My child has synesthesia

I have always had a mild form of synesthesia -- a fairly common condition that causes sensory input to cross wires, so that I experience two forms of sensory input at once. I "see" low tones as cool colors and higher tones as warm colors. Some visual perceptions will cause me to feel a physical pushing or pulling sensation in my chest. Although it's an odd quirk, it's not something I put much thought into -- until my daughter started showing the same signs to a far greater degree.

When my 3-year-old daughter sees glitter, she automatically brings her hand to her mouth and gets a look of intense pain. "It makes my mouth taste spicy," she says frantically. She'll immediately hide, cover, or walk away from the offending "spicy" glitter. The sensation usually passes as soon as the glitter's out of her eyesight, but she's more than once requested a glass of water to "make the spicy part go away."

As my daughter has grown more verbally expressive, she's discussed the sensory feelings that arise in other circumstances. The color blue "tastes bad like spoiled milk," while the color red "tastes really salty" and the color yellow "tastes good, like I want to eat lots of it." Low bass sounds make her stomach hurt, while music with higher notes "tastes like a lollipop." The word "synesthesia," on the other hand, "tastes just like a banana, but greener."

Almost all humans experience some limited degree of synesthesia. For example, the sound of fingernails on a chalkboard is notoriously painful, even though we don't typically think of sounds as causing physical discomfort. We also refer to mild, passive synesthesia when we use metaphors like "loud colors" and "sweet emotions."

In a famous series of studies, etymologists determined that we experience some degree of sound-perception when we look at certain images. When shown a picture of a curvy image and a sharp-edged image, 98% both English-speakers in America and Tamil-speakers in India selected that the curvy image was named "bouba" and that the sharp-edged image was "kiki." The phenomenon is even apparent in pre-literate children as young as two. Clearly, synesthesia isn't quite as rare as we might think.

But my daughter's sensory perception seems to be far outside the range of normalcy. While it may be normal for toddlers to experience some images as "sharp," and while most adults can correctly select "kiki" and "bouba" when shown two differing images, the degree of synesthesia that my daughter experiences seems undeniably abnormal.

Ultimately, though, I don't see anything at all wrong with my daughter's quirky senses. Aside from the awkwardness of explaining to teachers that they should avoid glitter crafts when my daughter's around, I'm actually glad that my child possesses this rare and special gift. When it comes to sensory input, few of us are lucky enough to be able to break away from the constraints of definition.