In the autism world, there seems to be a big push to teach a child to label colors, so
today, I'm going to talk about when and how I recommend teaching colors.
Hi.
I'm Dr. Mary Barbera, autism mom, board-certified behavior analyst, and best selling author.
About 15 years ago, a local mom who's a friend of mine brought her young son to my house,
so I could assess him and give her some tips on how to help him.
I remember I pointed to a chair and asked him, "What's this called?"
And he said, "Yellow chair."
Mom and Dad looked so proud, since he not only labeled the chair, but also threw in
the color.
They were upset and confused, then, when I told them that since I didn't ask the color
of the chair, this was actually not a great response, that I would have much preferred
his response to just be, "Chair."
So you might be thinking, "What's the big deal, Mary?
Labeling colors shows more cognitive ability, so shouldn't we just celebrate yellow chair
like his parents wanted to?"
When should you teach colors?
In typically-developing kids, colors often are not identified until about 30 months of
age, so you don't want to be teaching a child with very low, limited language skills to
label colors.
It will just confuse things.
Sorting by color, so putting the yellow bear in the yellow cup and the red bear in the
red cup, those are all VB-MAPP level two skills, and labeling and receptively identifying colors
are actually level three skills, which are 30 to 48 month typical development.
So if a child can't say any words, or they can't identify dozens of nouns, like bed,
and shoe, and marker, then we don't want to teach them colors.
Some kids will naturally learn to identify colors by parents or preschool teachers using
color activities, such as red day, or find all the things in the room that are green.
This is ideal, not to teach or hyper-focus on colors, and let kids learn them naturally.
But for kids with moderate to severe autism, who need systematic instruction on language,
this is how I recommend teaching colors.
What we want to do is we want to get construction paper, and identify the three colors we want
to teach.
If your child knows any colors to start with, maybe yellow is their favorite color and they
can identify yellow, then certainly we want to add yellow into the mix, because it will
be nice to have one of the colors be a known skill.
You also may need to consider articulation with these skills.
So, when in doubt, I would pick red, yellow, and green to start with.
I would not pick orange and red at the same time, for instance, or orange and yellow at
the same time, because they're too close.
But sometimes, articulation gets in the way with something like yellow, so we might have
to substitute something that the child can say more clearly.
Also, we want to watch out for pastel colors, because they look a little bit different,
and I'd pick primary colors to start with, and avoid teaching brown, black, and white,
and certainly gray and pink would wait, unless pink happens to be a favorite color.
So, those non-primary colors tend to be taught later.
So once we have our construction paper, what you want to do is you want to cut it up so
you have basically four to six pieces, all in squares that kind of match are fine, of
red, yellow, and green.
And then we would start pairing, red, red, and they would put it with the other red object,
red construction paper.
We don't want to start teaching colors with items, such as, "This is a red firetruck,"
because that's too complicated.
What we want to do is we want to teach colors with these sample swatches, and then once
the child really knows colors, we can start combining the color plus the item name, which
is much later down the line.
While you're teaching these skills, these color skills, until the child is very fluent
with red, yellow, and green without any prompts, I would hold off trying to pair the colors,
and trying to generalize it into the natural environment, and that may be tough, because
I'm telling you, parents and professionals really hyper-focus on colors, because that's
kind of what preschoolers learn, and like Mason's parents, they felt like, oh, this
was a good sign to add a color.
So, there may be some undoing of colors you need to do.
So, three things you can do starting today, to teach colors more effectively.
Number one, I would stop focusing on teaching colors to early learners.
If you're a parent or professional, you may need to spread the word about this, why teaching
colors and focusing on combining colors with nouns too early is not a good idea.
Number two, you do want to begin pairing colors when the child is ready, with sorting activities.
I would use construction paper.
And number three, when it is time to teach the child to label and receptively identify
colors, we want to teach two or three colors at the same time.
We never want to just pick one color, because we want to build conditional discrimination
from the start.
Colors are a great thing to teach when the child is up at level three of the VB-MAPP,
needing to learn other, more advanced language skills, and they're functioning at a typical
language development of a 30 to 48 month old child.
Getting the colors mastered should be easy, and if it's not, it's probably that you're
starting too soon, without the prerequisite skills in mind.
If you'd like to get more helpful advice, where to start, or how to revamp your child
or client's ABA program, and join me on my mission to turn autism around for two million
by 2020, go to marybarbera.com/join, or click the link in the description right below to
download my free, three-step guide.
I hope you enjoyed this information about colors, and I hope you'll begin to teach colors
a little bit differently going forward, and I'll see you next week.