We were so mean!! An M&M story

So, about a year ago we started trying to teach Brady his colors. He wasn't interested in learning them at all--some of you may remember an earlier post about Kalen saying he didn't know his colors just to get some m&m's. We used m&m's to teach Brady his colors, and we gave them to him if he got the color right. However, if he got it wrong, we ate them, right in front of him! We thought that would motivate him to try harder since he never really wanted to learn and since he LOVES candy.

I guess it was about two months or so ago when I realized he NEVER got red and green right. He was actually doing pretty well with the other colors. My friend Megan suggested we try teaching him other things to see if he picks up on them, aside from colors, so we taught him his shapes. I was super surprised with how fast he learned his shapes, especially because the color thing had been on-going for a year and he still couldn't learn them.

I was reading in a parenting magazine in the doctor's office one day and read that up to 10% of males (closer to 8%) are red/green colorblind and sometimes parents don't realize it until their boys are well into school and accused of being "careless" too many times. It hit me-- that could be the case with Brady, but when I went home and took his lego blocks and mixed the red ones and green ones, he was able to seperate them, so I ruled that out.

Until two nights ago. We realized that he is super enthusiastic to tell us his colors, but when it comes to red and green he is almost embarrassed to say it, and 9 times out of 10 he'll say red things are green, but he says it really quietly, expecting us to correct him. So we found these tests:

And, the results were, Brady couldn't see the red shapes at all. I know they are a litte hard to see, even for me, but Kalen could see them just fine. Maybe he just didn't know what to look for, but for now, I think he really is red/green colorblind. We can't really test for it officially until he's closer to four, but I think it's something to be aware of. And it turns out, I'm probably a carrier of the recessive colorblind trait--both of my uncles on my dad's side are colorblind.

So, the question is--weren't we so mean? ..."Brady, what color m&m is this?" and when he said the red one was green we would say, "No! It's red." and eat it in front of him...poor boy!