Synesthesia

The most amazing thing happened in our household today and I just have to tell you all about it!

It all started this afternoon when Katie was drawing calendars, just for fun. She was putting the days of the week at the top and she put a 2 to abbreviate Tuesday, and I explained to her that it's really supposed to be a T. So, then she said, well, I prefer the number 2 because it's pink (she was using a regular lead pencil). What? A pink 2? I asked her why she thinks that twos are pink and she said, "Because they are." At first I thought it was just silly and I asked her if other numbers had colors. "Yes, they all do." She said it so matter of fact as though I should have known that, or that I was asking a really stupid question. So, I asked her what color other numbers were. She told me the colors for each number and then something even more interesting happened. When she got to 10, all of a sudden she gave me two colors. 10 is yellow and white. Then I realized that she had told me that 1 was yellow and 0 was white.

So I wrote it all down. She only told me the colors once. Then I had her stand in front of me so that she couldn't see the paper and asked her to give me the colors for various number combinations as I checked what I had written. She got them all right! I asked her how she decided what colors go with what numbers and she just said, "that's the color that they are."

It gets even better. I asked her if letters had colors too. She looked at me again really puzzled and said, "yes, of course."

Again I wrote down all the colors that go with each letter. Then I wrote down words and she told me what colors she saw as I was writing them. I checked what she had dictated to me earlier and again, 100% correct.

I asked Jackson if he thought that letters or numbers had colors and he said that he only saw colors when they were his fridge magnets. I asked him what color he thought numbers and letters were because he wanted to "play" this game too. But, he was just making them up as we went along as he wasn't able at all to be consistent in what he had dictated to me.

Another thing that is sort of funny, is that Katie very much feels like there is a right and a wrong answer. Twos *are* pink. When Jackson said that they were orange, she whispered to me "oops, he got that one wrong."

So, I did a little research this evening and found this really interesting article. Apparently this is something that can occur in about 1 in 200 to 1 in 2000 people!

I read that it mostly happens in really artistic people. Has anyone ever heard of this, experienced it themselves or known someone with it?

Here's the article if you want to check it out. I'm still just so shocked and amazed by this. We truly are fearfully and wonderfully made!

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