At what age does a child’s eye color change?

Most par­ents after the birth of the crumbs try to deter­mine who the baby looks more like. And often the object for com­par­i­son is the col­or of the eyes. Here it is worth con­sid­er­ing that it is unsta­ble in a new­born, and the real “col­or” will “appear” much lat­er.

The col­or of the eyes of the crumbs can change dur­ing the first year of life, or even lat­er. It is prac­ti­cal­ly impos­si­ble to deter­mine this accu­rate­ly before the age of three months. The same applies to visu­al acu­ity — at first, the baby can only feel the light, but clos­er to a year this val­ue will cor­re­spond to half the visu­al acu­ity of an adult.

Imme­di­ate­ly after birth, the baby’s vision is test­ed by its reac­tion to light. And in the sec­ond week of life, the child will already be able to fix his gaze for a few sec­onds on a cer­tain object. When the baby reach­es two months of age, the fix­a­tion of the gaze will become sta­ble. At six months, the baby will already be able to dis­tin­guish between the sim­plest geo­met­ric shapes, and at a year — and draw­ings.

Why does eye col­or change in new­borns? The col­or of the iris, as well as the col­or of the skin and hair, is direct­ly depen­dent on the melanin pig­ment. Most babies have light gray or light blue eyes. This is because the iris of their eyes does not con­tain melanin. As the body pro­duces and accu­mu­lates melanin, the baby’s eye col­or will change. A large amount of pig­ment will cause the eyes to turn brown, and a small amount will stain the iris in gray, green or blue.

The pro­duc­tion of melanin is an unsta­ble process in the child’s body. So the col­or of the baby’s eyes can change sev­er­al times and final­ly sta­bi­lize only at the age of three to four years. Then it will be pos­si­ble to com­pare it with rel­a­tives.

As for the total amount of melanin, it is pri­mar­i­ly due to hered­i­ty. And keep in mind that the com­plex of genes will be com­mon — not only from par­ents, but also from dis­tant ances­tors. Of course, it is impos­si­ble to pre­dict in advance what eye col­or your baby will have. Very rarely, but a baby can be born with eyes of dif­fer­ent col­ors — this phe­nom­e­non is called het­e­rochro­mia. There are also albi­no babies. If melanin is com­plete­ly absent in the iris, then blood in the choroid is respon­si­ble for the col­or of the eyes. Inter­est­ing­ly, light eyes, even in adults, can change their col­or — for exam­ple, as a result of ill­ness or stress.