See the World through my Son's Eyes
by Linda Moran

The bare winter trees repeat in regular patterns, the monotony broken up only by an occasional exit sign or rest stop sign. As our van heads north on the New York State Thruway, my mind drifts to one of my favorite activities-adjusting the colors I see along the road. I have a rhythm going now. Each bright green exit sign fades to a reddish-greenish-brown. The snowy trees dim just a notch, their slight color differences melting into one brown-gray hue.

I've done this many times before. As the next sign comes up, I see it has a green background, splotched with four bright red squares displaying the names of restaurants in white. I tell my eyes to confuse the red with its green background, leaving only the words as a cue that there are restaurants coming up. It takes concentration. Even after months of practice, I still have to talk to myself to translate colors from what I see to what my son sees. My six-year-old tries hard to imagine how I see-the least I could do is reciprocate.

I reflect on my research. I've learned that children with CVD can become frustrated in school. In gym class they are accused of cheating at kick ball when they cross the orange boundary line that's drawn on the green grass. In the classroom they're admonished not to be sloppy after they draw a line on their worksheet to the brown toy instead of the red one. To these children, both choices look identical, and they are forced to guess. Many of them don't even know what's wrong, and the result is shame and confusion. If I can learn to see the way Dwight sees, perhaps I can anticipate these problems myself, and can inform others.

I'm interrupted by the chatter of my kids in the back seat. Dwight is reading a chapter book too loud, and the others are complaining about it. I smile, as I think of his reading ability, and how it was one of his earliest tools to help him compensate for his color-blindness. He was diagnosed with color vision deficiency or CVD (what was once known as color blindness) at age five. But even before his diagnosis, he discovered from a book that Christmas trees are green, and now he knows that fact by heart. Even a blue spruce is green.

We're lucky that we know what's wrong. He was diagnosed with color vision deficiency (what was once known as color blindness and is now referred to as CVD) at age five. It means that the cones (the material in the eye responsible for color-sight) in Dwight's retinas don't work right, an inherited condition passed to me by my father, and which I, in turn, passed along to my son. Few girls have the deficiency-both parents would have to be carriers for that to happen. But boys only need their mothers to be carriers, a fact which explains why color deficiency is so much more common for boys. That's what happened to Dwight.

I've learned some other things too. I've learned that CVD is not properly diagnosed or often mis diagnosed as color-sighted. I've learned that one in twelve boys, and a smaller number of girls, actually has some level of the deficiency, whether they know it or not. I've come to believe that the lack of a diagnosis is at best, a missed opportunity for self-understanding, but worse, it's often a formula for difficulty in school, especially in the primary grades. It's the children I'm most concerned about.

We pass a rest stop. I describe to myself its large brick-red entrance door, and then change the words to "large red-green-brown door that looks like the same color as the exit signs." Then I can picture the door the way Dwight sees it. This task of translating colors as objects go whizzing by is only achievable because the scenery is so sparse and repetitive. Words take time, while images are instant. Maybe someday I'll become so adept at this exercise that I could choose to instantly turn on the "Dwight's color vision" part of my brain at will. If I could imagine how he sees, I reason, then could he perhaps learn to imagine the world the way I see it-in all its colored brilliance? Right now, however, it's more like learning a foreign language only well enough to translate from one to the other. I am, as yet, unable to think in Dwight's color language.

I reflect on the moment of Dwight's diagnosis. I had suspected, after seeing Dwight's adamant avoidance of those colorful "find the hidden picture" activities in his children's magazine. I was even more sure after I discovered he was perfectly happy to "find the hidden picture" if it was in black and white. Now, the ophthalmologist, clad in his white lab coat, confirmed my suspicions with a diagnosis of red-green color deficiency. To me, this was the start of an exciting adventure. How can I best help him? I wanted to know. We walked out of his office with an outdated fact sheet, and the advice to "take him home and treat him normally."

I ignored the doctor's advice. Instead, I have probed him for information, and I have observed him closely. I learned that Dwight, unlike most children who appreciate the brilliance and smooth texture of markers, prefers crayons. The simple reason-crayons have a color label, thus allowing him to color his picture of the food pyramid for school with the "correct" colors. One brand of markers, however, does print the name on the side, and he can spot that brand, by his own report, from across a classroom.

I learned that Dwight's favorite color is blue, and his second favorite color is yellow. It didn't take much research to find out why his favorite colors are the same as Grandpa's. The only colors seen correctly by folks with red-green deficiency are blue and yellow. All other colors, even those which they can correctly identify by name, are a little muddy or grayish. Dwight can sometimes distinguish red from green if they are each a brilliant primary color. But mix a little green with blue, and you get the teal heart he lovingly colored with an unlabeled marker for his sister, handing it to her with the message, "This is for you, Madeline, because I know how much you love the color purple."

I've watched him compensate. Once, in a crafts class at the library, the children at a table were given a bucket of paper less crayons to share. Rather than reveal his color deficiency to a group of clueless five-year-olds, he chose to announce, "Does anybody have a brown crayon?" There were several brown crayons in the bucket right in front of him, but this was his way of easily obtaining the right color for his tree trunk while sparing everyone an explanation.

Dwight has learned to speak up in school. But what about children who are undiagnosed? In some schools there is no screening at all, and in others, the screening tools are outdated, and rely upon number recognition, which many kindergartners are not ready for. Unwittingly, the school nurse helps the child to "pass" the test by telling him what number he should see. In one elementary school I know of with a population of 400 children, not a single child failed the color test.

Yet according to Arlene Evans, R.N., and author of It's My Rainbow Too, even the old number-based tests can be easily adapted for proper diagnosis. "All the tester needs to do is give the child a q-tip with which to trace the number," says Evans. In this way, the tester can see that the child has traced the hidden number properly, demonstrating that he can distinguish it from its surrounding colors. But it's not just the school nurse that needs information. Classroom teachers and even art teachers, I've learned, receive no education on the subject. It's become my job to tell Dwight's teachers what I know.

If I hadn't taken Dwight to the ophthalmologist, he may have gone down the road that so many do, according to Evans. He would have struggled to "learn" his colors, as though it were an intellectual pursuit that everyone else seemed to achieve easily except him. He would have gone on asking nonsensical questions, such as the one he asked me shortly after his diagnosis, "Tan is lighter than gray, right?" Because I knew why he asked the question, I was able to give him a sensible answer. "Either could be lighter or darker, so you can't really tell them apart that way. I see them as different because gray is made of black and white, while tan is made of brown and white."

Dwight is intelligent and articulate, and he will do well in life. Now that he knows what he has to work with, he can manage his CVD just as a child with a disease such as diabetes learns to manage. Dwight's approach is a mix of compensating and asking for help. But compensating is not the same as pretending. I've taught my son to be proud of his color deficiency. He explains it to anyone who cares to listen, and this year, he decided it would be the topic of his science fair project. "I want to show off my color deficiency," he said. But I'm left wondering. What about the children who don't know they have it? I read about a man who, when finally diagnosed as an adult, reflected on all those years of insecurity. The veil of shame was lifted, and he now had a word to describe that vague feeling that something was wrong. He was relieved to finally find out what it was.

I reach our thruway exit and slow down at the toll. Two booths are closed, indicated by a red light in the shape of an X over the top of the booth. The third booth is open, marked with a lighted green arrow. I am satisfied, knowing that one day Dwight will travel this thruway, and that with his sharp mind, he'll select the correct booth because of the arrow, but not because of the color. He'll have to look harder than I do, since he will receive only one visual clue, while I receive two. He'll be on the lookout for it though-I will have told him about it before he starts to drive.