply didn’t understand.
Looking back now, I can see them differently.
The red hammer
His dad is an electrician, and one day he asked our son to bring him the red hammer.
Our son never came back with it.
At the time, we thought maybe he wasn’t listening. Maybe he was busy doing something else.
After we learned that he was seeing colors differently, we looked at each other and said:
“Makes sense that I never got the red hammer.”
That little moment suddenly made sense.
My green hair
Another time, my son looked at me and said:
“My mom has green hair like my teacher.”
My hair was blonde.
He was seeing it as green.
At the time, it was one of those comments that makes a mom stop and wonder what in the world her child is thinking.
Once we understood that he saw colors differently, I realized he wasn’t making it up. He was telling me what he actually saw.
The pink sky
One day, my son made a picture at school. There was a person on the page and the sky was pink.
I was working, and his great-aunt was watching him. When I asked why the sky was pink, he looked at me and said:
“What you mean mom look its pink in the sky.”
I remember saying, “Ah no baby, the sky is blue.”
We eventually named that artwork THE SUPER NANNY. His great-aunt had been watching him, and they used to do all kinds of crazy things together.
I had the artwork professionally framed, and it still hangs in my home office.
We started asking a different question
Those moments changed something for our family.
Instead of automatically saying, “That’s red,” or “The sky is blue,” we started asking:
“What color do you see?”
That became our way of understanding his experience instead of assuming that he was seeing what we were seeing.
Learning the names helped
Once he could read, I taught him to read the color names printed on his crayons and markers.
That gave him another way to learn colors. He could see a color differently and still learn what that color was called.
I also taught him shapes, and I encouraged him to learn through creating.
What I didn’t know then
I didn’t know that these little moments would eventually become part of the reason I created a children’s activity book.
In 2008, I created A Rainbow of Shapes.
The book came from a difficult moment in my life as a mom, but creating it gave me something purposeful and positive to focus on. I wanted to help my son—and other moms and children who might be going through something similar.
It wasn’t about telling him that what he saw was wrong.
It was about finding another way to help him learn.
Years later, I still think about those moments
My son grew up. He still sees some colors differently, but he knows what those colors are supposed to be.
And our family still asks him what he sees.
Something that started as a collection of confusing little moments became one of the most meaningful lessons of my life as a mom:
Sometimes you understand your child better when you stop assuming they see the world the way you do.
Read more about the story behind A Rainbow of Shapes: The KidsWonderArt Story.
Explore simple creative learning activities: Creativity & Learning.
Mom Life, As It Happens 
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