How to check if your child is colorblind. Is color blindness in a child a unique feature or a disease? How to recognize and treat pathology. The complex itself includes several sets of cards

For many parents, information on how to determine color blindness in a child is relevant. Most people see the world as colorful thanks to their full vision. A minority exhibit various anomalies in color perception. A person who sees the world in black and white, or in a limited color spectrum, is called colorblind.

In the presence of this pathology, the organs of vision are deprived of the ability to recognize one or more colors. This condition is given the name of the English optical physicist D. Dalton, who had impaired perception of a certain color range. Based on his own experience, the scientist described in detail this deviation from the norm back in the 18th century.

Color blindness, or color blindness, can be congenital or acquired, while the second form of pathology is more prone to progression.

The main reasons for the development of the disease include:

• heredity;
• eye injuries;
• diabetes or optic nerve pathology;
• age characteristics of the body.

With color blindness, there is a deficiency of red pigment in the color-sensitive receptors of the retina, which causes incomplete color perception.

In medicine, there are several types of this disorder:

1. Protanopia is the inability to distinguish green from red.
2. Deuteranopia - confusion of green shades with blue.
3. Tritanopia – poor vision of colors and objects in the dark (“night blindness”).
4. Achromasia is the most complex form of color blindness, which is the perception of the environment in black and white.

According to statistics, color blindness predominantly affects males. In this case, women are hidden carriers of a gene that is passed on to the child on the maternal chromosome.

Doctors say: all children are born color blind, and the ability to perceive colors appears some time after birth.

Detection of pathology at home

Color blindness must be identified in childhood. In the future, pathology can significantly limit a person’s choice of specialty. It is known that representatives of such professions as a driver, sailor, doctor or pilot should have full vision, since its condition largely affects the safety and health of the people around them.

Diagnosing color blindness in children is quite difficult. At the age of 2, most of them are already able to distinguish colors, and they will not be able to meaningfully name them until the age of 3. To determine the presence of the disease, you will need particularly careful monitoring of the baby.

There are simple ways that tell you how to determine color blindness in a child yourself. Adults need to pay attention to some characteristic symptoms and signs of the presence of an anomaly. Parents should be wary if their child:

• calls red color green and vice versa;
• draws the sky, grass, sun, water, etc. in tones different from real colors;
• during a game to determine the color of an object, he makes the same mistake several times in a row;
• when choosing between two objects, bright and black, he will not immediately reach for the first one, but after some deliberation he will choose one of them at random.

With the development of computer technology, tests have appeared that allow online testing of children or adults for color blindness. There are many sites where you can take such a test completely free of charge and get reliable and understandable results.

Adults should realize that the perception of a colorblind child is significantly different from the worldview of his healthy peers. Therefore, it is important to learn to promptly identify the presence of color blindness in children, and when it is confirmed, treat the child’s mistakes with understanding.

Medical methods for diagnosing color blindness

Children who, according to the observations of their parents, have developed color blindness, require a mandatory medical examination. To diagnose color blindness, specialists turn to:

Rabkin's tables are images consisting of multi-colored circles of equal brightness. With normal color perception, children do not have difficulty distinguishing certain numbers or geometric shapes in special images. Having signs of color blindness, it is not possible to see them. There is a second type of polychromatic tables. Such manuals contain images that only a colorblind person can see.

When taking the Ishihara color test, the patient names multi-colored numbers on a colored background, or tracks the trajectory of a winding line. In this case, both the numbers and the background consist of green and red dots. Young children are examined using special drawings (car, circle, square).

Holmgren's method is as follows: from a set of multi-colored six, you will need to choose skeins of the same color, but of different shades. If the patient is unable to distinguish red from dark tones, the patient is classified as “red-blind”, and from light tones – “green-blind”.

Flickering lanterns contain movable plates with built-in colored glasses that can be combined with each other. In a dark room, the child is asked to identify the color that is shown to him in a flashlight or in its mirror reflection.

Color blindness in children can be detected using spectral techniques. To do this, they resort to the use of Girinberg and Abney apparatuses, Nagel anomaloscope, and Rabkin spectroanomaloscope.

Diagnosis of color blindness requires the most careful approach, since this pathology cannot be detected with a standard fundus examination. That is why people can live with it without thinking about their condition.

What are the chances of a cure?

Modern medicine has not yet found a way to fully or partially cure a person from color blindness. Scientists have repeatedly made attempts to correct visual defects using various optical devices, glasses and contact lenses, but they have not found widespread use.

In 2009, it became known about a successful experiment in the field of genetic engineering. A group of American scientists was able to save experimental monkeys from color blindness by introducing missing genes into the retina. Positive results allow us to hope that similar treatment can be carried out in humans.

Similar articles

The essence of color blindness is the inability to identify colors (one or more). This pathology is hereditary and is caused by a malfunction of nerve cells. It is extremely rare that color blindness can be acquired. A special feature of the disease is that boys are more susceptible to the pathology. Among one hundred patients, color blindness is observed in one girl and 99 boys.

There are several types of color blindness:

• protanopia - the inability to distinguish between red and green colors, their shades;
• tritanopia - problems with identifying colors in the blue-violet spectrum;
• deuteranopia - inability to see the color green and its shades;
• Complete color blindness - black and white vision.

Causes

Color blindness can appear in a child for two reasons:

• Genetic predisposition. In most cases, color blindness is passed on to the child on the maternal side. The genes responsible for color perception are located on the X chromosome. There are two X chromosomes in the female body; if one is abnormal, the second one activates a compensatory function, and color blindness does not appear. Boys have only one X chromosome, so if it is damaged, it is not possible to replace the gene with a full-fledged one from the second chromosome.
• External effects on the eye. Color blindness in children can occur due to eye injury, myopia due to cataracts. In this case, the child may stop highlighting the blue and yellow palette.

Symptoms

Modern medicine allows early detection of disorders of the nerve endings in the eye that are responsible for the perception of colors.

It is very difficult to detect color blindness at home. This is due to the fact that only at 3-4 years old children can meaningfully name colors. But learning colors occurs much earlier. Thus, the child simply remembers the names of the colors he sees.

In order to understand what colors he associates with the names, you can ask him to draw some kind of picture, for example, a landscape from a window. It is important not to name colors. Instead of drawing “green grass,” say “draw the grass you see near the house.” This test cannot be objective, since red grass or yellow sky may be manifestations of a child's imagination.

Another test looks like this. Offer your baby two candies - one in a bright and one in gray wrapper. A child with normal vision will take a bright object, a child with color blindness will not pay attention to the wrapper.

Such tests need to be carried out several times to increase their reliability.

In kindergartens and specialists' offices there are many test cards that can be used to identify problems with color determination.

Complications

Color blindness does not pose a serious threat to the physical condition of the child. Much more often, children experience psychological problems when communicating with peers.

Treatment

What can you do

When identifying color blindness in your child, there is no need to point out his mistakes in naming colors. This can cause isolation and other psychological problems with the child.

To prevent difficulties with communicating with peers and socialization, you need to seek help from a psychologist who will help you overcome difficulties due to incorrect vision of colors.

Much attention should be paid to the development of memory and logic in children suffering from color blindness. This will make it easier for them to navigate everyday life. For example, when crossing the road. The child knows that the stopping signal of the traffic light is the top one, and he can go if the bottom lamp lights up.

What does a doctor do

When diagnosing color blindness in a child, it is important to determine the cause. If a malfunction in the functioning of the optic nerves occurs due to external influences, then color vision can be partially restored.

If a change in color perception occurs due to taking medications, then the treatment course is canceled and vision gradually returns to normal.

If the cause of color blindness was a cataract, then with its surgical removal, color vision is also restored (though not to its full extent).

Also, as a partial compensatory function, the ophthalmologist may prescribe:

• wearing special lenses or glasses. Disadvantage - distortion of shapes and sizes of objects;
• wearing bright color blocking glasses. Bright color aggravates color blindness; its absence allows you to more accurately determine colors;

Modern medicine is studying the possibilities of eliminating hereditary color blindness using genetic engineering methods.

Prevention

Color blindness cannot be prevented because it is a genetic disease. During pregnancy, parents can only turn to a geneticist, who can calculate the likelihood of the presence of a mutation gene in future offspring.

And caring parents will find on the service pages complete information about the symptoms of color blindness in children. How do the signs of the disease in children aged 1, 2 and 3 differ from the manifestations of the disease in children aged 4, 5, 6 and 7? What is the best way to treat color blindness in children?

Take care of the health of your loved ones and stay in good shape!

It appears quite rarely. This is a common problem and its main essence is that a person cannot recognize certain colors. Now color blindness in children is no longer uncommon and is becoming more common.

Children's color blindness

Not all parents know how to determine color blindness in a child. It is quite difficult to recognize that a 2-3 year old child cannot distinguish certain colors. In this article, we decided to talk and figure out what to do if the baby has already been diagnosed with this.

Features of the disease

Most often, this problem manifests itself in a child due to a chromosomal mutation during intrauterine development. However, there are also cases where color blindness manifested itself as a result of ophthalmological or neurological pathology. Depending on the factors that caused the problem, you can determine whether color blindness in children can be treated.

Hereditary color blindness is irreversible and cannot be cured. However, now there are glasses for colorblind people that correct the problem well.

The mechanism of color perception impairment will be a disruption of the functional activity of color-sensitive cells (cones). They are localized in the central part of the retina.

Today, experts distinguish several types of cones, which will contain a special protein pigment. The perception of a certain color depends on it:

1. The first type of pigment is responsible for the perception of the red spectrum.
2. The second type of pigment perceives the green spectrum.
3. The third type of pigment is responsible for the blue spectrum.

If the child is completely healthy, then his color-sensitive cells contain all three types of pigments. Therefore, the visual apparatus is able to correctly perceive various information about colors.

Clinical picture

The mechanism of development and the degree of various visual impairments that are associated with color perception are always individual. Most often, the disease in people occurs in mild or moderate form. Therefore, the child practically does not feel any discomfort and can fully enjoy life. Cases where color perception is completely absent almost never occur.

Signs of color blindness in children most often include inability to perceive the red or green spectrum. The following problems can contribute to severe forms of color blindness:

• low visual acuity;
• nystagmus.

Carrying out diagnostics

How to determine that a child is colorblind? This question is most often asked by parents who want to check their baby for color blindness. Typically, children with impaired color vision begin to clearly name the colors of surrounding objects much later than their peers. If you are trying to teach a child to recognize colors, but he names them in a distorted form, then this also indicates various disorders.

It is not uncommon for color blindness to be diagnosed in adulthood. By closely monitoring your baby, you can test and identify color vision disorders. To perform this task, simply use the following tests:

1. Place identical candies in front of the child. Wrap one in a variegated wrapper, and the other in a gray one. Children love bright colors, so they will give their preference to bright wrappers.
2. Ask your child to draw a landscape. If the colors that are present in a child’s drawing do not correspond to reality, then there is reason to worry. However, sometimes it happens that the baby simply decided to give his preference to other colors.

To diagnose color blindness in children, ophthalmologists usually use Rabkin's polychromatic tables. They allow not only to determine the presence of the disease, but also make it possible to determine the type of color sensitivity disorder.

Methods for treating color blindness in a child

Congenital color blindness is genetically determined, so it is currently not treatable or preventable. Some types of acquired color blindness, in turn, can be eliminated if their root cause is addressed. If the disorder was associated with cataracts or other organic pathology of the visual apparatus, then in this case you can get rid of color blindness through the use of adequate therapy or surgical correction of the primary disease.

Systematic use of certain drugs can sometimes provoke the occurrence of such vision disorders. In these cases, the attending physician adjusts the drug treatment plan. The most common methods of correcting color vision disorders in children include:

1. Wearing special glasses or. They can significantly improve the recognition of certain colors and shades. However, sometimes the shape or size of objects can be distorted.
2. Wearing glasses or lenses that block bright light. Such glasses can be considered a high-quality therapeutic agent. With their help, a child who has been diagnosed with a problem can navigate much better among colorful objects.
3. Wearing special glasses with shields on the periphery. The products are recommended for use by children with a complete lack of normal color vision. Thanks to dim light, additional stimulation of color-sensitive cells occurs.

If you study the statistical data, then you will notice that almost 10% of the planet's inhabitants suffer from color blindness to one degree or another. A number of studies have proven that the likelihood of this disease will depend on many factors. The main ones include genetic predisposition, gender, age category and place of residence.

There is also a hypothesis that visual impairment was a physiological norm for ancient man. Hereditary color blindness, in turn, is a result of a violation of the structure of the X chromosome. The acquired form of the disease can develop as a result of traumatic brain injury, neurological or ophthalmological organic disorders.

In global prevention, there have been cases where color blindness was a sign of degenerative processes in the visual apparatus associated with the structure of the body. Color blindness is a problem that will predominantly manifest itself only in men. However, it also exists.

Only 0.1% of people suffer from an absolute lack of color vision. Now there are three types of partial color vision impairment:

1. – weakened color perception of the red range of shades.
2. – weakened color perception of the green range of shades.
3. – weakened color perception of blue shades.

Now you know what childhood color blindness is and how to recognize it. We hope this information was useful and interesting.

If among your relatives, especially on the side of the child’s father, there were colorblind people, you should pay special attention to the signs of colorblindness in your son or daughter. As a rule, color blindness is a hereditary disorder, and it is sometimes passed on from father to son. Girls suffer from color blindness much less often, although they are not immune to this risk.
Contrary to popular belief, colorblind people see the world in color. However, their color perception is impaired. For example, they may not distinguish between blue and violet, yellow and red, green and cyan.
This is due to the fact that in the human eye there are three types of sensitive cells that recognize colors. They respond to red, green and blue. If for some reason the “red” cells do not work, then your child will see all red objects as green, and he will see purple and blue, which differ only in their red tint, as the same.
As a rule, children correctly distinguish colors by the age of two. However, you can't diagnose your child with color blindness until he or she can speak fluently and learn the names of colors.
If you notice that your baby calls red objects green (or vice versa - for a colorblind person they are the same color), or cannot see a blue picture on a yellow background, then he most likely has colorblindness.
For more accurate diagnostics, polychromatic Rabkin tables are used. These are images consisting of circles of different colors, but of the same brightness. A person with normal color vision will see numbers or geometric shapes in these images, but someone who suffers from color blindness will not be able to see them. Another version of polychromatic tables, on the contrary, contains images that are visible only to color-blind people.
A child with color blindness requires a special approach. The ability to distinguish colors is very important in everyday life, in learning, and even in communication. Therefore, the first thing a parent should pay attention to is to teach the child, under the supervision of a medical specialist, to understand exactly those colors that he does not perceive from birth.
This is usually done through associations. The child simply remembers which of his familiar objects are red and which are green. This is especially important when it comes to traffic signals. For a child with red color blindness, it is worth distinguishing not between “red” and “green,” but, for example, between “upper” and “lower” light.
Although color blindness causes many inconveniences in life, some varieties of color blindness may not be a disease, but simply congenital characteristics. For example, people who cannot see the color red can distinguish many more shades of green than those who are not colorblind. This can help, for example, to navigate in the forest.

Color blindness is a disease that affects the organs of vision and affects the visual process by impaired color perception. Color blindness in children in almost all cases is congenital.

Many parents are interested in how to recognize color blindness in a child, because at a young age the child cannot explain that he sees color incorrectly. To do this, there are several tests that can be performed either at the doctor or at home on your own.

Treatment for color blindness involves the use of special glasses and lenses that help bring the color of an object closer to how a normal person sees it. Also, it is necessary to explain to the child that there is nothing terrible about his illness, so that in the future this does not lead to the development of complexes.

Background

This interesting pathology received its name from the name of the first official “victim” in 1794. English chemist John Dalton lived to the age of 26, not knowing that he saw the world differently than everyone else.

And only when one fine day he ordered an expensive gray camisole for himself for a gala reception, he suddenly learned that those around him were lavishing compliments on his “beautiful red outfit.”

Having become interested in this phenomenon, he found out that in his family (which, besides him, there were three more brothers and a sister), two of the brothers also did not distinguish the color red. Based on his own feelings of color perception, Dalton was the first to write a book about this visual disorder, which later became known as “color blindness.”

Today it has already been proven that color blindness is a hereditary disease caused by a congenital defect of the X chromosome. Therefore, in 99% of cases, men suffer from it, and women are only hidden carriers and pass on the “wrong gene” to their sons.

However, color blindness can also be acquired, which is extremely rare and can be the result of various nervous disorders, eye diseases or injuries. There are several types of color blindness.

Types of color blindness

If a child cannot distinguish the color green (or its shades), this is deuteranopia. If it's red, it's protanopia. And if the perception of the blue-violet part of the spectrum is impaired, then we are talking about tritanopia (however, this type of color blindness is much less common).

But all colorblind people have one thing in common: the colors they cannot distinguish look like gray to them. At the same time, there were many colorblind artists (for example, V. Van Gogh, M. Vrubel, I. Repin, etc.), which did not prevent them from creating masterpieces of fine art.

How does female color blindness differ from male color blindness?

The female chromosome set is XX, therefore a completely healthy second chromosome must always compensate for the damaged one. Thanks to this circumstance, women very rarely suffer from color blindness themselves, but are only its carriers.

A man is distinguished by XY chromosomes, and if he inherits a gene altered by color blindness, then in one hundred percent of cases he will be sick. This explains the fact that there are many times more colorblind men than women. In percentage terms, this figure looks like 8 and 0.4, respectively.

Classification

If a child is diagnosed with color blindness during research, the ophthalmologist will have to clarify its type. This is very important for further self-determination in life and social adaptation. Here are the main types of the disease:

1. Achromasia (achromatopsia) - color vision is completely absent. The child sees the world around him exclusively in shades of gray. Such color blindness is very rare (people with this vision feature make up only 0.0001% of the entire population). Its cause is the absence of color pigment in all cones in the retina.
2. Monochromacy is the perception of only one color. Usually accompanied by nystagmus - involuntary movements of the eyeballs. Photophobia may occur.
3. Dichromasia is color blindness, in which a person distinguishes two (instead of three) colors.

Dichromasia, in turn, is divided into several more subgroups:

• • Protanopia

The term translates as “first,” which refers to the location of shades in the color spectrum. This is the most common color blindness. Color blindness in the red region (diagnosis rate is 0.59%).

Children suffering from this form of color blindness perceive red as a darker color than others. For them it is mixed with dark green or even dark brown, while they see green as light gray, light yellow, light brown. Weak form - protanomaly (0.66%).

• • Deuteranopia

Goes back to the ancient Greek word “deuteros” - second. This is the lack of perception of green (0.56%). This form of color blindness mixes the color green with light orange or light pink. For children of this color perception, red is the same as light green, light brown. A weak form is deuteranomaly (2.7%).

• • Tritanopia

"Tritos" means third. This is an impaired perception of the blue-violet spectrum, when the child distinguishes only shades of green and red. Very rare (0.016%). This type of color blindness is complicated by the lack of twilight vision. It does not depend on gender, as it is determined by a mutation on chromosome 7. Weak form - tritanomaly (0.01%).

A test for color blindness allows you to promptly identify a certain type of congenital anomaly in a child. This will help parents prepare him appropriately not only for school, but also for life. After all, such a baby will always be different from others in his color perception of the world around him.

And how fully he adapts to it will largely depend on his family and friends. For them, in turn, the first question when making such a diagnosis is the possibility of treating the disease.

Speaking about the difference between the acquired and congenital forms of the disease, it is worth saying that acquired color blindness has its own differences:

1. The disease spreads only to one eye - the one that was affected, whereas in the congenital form of the disease it spreads to both eyes;
2. Children with an acquired form of the phenomenon do not distinguish between yellow and blue colors.

Ways of transmission of the disease

The disease is inherited. The mother is a carrier of a defective gene located on the X chromosome and is not sick herself, since she has two X chromosomes. Whether or not they will be colorblind depends on which chromosome her sons receive.

If it’s defective, yes, but if it’s healthy, no. That is, the probability of sons becoming color blind is 50%. A girl can become colorblind only if she receives two defective X chromosomes - one from her father and one from her mother.

Thus, for a boy to become color blind, it is enough for the mother to be a carrier of the gene, and for a girl to become color blind, the father must be sick and the mother must be a carrier. Therefore, for every 99 male colorblind people there is only one female.

There are cases of acquired color blindness - when there are:

• a brain tumor;
• retinal injuries;
• disturbance of optic nerve conduction.

Main features

But how can you determine whether your baby is colorblind or not? This is not very simple, considering that children begin to clearly name all complex colors only at 5-6 years old. But what to do before that? Observe, observe and observe again!

All attention to the 3 main colors of the spectrum: red, green, blue. Pay close attention to how your child draws. If he simply makes a mistake when choosing a colored pencil because he is in a hurry and is carried away by the process, and at the first emphasis on this (“Have you seen such grass on the street?”) he immediately corrects his mistake and draws green greenery, that’s one thing.

But if in his drawings regularly appear not red poppies, but gray ones, not a yellow sun, but a brown one, then something is probably wrong with color perception. If you are “tormented by vague doubts,” conduct a simple experiment.

Take 2 identical baby treats (candy, cake, apple, but make sure he sees them!) and wrap each one in colored paper. One is in red paper, and the other is in black paper (brown or any other, but unattractive in appearance).

After this, invite your child to choose any treat for himself. If a child is healthy, purely psychologically he will always be drawn to everything bright and will choose what is in a red wrapper. But if he does not distinguish colors, he will take any (possibly black), because for him they are all the same.

For the “purity of the experiment” it must be repeated for several days, 2-3 times a day, recording the result. If a child makes a mistake a couple of times, it may be an accident, but if it is repeated constantly, it is already a trend.

What to do in this case? Be sure to make an appointment with an ophthalmologist. If a child is 5-6 years old and is normally developed for his age, then his color vision impairment can be identified using special Rabkin tables (medical test for color blindness).

These are drawings made using dots or circles of the same brightness, which are different in color. As a rule, colorblind people do not notice color when noticing the degree of brightness. Therefore, on some tables they will not see a weak pattern, perceiving the table simply as a field evenly filled with circles.

If the diagnosis of “color blindness” is officially made, this means for the boy that most likely in the future he will not receive permission to drive a car, will not be able to serve in the army, work as a chemist, confectioner, etc.

Causes

The retina of the eye contains color-sensitive receptors. These nerve cells are medically called cones. Normally, there are three types: one is sensitive to red, another to green, and the third to blue.

If any of the pigments is missing, the child does not distinguish one of these or several colors at once. The question is why for some people everything is fine, but for others the world does not shine with all the shades of the rainbow.

In fact, the causes of color blindness in children are still being studied by scientists. At this point in time, they identify two groups of factors contributing to the development of this pathology.

Hereditary disease

Most often, color blindness is inherited by a child, and exclusively on the maternal side. About 8% of boys and only 0.4% of girls receive this diagnosis. However, scientists have found that there are unique cases when color blindness cannot be called a hereditary or genetic disease.

Today, the question is increasingly being raised that this is just a feature of vision - and a unique one. For example, a child cannot distinguish the color red, but at the same time sees a large number of shades of khaki, which merge into one tone for those who have normal vision.

Hereditary color blindness is diagnosed in preschool children using special tests.

Acquired disease

In rare cases, color blindness may develop due to damage to the optic nerve or retina. This is an already acquired disease, and it is characterized by its own characteristics:

1. progressive deterioration;
2. color blindness in one eye, which is affected;
3. inability to distinguish between yellow and blue colors.

The reasons may be:

• cataract;
• long-term use of a number of medications;
• traumatic brain injuries.

An acquired disease is much more severe than a hereditary one. It is fraught with various complications for vision, so constant monitoring by an ophthalmologist is required.

Symptoms

Color blindness in children is a hereditary disease, in extremely rare cases it can be acquired, the essence of which is the inability to distinguish one color or several at once.

The disease is hereditary, the gender ratio is 99:1, mostly men are affected, and women are latent carriers of the gene. The disease is almost always congenital, but its detection often takes many years.

Problems of color blindness

As a result of color blindness, children do not receive the necessary information, which subsequently affects their development. But this is not the worst thing, because a child who suffers from a form of color blindness such as deuteranopia can simply confuse the color of a traffic light and get hit by a car.

Color blindness in children is quite difficult to diagnose, due to the fact that the age at which children begin to meaningfully name colors is approximately 3-4 years. And in order to consolidate color determination skills, it is necessary to diagnose diseases before this age.

This can only be done by observing the child. Colorblindness in children at an early age can be determined by such signs as: drawing grass, sky, water, sun with colors different from real colors. For example, if your child draws the sky green and the grass red, this is a reason to be wary.

The second sign by which a disease can be suspected: place 2 identical candies in front of the child, but one should be a black or gray repulsive color, and the second should be a bright, beautiful color. A healthy child almost always chooses the second one. And the patient, not feeling the difference, chooses at random.

Colorblindness in children is not a reason to be upset or overly concerned about it. If your child is diagnosed with dichromia - distinguishing between two primary colors out of three, he will still be able to subsequently obtain a driver's license, and will also not experience restrictions when choosing a job.

Currently, there is no effective treatment for color blindness in children. A certain compensatory reaction can be developed on the basis of logical conclusions and the thinking characteristics of memory, such as remembering the order of colors in a traffic light: red, yellow, green.

Experimental methods for treating color blindness in children are being developed, such as the introduction of missing genes into the retina using genetic engineering methods, but so far this method is undergoing laboratory testing.

How to identify color blindness in a child?

To check a child for color blindness if a pathology is suspected, you need to make an appointment with an ophthalmologist. He will determine the features of color perception using special polychromatic Rabkin tables.

These are drawings in which there are circles, dots with different diameters and colors, but with the same brightness. A little colorblind person cannot see the image hidden in the diagram - for him the picture will be homogeneous. If there are no problems with vision, he will distinguish geometric shapes and numbers from circles of the same color.

Let's take a closer look at how this research is conducted.

1. The main test for color blindness consists of 27 tables, with the help of which the forms and degrees of color vision pathologies are differentiated. There is also a control group (28-48 tables) to clarify the diagnosis.
2. The study is carried out in natural light.
3. The child should feel well at the time of diagnosis.
4. He sits with his back to the window, the ophthalmologist is opposite him.
5. Rabkin tables are shown vertically, at the baby’s eye level at a distance of 1 meter.
6. The viewing time for one picture is no more than 7 seconds.
7. The test cannot be carried out online or simply on a computer, since the monitor distorts the color reality of the images.
8. All people see the first two signs exactly the same. Their goal is a demonstration so that the child understands what they want from him.
9. The remaining pictures already allow us to recognize color blindness: the third, for example, shows the number “9”. If there is an anomaly, the baby will see another one - “5”.
10. There is no need to count the results, because any number of incorrectly recognized pictures suggests a vision pathology.

This is how color blindness is diagnosed in children everywhere, because Rabkin tables are used all over the world. They reliably establish the degree and type of pathology of color perception.

After all, one child will be cut off already on the first problem picture, because he will not distinguish the color red, and the other - only on the 27th because he will not be able to see the color green. An ophthalmologist will use a control test to determine the type of deviation.

Test for home use

A peculiarity of the expression of color blindness in children is that they begin to be able to distinguish colors only in the third or fourth year of life. We start teaching them the names of colors much earlier. As a result, the child learns the name of the color, but at the same time they see it completely differently than a healthy person.

Colorblindness can be suspected after long-term observation of the baby. You can conduct two such experiments at home:

• Place two identically shaped candies in front of the child. One candy should be in a bright wrapper, and the other should be wrapped in a gray and unattractive wrapper. Children usually prefer to choose everything bright. Children with color blindness grab everything at random. But this method can only raise suspicion of the presence of a disease. The diagnosis can only be confirmed by an ophthalmologist. In order to diagnose this disease, the doctor uses special pictures and Rabkin tables.

  These tables depict multi-colored circles of different colors; figures (for small children) and numbers (for teenagers) are laid out against the background of the same small multi-colored circles. Depending on what type of color blindness a child has, he will be able to see different pictures.

• You can ask your child to draw a landscape from life - sky, sun, grass, tree. To draw, you need to give your child colored pencils. If a child draws the grass red, the sky green, or the entire drawing is made in one color, then this may indicate that he has color blindness. It may also be that the child draws this way only because of his wild imagination.

What to do if your child is colorblind?

Nothing special. Live as you lived, play as you played. The main task of the mother of a colorblind person is not to develop an inferiority complex in him. There is no need to feel sorry for the baby, you don’t need to make him feel that he is special (but you also don’t need to laugh at him, make fun of him, or otherwise hurt his pride).

Just slowly teach him to live in a world where the majority sees their surroundings a little differently. Gently correct your child if he gets the color wrong. No comment - they named the correct one and continued their business. Complete color blindness is very rare.

Usually the child sees differences in shades, sees color saturation and brightness. Therefore, after some time, the baby will learn to “guess” colors very similarly based on indirect signs. Help him with this, just don't be annoying - anyone will start to get annoyed if he is corrected every five minutes.

Provide your child with color comfort at home. When buying clothes and other personal items for your baby, ask him if he sees exactly what color it is. Will he confuse his socks with his sister's socks? Would a friend wear his cap? If necessary, sew or glue some marks or pictures.

So that the baby definitely finds his thing and doesn’t have to guess whether it is it or not. The same applies to any games and toys. In ordinary everyday life, colors are not so important for us (except perhaps traffic lights), but in games where there is color coding, the ability to correctly distinguish color comes to the fore.

Therefore, make sure that your child can identify all the colors in the tiles, cards, and other elements of the game before purchasing it. Usually, different companies offer slightly different shades, and the mosaic, the details of which the child cannot distinguish in one set, he will recognize in another.

Conditions for the child

Provide color comfort outside the home. This again concerns personal belongings - so that the baby can find them among others not only by color, but also by some other understandable and obvious sign. If colors are important, feel free to sign them.

Use a CD marker to write the color of the CD directly onto the crayons. It may not be necessary for everyone - it was enough for us to sign red, green, brown, orange.

Make stickers with the names of colors on jars of paint, on the cells of a plasticine box, on sheets of colored paper and cardboard. Even little ones can draw some icons - for example, green color with a leaf, orange with an orange circle, etc.

Warn the adults significant to the child about his or her peculiarities. So that relatives, parents of friends, educators, nannies, teachers do not get lost in guesswork, immediately tell them that the child does not see colors well, that he is color blind.

And then you will save your baby from unnecessary problems and requests to name, show, and bring what he cannot. Ask your kindergarten teacher or school teacher not to specifically give your child tasks with flowers, but also not to exempt him from such tasks.

She just needs not to be surprised if the camel in the picture about Africa is green (as it was with us). Ask for a daycare locker, towel badge, etc. give the child a color that he can distinguish well (for example, for us these are any shades of blue).

Teach your child to ask for help from other people. If the baby cannot cope with determining the color on his own, he can always ask those nearby to help him. Teach him not to be afraid to ask his neighbor at the table, “What pencil is this?”

Teach adults who, not knowing about his colorblindness, want something from him to answer: “I’m colorblind and I don’t see what color it is.” Teach him not to be ashamed of his features, but to treat them as part of his personality. Mishka writes with his left hand, I don’t distinguish orange from green, and Vaska doesn’t add 2+2. We are all so different!

Treatment

Unfortunately, at present, congenital color blindness in children (as well as in adults) cannot be treated by medicine. As for acquired color blindness, the cure rate is quite high, provided that the underlying disease that caused it is corrected as early as possible.

All over the world, scientific developments are actively underway to introduce missing genes into the retina through genetic engineering methods, but so far this method is at the stage of laboratory experiments on monkeys.

On the other hand, diagnosed color blindness does not threaten a child with anything “so terrible.” Before registering for school, you must obtain a certificate from an ophthalmologist and notify teachers in advance.

And so that the child does not feel his “flawedness,” he should be regularly explained that there is nothing wrong with the fact that he sees the world in a slightly different color. With age, the child will definitely learn to adjust his color perception with the help of memory and associative thinking.

But if a woman has a history of color blindness in her family, then before planning conception she can undergo a genetic test for color blindness in the unborn child.

Although this is an expensive, but highly accurate study, it will be possible to determine the gene in which the mutation occurred and its cause. However, it is not yet possible to eliminate the gene defect. Therefore, each woman must decide for herself the need for such research.

What can you do?

When identifying color blindness in your child, there is no need to point out his mistakes in naming colors. This can cause isolation and other psychological problems with the child.

To prevent difficulties with communicating with peers and socialization, you need to seek help from a psychologist who will help you overcome difficulties due to incorrect vision of colors. Much attention should be paid to the development of memory and logic in children suffering from color blindness.

This will make it easier for them to navigate everyday life. For example, when crossing the road. The child knows that the stopping signal of the traffic light is the top one, and he can go if the bottom lamp lights up.

What does a doctor do

When diagnosing color blindness in a child, it is important to determine the cause. If a malfunction in the functioning of the optic nerves occurs due to external influences, then color vision can be partially restored. If the cause of color blindness was a cataract, then with its surgical removal, color vision is also restored.

Also, as a partial compensatory function, the ophthalmologist may prescribe:

• wearing special lenses or glasses. Disadvantage: distortion of shapes and sizes of objects;
• wearing bright color blocking glasses. Bright color aggravates color blindness; its absence allows you to more accurately determine colors;

Modern medicine is studying the possibilities of eliminating hereditary color blindness using genetic engineering methods.

What problems can color blindness create for a child?