How Do I Tell if My Child Is Colorblind?

One out of every twelve men and one out of every two hundred women are born colorblind. If you have a son who is struggling with distinguishing his colors, then it's possible that he is colorblind and needs further testing. And while colorblindness isn't a disability that affects quality of life, it is important that young children's teachers are informed of their disability. Many learning materials for children are color-enhanced, and they may have to be modified to accommodate your child's special needs.

Notice the Symptoms

• Most parents have their first suspicions that their child might be colorblind when they are teaching him or her the basic colors. Ninety-nine percent of colorblind people are either "red weak" or "green weak." This means that they have trouble distinguishing between shades of these colors and colors that contain these hues.

  Colorblind children often have trouble distinguishing between different hues. For example, to a "red weak" colorblind child, violet, lavender, purple and blue all appear to be the same color.

Take an Online Test

• The fact that your child is having difficulty learning his colors doesn't necessarily mean that he is colorblind. For a more accurate appraisal of his condition, you can give him an online colorblindness test like the one offered for free on ColorVisionTesting.com (http://colorvisiontesting.com/online%20test.htm).

  Your child's color vision will be tested by a series of cards with colored dots and hidden shapes. He will have three seconds to distinguish shapes within the dot patterns. Each card comes with an explanation about what your child's inability to see certain shapes or patterns means for his color vision.

Administer Your Own Test

• If your child is too young to distinguish shapes, then you can administer the test with similarly shaped but differently colored objects.

  To check for "red weak" colorblindness, have her pick out a red crayon from a row that also includes an orange, a yellow and a green crayon.

  To test "green weak" colorblindness, have her pick out a green crayon from a row that also includes a white, a brown and a gray crayon.

  If your child has trouble making these distinctions despite a sound knowledge of color names, then it is likely that she is colorblind.

Take Him to a Doctor

• While the above tests are not much different from the one your child's eye doctor will administer, it is important to have a physician's diagnosis in order to rule out any optic nerve or neurological disorder behind your child's impaired vision.