Do any of your children think like this?

[Nestof3]

Sure, this is minor, but I don't understand it.

 

Nathan thinks of words in terms of numbers, but I cannot get his system. Mom is 5, for example, Aaron is 11, and so on. It has nothing to do with syllables. I asked if it had to do with how big the item was (he also assigns #s to things). He said, not really. He made is sound so matter of fact as if I were crazy for not really getting the system. He wasn't rude or anything, just sure.

 

Ben joined in saying that letters go good with certain colors, and he proceeded to write down the letter "o" and color a red spot on the paper. He said, "See, don't these look right together?" He proceeded to tell me which letters went with which colors. Ben then started agreeing that certain numbers naturally went with certain objects, and then he began giving me his examples, and Nathan was shaking his head in agreement.

 

I honestly have NO idea what they are talking about.

 

So, I thought I'd ask the hive if any of their children think like this.

[chiguirre]

That sounds like synaesthesia. Here's a wiki link:

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synaesthesia

 

I do think of numbers as having colors, but I can't say it's had any impact on my life other than making math more colorful. :D

[Jenny in Florida]

Check out this link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synesthesia

 

I think you may be describing synesthesia. All of us here do these things to some degree. To me, for example, there are certain words that look like what they mean. When I see those words on the page, I perceive them as a picture symbolic of their meaning.

 

My kids tell me that they associate certain days or people with certain colors.

 

My husband's quirks in this way involve numbers, but I can't remember off the top of my head exactly what they are.

 

It's kind of cool, actually.

[Nestof3]

You are too cool! I cannot believe you posted that so quickly.

 

Get this, the article said that A is usually red. I just awakened Nathan and asked him, "What color is A?" He said, "Red."

 

Weird!

 

That sounds like synaesthesia. Here's a wiki link:

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synaesthesia

 

I do think of numbers as having colors, but I can't say it's had any impact on my life other than making math more colorful. :D

 

Update.

 

I asked Ben, and A was red for him as well.

 

I asked Nathan if he saw letters in different colors (showing him an example of a invitation typed in black). He said he sees them in black but knows that they are the other colors. He said, "I just have a sensation."

Edited March 28, 2009 by nestof3

[Leanna Tomlinson]

This is the first time I have ever read an explanation of how my brain works! I have always viewed time as an egg shaped spiral. For some reason I can remember when anything in my life happened by "zooming up and down the spiral" and finding a certain event. People think I am really strange because of all the small events I can remember and can pinpoint the month and year of many minor events in my life and the lives of my friends. (ie- what month a friend went to the Dr. in 2003) I have tried to explain this to people and have NEVER had anyone else express any kind of similiar thought pattern. I also have a 3D image in my brain of all the centuries, with each era having its own color! I had a really hard time in 2000 because my mental map did not go past the 20th century. I guess I had established this internal timeline in my head when I was a child and couldn't see beyond the year 2000.

 

BTW- two of my kids insist that every letter and number is masculine or feminine. They thought this before they studied Latin or Spanish.

 

Thanks for the insight!:)

Leanna

[Colleen]

I just read a book in which I was introduced, through one character, to synesthesia. Hadn't heard of it before, but isn't it funny how after you see/hear something once, you're more attuned to it elsewhere?

[linders]

Ever since I was little, everything - objects, numbers, letters, days of the week - had a "gender." For example, spoons are female and forks and knives are male. The letter "p" is female but the letter "a" is male. And so on. My parents thought it was weird so I quit mentioning it. When I started Spanish in high school and learned that the Latin-based languages do much the same, I thought, "Ah ha! I'm not crazy!" Only Spanish doesn't assign the same gender for a lot of things that I do, so I often got mixed up in class.

 

Very cool that your son does this. Help him keep track of the numbers and maybe someday when he is older he can discover a pattern.

[Desert Rat]

My 8yo has a different thing with numbers. When he was 4 or so he could solve complex algebra problems in his head. When I asked how he knew that was right, his reply was, "The number floated out to me." In his head numbers take shape and the right one comes closer. Interesting. Unfortunately, it doesn't work for 17-9, only the really hard stuff. :o

[Stacia]

Your post made me think about a book I read a long time ago: The Man Who Tasted Shapes. After reading the wiki article, I know why -- the book is about synesthesia, but I didn't remember that particular term.

[TrixieB]

Get this, the article said that A is usually red. I just awakened Nathan and asked him, "What color is A?" He said, "Red."

My dd has always told me about letters and numbers having colors. A few minutes ago I asked her, "What color is A?" and her response: RED.

 

I am going to ask her if musical tones have color too.

[joannqn]

That is really odd and cool!

 

I asked my husband about it and he's heard of it. He thinks it would be cool to have that. I think it would drive me insane. I don't think I could handle that kind of input. I'm weird enough without it.

 

Our kids don't have this ability. They came downstairs and we asked them what color A was. They looked at us like we had lost our mind. LOL

[Guest Virginia Dawn]

That is so cool! I asked all my kids what color A is. Only one could answer, and he said RED!

[asta]

So I ask my aspie kid "what color is A" and he says "alphalt".

 

I ask my husband, and he says "RED - because everyone learns that A is for Apple, and apples are red".

 

Heh.

 

Aspie mom, of course has a different type of synesthesia: I taste recipes as I read them.

 

 

asta

[tajott]

So, I thought I'd ask the hive if any of their children think like this.

 

yes.

 

It is called synesthesia and my oldest is a synesthete.

 

She sees letters and numbers with colors and sees colors when she plays her cello.

 

Here is a test:

http://synesthete.org/

[flyingmommy]

I just asked my dd (8) what color red is. She said "huh?" I said, "Imagine an A in your head and tell me what color it is." She said "red." I laughed and asked her why she said red. She said, "A is always red, just like 8 is purple." Now I have to go read and find out if 8 is supposed to be purple or not. LOL

 

Jeannie

[MamaT]

Okay, after reading this thread, I just asked my two dds what color "A" was. One looked at me like I was crazy, the other said, "Red, just like B is blue."

 

Asking her about different things, she also told me that her ballet moves have a color for her, different colors for different movements.

[mcconnellboys]

My very right-brained, older son experiences this, as well. He was not able to express it to me until he was about 11/12. He associates things he likes (or doesn't like), by degree, with colors/numbers. I've suggested that he use this to develop a mental filing system for himself, but I think that sort of naturally occurs, anyway, due to the sorting features of the process.

 

So, for instance (he's not here right now to give me the correct data), but for a favorite day of the week (due to the activities done on that day), or a favorite song on an album, or a favorite movie or book - he might associate that with blue/1. Then he ranks the other days of the week, songs on the album, etc. down from that by color/number. It's been a while since we've discussed it, but I seem to recall that cool colors were the favored ones (blue,green,purple) and warmer colors were the less favored (red,orange,yellow), then least favorite things were something like black.....

[amyco]

Very interesting thread...a friend of mine assigns colors to numbers, but not letters. I just asked my son what color A is, and he answered, "Any color you want it to be." Guess he doesn't have this. :) And as I had never heard of it before, and don't do it myself, I don't have it either! Is it genetic?

[Heather in AL]

For me A is red, C is yellow, E is green, Z is black, R is brown, etc. I remember as a kid telling my mom that I had to wear yellow on Wednesday. When she asked what the special occasion was, I replied "because Wednesdays are yellow". She asked me what I meant and I said that Wednesdays were yellow, and Fridays were green, so I *had* to wear the same colors or I would be confused all day. I remember this was around grade 4 or 5. That was also the same time I had to physically wave my hand back and forth to "erase" my mental chalkboard (try explaining THAT to a teacher!). I don't have any memories of colors being assigned to things before then, so I wonder if it didn't manifest at a time when I was learning a LOT of new things---grades 4, 5. It could simply be the brain's way of organizing things. I'm very visual, so that's my thought, anyway.

 

I thought I was nuts until about 5 years ago when a friend gave me an article from a magazine titled "Raspberry Kisses" where the author described and named synesthesia. I FINALLY had a name to put to my 'quirks'. I had stopped mentioning things because of the looks I would get from non-synesthetes. This friend thought I was nuts, too, until she read that article. She had never heard anyone refer to January as powder blue, and August as orange before! As a plus, it seems that this strange thing has given me an extraordinary sense of direction, in that I map out routes in my head, complete with roads, buildings, landmarks, etc....imagine my hubby's surprise when I saw the GPS on in the van for the first time and said "that's what's in my head!"--but my 'map' is in 3-D.

 

If you are really interested in following up on this, there are some online tests you can take to see if you are a "true" synesthete (just Google synesthesia) I believe one of the tests is sponsored by the BBC ...my problem is that while some colors stay the same all the time, others vary, so I didn't care for the test. Also, musical notes don't have colors for me, and I don't taste colors, so those questions didn't apply to me.

 

As a side note, and out of pure curiosity....how many of the new-found synesthetes are left handed? Both my ds and I are.

 

I find this topic fascinating...I can't remember who it was, but there was a composer who composed based on the colors of each note (the colors had sound, doncha know!), and when he tried to explain to people how he composed, he got really strange looks!

 

Keep the stories coming...I'm enjoying this thread!

[dragons in the flower bed]

None of my kids do, and I find that kind of sad. It was something special my father and I shared when I was small. Nowadays it doesn't seem as special.

 

People with this disorder are more likely to do mirror writing, too. Can he write like DaVinci?

[Annie Laurie]

I also asked my dd who was standing here what color the letter A is and she also said red right away. Further questioning revealed that A is red because the vowels are red in All About Spelling and vowels are red in Leapfrog videos. :lol:

[dangermom]

Richard Feynman had this. I think it's cool.

[Stacia]

I just asked my kids & they couldn't figure out what I was asking.

 

Ds did decide that A is yellow (because of Spanish -- we use La Clase Divertida & one of the chants has A, A, Amarillo). LOL.

[Murphy101]

well I do that...

 

just the other day I was talking about a town I'd visited, but the name of the town woulnd't come to me. I rambled that I knew it was 5 letters and began with S because the sign into to town was doen with a graphic italic red S and then black for the rest of the name.

 

it might be more odd that the person I was talking to knew what town I meant from that!:D

[jujsky]

Wow! That does sound like synesthesia! I recently read a very well-written young adult novel about a girl with synesthesia called A Mango-Shaped Space. The author did a ton of research on the subject. After you wade through all the clinical stuff, it might be worth reading.

[ChrisN in NY]

FWIW, I just asked my kids --the four of them that are here, anyway-- what color "A" is and they looked at me like I had two heads....

 

Sounds fascinating, though!

[Nestof3]

Okay, if your kids do think like that, I'd be interested to see if they see "J" as the same color as my boys.

 

So, what do they see "J" as?

 

For what it's worth, my boys don't match up colors exactly, and I don't think there is a specific rightness in the color match-up.

 

I wonder if it has anything to do with early exposure to letters and numbers -- meaning that somehow they remember the color they first saw "a" in?

[Leanna Tomlinson]

I feel like this is therapy! All of my quirks are being explained. :)

I don't correlate numbers or letters with colors, but every day is a color, and every month is a color, and every day is divided into 6 blocks of time and each one of those is a color.

 

Also, the year is shaped like and egg and moves counter clockwise. It always has as long as I can remember.

 

Numbers exist in space at different heights and distances from my eyes, but each number is always in the same place.

 

My TOG manuals constantly confuse me because TOG has ancients as burgundy and Medieval a brown, but in my mind ancient history has always been brown and the middle ages ARE burgundy. I was so relieved to get year 3 because it is GREEN and the 1800's ARE green. :)

 

Like Heather, I have a 3-D GPS in my head, but I can sometimes give people the wrong directions because I am looking at the map from a bird's eye view and not necessarily from the direction the person is coming from.

 

Heather, I am not left-handed, but my Dad is and 2 of my kids are. It took me until I was a teenager to be confident in identifying left from right because I always saw things from a "bird's eye view" and thought more in terms of N/S/E/W. Can you identify with that?

 

I can't wait to talk to my two lefties when they get home later.:)

 

Leanna

[Nestof3]

I just asked my husband what purple was (he's been at work all day, and we spoke on the cell phone). He said "purple."

[brehon]

I have a form of synesthesia as well. For me individual notes have colors (IOW I "see" the color of the note in my mind's eye as I sing/hear/play it) and chords and/or harmonies generally have a wonderful blending of colors -- almost a cascade effect.

 

I recently realized that I seem to have the letter/color form as well. The system I work for used to call shifts by color (i.e., red, blue, gold). We recently switched the shift names to letters and I am constantly mixing them up because the shift letter name doesn't match the old color name. I work red shift which, to my eccentric mind, ought to be A-shift. It's not...red shift turned into C-shift. I can't tell you the jarring I feel in my psyche when the shift names are mentioned. This is just further proof to my partner that I've gone off the deep end. :tongue_smilie:

[swellmomma]

This is fasinating to read. I don't think this way, and I asked my oldest ds (the only one home right now) and he looked at me like I had a third eye. SO apparently he does not think this way. I will have to ask my other kids when I pick them up in a while. I am going to look into those books/articles mentioned out of curiosity, I have never heard of this term before.

[asta]

I have a form of synesthesia as well. For me individual notes have colors (IOW I "see" the color of the note in my mind's eye as I sing/hear/play it) and chords and/or harmonies generally have a wonderful blending of colors -- almost a cascade effect.

 

I see music in pictures. Full-on photographic type images.

 

It was a real trip when I went to Europe and started mentally humming classical music when I was in different places. Weirder to find out later that certain pieces were composed in said places...

 

(Besides, who can't think of L.A. when listening to the band "X"?)

 

asta

[claire+3]

Both my siblings, my Dad, my daughter and I have this. We see letters as colors, days of the week as colors, and also certain piano keys, ( the key of C is yellow, D is green etc.) We don't always agree on all of our colors, but many of them are the same. It's fun to compare.

There is an interesting article (a little technical) that I read a while back from the American Synesthetic Society which links seeing letters as colors with using colored refrigerator letter magnets to learn the alphabet.

http://http://synesthesia.info/Witthoft.pdf

I did have a set of these as a child and many are the same. This doesn't explain the music or days of the week connection, though.

[AnnetteB]

Several of us think this way, but there is little agreement on the colors! Natalie says the key of C is yellow :) David thinks of shapes and colors for things. We have put holds on a couple of the books mentioned above and will have a little fun with it :)

[Quad Shot Academy]

I just asked my three oldest, in separate rooms. My 7yog looked at me really strangely, my 4yog said "red" but couldn't tell me why and my oldest said, "Red, because apples are red." I asked if anymore letters were red and he said that g and x were red and f was blue. I asked if he saw the printed letters as colored or just thought of the color when he thought of the letter. He said that he was just telling me the colors of the flash cards that I use with his little sister!:tongue_smilie: He asked why I was asking these weird questions and after I told him, he said, "No, I don't have any problems like that. The only problem I have is that I have to read w/o my eyes or I see colored dots." :confused: I asked how he read w/o his eyes and he said he that he took pictures of the words and looked at them later . . . but the dots weren't so bad as long as he did not read while talking. If he read while talking, so many colored dots would zoom around that it was too hard to concentrate on the text. Weird. I have taken him to four doctors over the past 3 years, trying to find out about these pesky dots. The last one diagnosed him with Alice in Wonderland Syndrome :glare: but after having his adenoids out a year ago, he hasn't mentioned them, so I thought they were gone. Wonder if it is something else . . .

[jenL]

What a fascinating thread! I just asked my oldest ds what color A was, and he replied, "Which A?" :lol: I didn't know there was more than one! Anyway, I prodded further, and he couldn't name a color; neither could dh. I don't see things this way either, but it was an interesting article, and it's exciting to see other people on here who live with this.

[Maria from IN]

Here's an interesting website I found...

 

http://synesthete.org/index.php

 

You can take their synesthesia battery and find out what kind you have.

 

Apparently there's all different kinds of it--even TEA has its color!;)

[sassenach]

Super cool thread!

[flyingmommy]

My older dd said that letters don't have colors for her. I asked her about time being a spiral (somebody mentioned that, I think) and she said no, but in her mind timelines are always horizontal and number lines are always vertical. Hmmmm......

 

My husband says A is blue and they're all going to be blue and why am I asking him weird questions! lol

 

Jeannie

[*********]

I asked Zee, and he also said A is red. How interesting. He also gave colors for other letters. He said it's because that's what color they are on the Leapfrog Videos. I'm not sure if he's right, I haven't checked yet. But he also gave me colors for some numbers, and we don't have the Leapfrog Math video. It was so cute; when I asked him what color A is, he just said, all matter of fact, 'Red'. My dh was like, um, what in the world are you guys talking about?

 

I don't have this color association, but somehow I just knew my ds5 would. Zee's got lots of 'quirks'.

 

ETA: And Dawn, he says that J is purple. :)

[flyingmommy]

This is the most interesting thread! I've never heard of this before and now I want to research it.

 

:lurk5:

[MBM]

My youngest has several of the different types of synesthesia. He identifies numbers, letters, food, sounds of all kinds, people, houses, and even tastes and smells with colors. For example, I'm a dark red and dh is green.

 

I don't know much about it, though.

[Marylou]

Yes, very interesting topic. I saw a special about this on Dateline a few years ago.

 

Here's one man's experience:

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DvwTSEwVBfc

 

and a little off topic. . . . I have a friend who once was in a diabetic coma and crossed-over, so to speak, before she was told to go back. She told me that she saw many beautiful colors that "don't exist" here. I still can't wrap my mind around that, but I totally believe her!

[AnnetteB]

I'm not sure if this is a form of synesthesia or not, but Olivia, 11, says that she thinks of her multiplication table "as people on a journey to infinity" and they have a story and colors.

[ChristusG]

I just asked my 4 year old DD what color A was. She said red. :ohmy:

[rowan25]

When my brother was little--probably around 3 or 4, he walked in my mom's room. As he came in, he wrinkled up his nose and said "What smells purple?" She had been using Lemon Pledge to dust her furniture. That always struck us as odd until later we learned more about this type of brain activity. I can't wait to ask my dd when she gets up tomorrow!! :)

[LoriM]

My older daughter has a 7 letter first name that she has always written (given the opportunity) with the colors of the rainbow. Since "A" is the second letter, she said A is orange. :)

 

But she is both an artist and a mathematician, so she sees lots of colors and numbers together.

[Tree House Academy]

I do not think this way at all. Reading over all the stuff, I kind of wish I did! How neat! I will have to ask dh and the kids tomorrow. I have a feeling that if ds 9 had ever thought this way, he would have told me by now, but I am not sure about ds5...I am not even sure about dh. If it is something he thinks, it is something he finds too strange to have ever shared with me. Hmmm....

[Nestof3]

I think there is some association that we all do with colors and letters -- specifically thinking here about words that we commonly associate with a specific letter -- such as one might say "b" is for blue, or "o" for orange. Then there's "a" for red because apple is usually the word on the alphabet flashcards.

 

I think the difference, after reading articles and talking to Nathan some more is that some people see the letters in colors, and some people feel the color. Nathan said that when he sees a letter, he sees it in the color printed in, but if he thinks of a letter, he feels the color for it. There's a certain rightness about "j" being purple, for him.

 

I really don't get the assigning numbers to things at all. I haven't been able to find any info on it.

[muffinmom]

This has been so interesting to read. As long as I can remember I have seen the calendar year in the form of a racetrack (oval--like an egg, as others have described). I can view it from a bird's-eye-view, if I'm thinking about it as a whole, or I see myself on the "track" in whatever month I'm in. I can look backwards toward the previous months or forward to the coming ones. Totally 3-D. And the track itself is sort of floating in space--not completely fixed. Oh yeah...and the months each have their own colors.

 

So glad to know I'm not weird. Well at least not in this aspect! :D By the way, March is a mix of dark blues and light blues. April pretty much just light blue, in case you were wondering.;)