This happened 20 years ago and I still think about how I ruined a mother and child’s day.
I was working in a minigolf and arcade place handing out prizes and running birthday parties. This child (about 10 years old) comes up with his tickets as his mother hovering over his shoulder waiting to get out of there. He claims his prizes and has a few tickets left when his mom starts to get a little impatient. She tells him to pick 2 blue bracelets for his sister and then they can go. He picks out 2 purple bracelets. She chides him softly, "those are purple. get 2 blue bracelets." In goes the bracelets back into the bin and he picks out 2 purple ones again, looking a little dejected. "I said get 2 blue bracelets."
I stopped them both. "Come here, buddy. I got a couple tests for you." I proceeded to pull out 5 bracelets. Red and green. "How many are red?" wrong answer. Green and yellow bracelets next. wrong. red and yellow correct. blue and yellow, etc etc. He got a few right and a few wrong. The final test I had for him, I pulled out 5 identical blue bracelets. "How many are blue?" At this point he was frustrated. "3?" It was a question.
I looked at the mom and she was flabbergasted. "Baby, they’re all blue."
"Ma’am, was your father colorblind?"
"Yes."
I had just finished a lesson in highschool about genetics and we went over a bit of colorblindness and how it is inherited. I also knew from my days playing counterstrike that people have different forms of colorblindness and that’s why we can change crosshair colors and informative markers today.
"Ma’am, Colorblindness is a sex linked genetic trait from the X chromosome. Your father being colorblind makes you a carrier. If you go to an optometrist, he can tell you exactly what kind of colorblindness he has."
At that point she said, "let’s go, sweetie." I saw how sad this kid was.
I remember thinking, "Imagine being that kid’s mom and not noticing. Imagine being that kid being told ‘you’re colorblind and here’s proof’ by a complete minimum wage stranger after a day of playing arcade games, minigolf, and eating cake, ice cream, and candy."
AITA?
NTA – You probably saved that kid from a lot of frustration.
Thanks, in the long picture I think I helped. But it still sucks to be the one who breaks bad news.
It wasn’t bad news. It was the first time he found out that *it wasn’t his fault* that he couldn’t get colors right.
Hey so this isn’t quite the same but I have ADHD and I spent my whole life telling myself I was lazy and ungrateful and a failure. Then I found out and finally I could let go of those labels.
I wish my kid self had a You – I could have skipped adding a thousand sandpapery moments to the ole’ personal shame pile.
You did good. You did SO good. I don’t think you’ll be able to get how much of a favour you might have done that kid if you’ve never gone through life with an undiagnosed issue that people confuse for being “obtuse” or “disobedient” or “not trying” – you saw that kids frustration with it today with just bangles, bet he’s had loads of it in class.
AND you showed him that community members generally will often try to help others and modelled understanding and problem solving to him and showed him how taking time to understand people can be important. That’s really important too.
NTA, I bet that kid remembers that day clearly as a formative moment when he started to realize that he actually experiences the world differently from almost everyone else, and wasn’t just stupid like his mother’s commentary must have made him feel. You did him a huge favour, even if it was uncomfortable in the moment.
Maybe they both knew and she was letting him try to figure out his own hues? She was very sweet to him, albeit a bit impatient, and didn’t bawl you out. That’s great. Also, if she didn’t know enough, other than a family member was colorblind, maybe you helped her.
NTA you helped him. It might have been years before he figured it out and it would have harmed his intellectual development.
NTA, hopefully it helped the kid figure out that he actually WAS seeing differently and prompted them to get him assessed. It sucks that it made him sad, though.
One of my kids has a weird kind of colourblindness (not red/green and not X-linked.) We didn’t find out that she had it until she was goofing off online in middle scool, took an online colourblindness test, and then wanted me to take it because ‘the test was wrong.’ She probably has a random gene mutation that affects her yellow/blue colour vision, to her a lot of blues all look the same (grey-ish) and dark blue, dark olive green, and dark grey all look the same. No one else in the family has it, she’s literally a mutant! The optometrist didn’t catch it because they only showed her the red/green colour plates, which she CAN see. I honestly wish that I could see through her eyes for an hour because I think her whole visual spectrum is probably a bit different from mine and we can never see what other people think is ‘red’ or ‘blue.’ Edited to add: Her colour vision difference is called tritanomaly. My understanding is that there are a lot of shades that other people can discern that blend together for her.
I love using a good colorblind filter to get my friend’s visual perspective. You can upload photos. Here’s my favorite:
https://daltonlens.org/colorblindness-simulator
Just make sure you choose the tritan tab to get the correct filter to see your daughter’s perspective. There’s even a slider so you can adjust to different levels of color blindness.
It’s not gonna be 100% accurate, but it helps me to understand which colors are vibrant and which colors are bland for colorblind folks.
NTA. He was going to find out at some point, you just made it sooner so it could be addressed.
I can remember a few times that people were worried that they were “off” and found comfort once it was explainable (the example I remember is telling someone that them knowing what sound looks like is a form of Sinestesia, which affects up to 10% of the population).
NTA, you were kind, matter of fact, and didn’t load it with any shame or catastrophe. Yeah, maybe it wasn’t the kind of surprise you hope for at a game ticket counter, but you handled it very well.
NTA. I didn’t realize my daughter was left handed until a lefty friend pointed it out after seeing a picture of her coloring. I also didn’t realize she needed special scissors until the same friend told me. Then it all made sense why she couldn’t cut well! (She was only 4 so it wasn’t a big deal, but as soon as she got lefty scissors she was able to cut paper easily.) Even if her dad was colorblind this woman might not have realized her kid was for years.
My dad was also colorblind and playing Uno with him was a hoot!
How could a child reach 10 without knowing this?
Who knows? Maybe he did know something was wrong but didn’t want to tell his mom because he was ashamed. kids feel ashamed about a lot of stuff and want to hide it. Imagine all the kids in school making fun of him for making small stupid mistakes like that. “what a funny colored dog.” and not knowing why it was a funny colored dog.