Daltónico

On Friday, I helped diagnose one of my kids with colorblindness. He came to the Ranch in March. His mom passed away just a few weeks ago. In May, his teacher reported to the psychologist that he was having trouble with his colors. Because there are so few staff members to help with this sort of thing, he was just now tested with the volunteer occupational therapist. She came to talk to us today to tell us that he did indeed have trouble with his colors. Several teachers had been working with him over the past few months on this skill to no effect. Having known three colorblind people (a student, my great-grandpa, and my physics lab partner in high school), I suggested that the problem might be visual instead of mental, especially given that he has no other issues beyond trouble reading. We took the child back into the therapy room. He had to go through a series of obstacles and then choose a ball of a specified color from a blow-up kiddie pool. He struggled especially to find pink at all even though there were several. With other colors, he would have the right one in his hand and then put it down. I could tell he was really embarrassed. The therapist got out a puzzle where he had to match things that were the same color. I remembered going to the Pacific Science Center with Grandma as a kid and taking the test for color-blindness. There was a design made of dots in red and green. There was a nine in red surrounded by a background circle of green. Grandma explained that colorblind people wouldn’t be able to find the nine because they couldn’t distinguish between the two colors. Sure enough, this child tried to put together the red and green items. On Monday, I’m looking forward to talking to him about it. It’s not something we can fix, but I want him to know it’s not his fault, he doesn’t have a learning problem, and he can learn coping skills to deal with it. I’m also going to make sure there’s a note in his file so his future teachers know about it and don’t think he has some kind of deficiency (e.g. he shouldn’t be docked points in English class for not knowing the colors when he can’t distinguish them). Neither the therapist nor the other teacher had ever met someone who was colorblind before, so today I felt really useful and like I helped a child.