As seen in SA Kids: July/August
All kids come up with random comments – my son Logan recently told me that penguins and turtles aren’t overly different (and what on earth do you say to that, other than penguins don’t having shells and turtles don’t have wings?) Most of the time their randomness is just word-vomit, a wave of thoughts rolling through their minds that are verbalised without much structure. I’m guilty of this even as a grown up!
One night a couple of months ago, I was standing in the kitchen getting dinner organised. Logan was sitting at the kitchen bench doing his homework when he asked me one of his usually random (and occasionally annoying) questions:
“Mummy, what’s your favourite number?” he said. “It’s five mate, why’s that?” I replied. He put his hand up to his chin as if he was thinking seriously. “Well, that would make sense then because your favourite colour is red,” he eventually says.
At this point I put down the knife and looked at him. I wasn’t sure if I had heard right, so I asked him to repeat it. He repeated himself, with attitude, as if something was wrong with my hearing. I was confused. I mean, what the hell does the number five have to do with colour red?
It took me a couple of seconds to piece together what he said, and he then began to tell me about the colours that appear in his head when he thinks/reads about things. This was the beginning of something amazing – learning something new about my big boy (who at seven I thought I knew pretty well).
I remembered from a few years before that a friend mentioned she had Synesthesia. This meant she linked letters and numbers to colours. As soon as my husband walked into the room, I asked Logan to relay the conversation. He was surprised too. Once Logan was in bed that evening, we got the laptop out and looked it up. We looked up ways of testing to make sure it wasn’t a fluke (or that he wasn’t faking it!). He passed. We did the same tests a few weeks later and he passed again.
We’ve since discovered Logan doesn’t just match letters and numbers with colours, but whole words and music. This is a whole new avenue for us to tap-in to, to help his unique brain develop to its best potential. And thanks to his doctor, we’ve got a great deal of support to help nurture this side of his creativity and intellect!
The past couple of years for him have been tough. He is on the Autism spectrum and since he was diagnosed he’s often been singled out, he’s had problems fitting in at school and he’s been anxious about things. Yet as soon as he started talking about seeing colours, a little spark has come back into his eyes that we haven’t seen in awhile. While Synesthesia may make him a little bit different, it’s made me understand him a whole lot more.
