More on Katie's Synesthesia

A couple of weeks ago, Katie was telling me that her favorite letters are K & P and her favorite number is 2. I didn't really ask her why, it didn't even occur to me to ask. But, as I look at her list...those are the 3 PINK ones, her favorite color.

I've been "testing" her on and off the last couple of days. She's so funny with her answers. I asked her what color a 4 is and she said, "You know a 4 is brown, Mom". She still doesn't really understand that we don't all see this.

To her, this is a bit of a "baby game", like she learned her colors years ago. It's like I'm asking her what color a lemon is and then getting excited that she says it is yellow. She doesn't really understand why I'm so impressed that she knows her colors. LOL

She told me last night that my name (Mom) was all blue. I checked her list and both M and O are blue.

She's really good at math too, for her age (5). In first grade (she's a year ahead since we wanted her to be in the same grade as Jackson) we're still just adding and subtracting, but she has recently figured out multiplication all on her own. The other night at dinner, she saw that Jackson had 5 fish sticks. Each fish stick is 3 bites so she declared "Jackson has 15 bites!" I almost wish I could take credit for her math skills but I've never taught her multiplication so I really can't, can I?

I was really curious what she thought about colored letters, like wooden blocks or fridge magnets. So, for her the number 1 is yellow, but our fridge magnet is red. So, I asked her what the color was on the magnet and she said, "red". Then she said, "why didn't they make it it's real color?" So, she obviously sees the reality too, but thinks of it as "wrong". When I was writing words for her in a black pencil, I asked her if she saw the black and she said that she did. From what I've read, it's like most people with this, will see the reality, but see the other color on top or just in their mind, however, the colors don't blend together. Like a blue and red don't make purple, kwim?

Katie took this test and she scored 83%. I really don't know what she got "wrong", other than she didn't understand the questions about three dimensional spaces and I didn't know how to explain it to her and she didn't seem to associate the days of the week with other senses. She did have an opinion about the music and colors, but I don't know if she was just guessing, or if she really saw something.

She had very strong convictions about this test. She took no time at all answer that one. It shows 2 shapes and you're supposed to say which one is bouba and which one is kiki. She picked those out right away! Then later I asked her to draw bouba and kiki on her doodle pro (magnetic drawing toy) and they looked almost identical to the pictures she saw on the computer.

I've read that people can sometimes outgrow this. I think I may have had a form of this when I was a child too, but I just don't remember for sure. It's also genetic. I remember as a very little child having a really bad sore throat once. Every time I swallowed I "felt" the color blue. I remember telling my dad that my sore throat felt really blue and he said that he feels pain as red. I remember thinking "how could anyone feel this as red, when is sooo very blue?" Now, I don't feel pain as blue anymore. I don't feel pain as a color at all, but I definitely remember feeling pain as a color before. I also just learned that my dad sees colored numbers, just like Katie. I find this all so very fascinating.