The power of favourite colours

April 26, 2008 by Barbara.

Reid wanted toast with peanut butter Friday morning and I told her she’d have to wait until Saturday. I’m worried that we’d miss a spec of peanut butter when we washed and she’d touch a kid at daycare who would then go into anaphylactic shock. She asked if anyone in our family was allergic to peanut butter and there isn’t anyone - thank goodness. Next, Reid wanted to know to what we *were* allergic. I said that Ken is allergic to flowers and pine trees and, before I could think of how to explain “pollen generally”, Reid interrupted me. “But not his favourite colour flowers,” she said. Favourite colours, in Ken’s case that would be red, are strong talismen in Reid’s life. It makes her happy to wear, colour with or eat from anything that is yellow. It even makes her happy to see Ken or me wear, use, etc. something that is our favourite colour. Reid has great empathy for the little girl in the book Red is Best by Kathy Stinson. Like that little girl, Reid knows that she can take bigger steps in (yellow) boots, throw snowballs farther in (yellow) mittens and that (yellow) paint puts a song in her head. Red is Best is one of Reid’s favourite books and that doesn’t surprise me at all.

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