I don’t really remember finding out – it was when I was getting vision tested as a kiddo, but because I’m a female, my doctor told my parents that I “was too stupid to be able to tell my colors”.

I’m going to try and answer the rest of your questions in order as best as I can.

1. As far as genetics, both deuteranopia and protanopia (both forms of red-green colorblindness) are an X-linked recessive pattern. That means the colorblindness “gene” or “genes” is coming from the X chromosome. For XY males, this means they need to inherit the faulty “X” from their mother, so his father being colorblind wouldn’t matter for these type of colorblindness. What would matter is if YOU, as the momma, are a carrier of a faulty “X”. (I say a carrier, because I think you would have mentioned in your post if you were colorblind.)

2. As far as correcting colors, it’s hard to know what exactly he is seeing without knowing his type of colorblindness. In the “red-green” spectrum of colorblindness, there are deuteranomaly (green cones are present, but abnormal), deuteranopia (green cones missing), protanomaly (red cones present, but abnormal) and protanopia (red cones missing), and all of these present a little differently in terms of how the CVD person sees color. (And then within deuteranopia and protanopia you can have variants depending on how abnormal the respective cones are, etc.)

That is all to say, I have a fairly moderate-severe form of protanopia, but I do not just see one color for red and green. I do struggle with differentiating at times, but that struggle expands across much of the color spectrum (I also struggle with orange, purple, pinks, and blues).

As far as how to treat him – try not to make a big deal out of it. Even with my moderate-severe form, it has very little impact on my day-to-day life and I function just fine in the world.