We first realized our middle son, Carter, was color blind when he was in kindergarten during Parent-Teacher conferences. While going through his “coursework” for the first part of the year his teacher was showing us his drawings and one was of a shark.  It was a lovely drawing of a shark swimming in the ocean with a brown boat, but the water was purple.  A few drawings later, the sky was purple.  A few more pictures later, more purple water. Later that day we asked him what color was the sky, what color was the ocean.  His response was blue. 

We reached out to his teacher again and after the simple testing using the Ishihara testing it confirmed he had a color deficinecy.   You’ve probably seen these before the circle of dots in different colors & sizes that have a hidden number. Usually individuals without color deficiencies see one number and those with an issue see a different number (or not one at all).

It wasn’t surprising to find that one of my three boys were colorblind. My father was colorblind and knew that there was a genetic link to colorblindness, so the chances were always there.

Once we knew he was colorblind, there really wasn’t anything we felt we needed to do.  Aside from the occasional coloring or fashion faux pas, the color blindness didn’t interrupt his everyday life or affect him in school.

Then one day Carter started to text me youtube videos of people “seeing color” for the first time and he wanted to try these special glasses. In true form, the kid did his homework. He sent me the research behind the glasses, his color deficiency, and the style of glasses he wanted.

He even went online and did the Enchroma color blindness test and showed me his results. He is considered a strong deutan. This is a type of red-green color blindness. The green cones in the eyes detect too much red light and not enough green light.

His biggest issues with colors were blue vs. purple and green vs. orange. Pinks would also give him issues at times, usually appearing gray to him. This was right on track for what this type of color blindness can appear to a person.

The first attempt with testing the glasses, we went took a day trip to downtown Chicago. Surprisingly, at the time, there was only one ophthalmologist in all of Illinois that sold these glasses. Lucky for us they are located downtown in the Hancock building. Since I love downtown Chicago this wasn’t a hard sell to try and test this out.

The office was great. After he tried on a few styles, we were allowed to wander outside up and down Michigan Avenue looking at the world a bit differently. We wandered into the Lego store where he was able to distinguish between different color legos in the bulk bins. Since it was summertime in Chicago, he was able to see distinct colors of flowers that normally appeared dull to him.

While it was exciting, I still wasn’t ready to jump into purchasing them. We sat on it for about a year, not really certain that he needed them and more concerned was he really responsible enough to take care of them. They run a few hundred dollars, and since he didn’t actually need any vision correction to read or see it was only for color correction.

Then, last December, we finally broke down. Once he started high school, some of his Honor Biology and Intro to Healthcare homework projects happened to use colors. I noticed (thankfully before he turned the work in) that he was swapping colors (usually blue, purple or green) in his work. He knew the tough answers to the questions when asked, but swapped the blue and purple in the answers. We ordered the glasses online and they arrived in three days.

• 

• 

When we opened the box we got the glasses as well as six balloons. So we blew them all out, headed outside into the natural (VERY COLD) light and he was ready to test them out for the first time.

Most certainly, the glasses have been able to help distinguish between blue and purple. He does use them around the house, outside as well as in school when they are doing work that tends to use strong visual aids that being able to distinguish between color is important. Since we have been in the depths of a dark, cold, colorless Chicago winter he is looking forward to spring to see what the colors look like through the lens of his Enchroma glasses

Follow my blog with Bloglovin