Black and White

[mckennasmomma]

My daughter (2.5 years old) has known all of her colors since probably 15-17 months.  But for some reason, she still struggles with black and white.  More often than not she calls black things white, and sometimes calls white things black.  She can easily identify light and dark shades of all other colors.  Is it possible to have some sort of odd black/white color blindness? For a long time I thought she was just a little mixed up about it and still learning, but now I'm beginning to wonder...

[kayabrink]

There is no black/white colorblindness, don't worry! Some concepts seem to be particularly prone to confuse toddlers/preschoolers. Many kids confuse lions and tigers, zebras and giraffes, elbows and shoulders. I'm not sure why that is, but I think your dd is just having this happen with black and white.

FWIW I've btdt with two kinds of colourblindness- my father and son both colourblind, confusing brown, red and green; green and grey; blue and purple; orange, red and brown... The only colour my son can see "normally" would appear to be yellow (incidentally, his favourite colour since toddlerhood, probably because it's the only one he can i.d.!). Same for my dad. And, I am (this is particularly rare- colourblindness is generally reserved for the male portion of the population, since it's due to a recessive gene carried on the X chromosome) also color blind, although not so severly- I just have issues with blues and purples.

[sapphire_chan]

DH is colorblind and dd was having trouble with red and green specifically, so I found a color blindness test online for kids and had her do that.

But yeah, there's no black/white colorblindness.

DD wants lights "off" in a dark room, wants to go upstairs to the basement, and won't eat food because it is "too tasty" for her. Opposites are her thing.