`Author: Follow the rainbow and color kids happy, healthy`

By Joe Pinchot
Herald Staff Writer

Do you have a child with a poor appetite, persistent headaches, difficulty learning or who wets the bed?

Maryanne E. Hoffman promotes a way to address these and many other disorders and behaviors that doesn’t require expensive medical treatment or counseling sessions: color therapy.

“Color can be used effectively for any personal, educational, social or formal situation,” wrote the author in her new book “Color Therapy For Children.” “Color is the power of the unspoken word and sends out signals loud and clear.”

Ms. Hoffman, a Crawford County resident who lives near Jamestown, promotes a holistic approach to color, using color as it relates to all the senses, from music to food and meditation to shapes. “The whole concept is the rainbow,” said the former syndicated astrologer, wearing a black top of her own design adorned with a rainbow and a glittery unicorn. “We should use the rainbow in our life everyday.”

Different parts of the brain process specific colors, so surrounding ourselves with certain colors can be used to stimulate parts of the brain that control behavior, Ms. Hoffman said. Color therapy is an ancient discipline but is more accepted in Germany, Australia and other parts of the world than in the United States, where it has been shunned as unconventional medicine, she said.

“Doctors who practiced color therapy were jailed,” the Youngstown native said of its U.S. history. “It got a very strange start here. In our culture the field of color therapy is just taking hold.”

Ms. Hoffman, who also has written about color therapy for adults, said children respond differently to color than adults, and color preferences change as the child grows.

“Pay close attention to colors that are repeated over a certain amount of time,” wrote the artist and daughter of original Disney animator Carl F. Hoffman Jr. “This may indicate a core personality trait or a physical or emotional condition that needs attention.”

The book opens with a way parents can assess a child’s color preferences. Children make, draw or paint a rainbow of their favorite colors, and are asked questions about color, shape, line and seasons. The choices the child makes reflects his or her personality, she said. These choices are then compared with the child’s responses to questions about the seven colored mandalas on the back cover of the book.

Based on this assessment parents can change a child’s environment, such as toys, interior design and clothes, with specific colors. Ms. Hoffman, a doctoral candidate in the art and technology program at Ohio State University, also sells and promotes the use of color therapy glasses, acetate overlays and mineral baths that add color to bath water.

Red can be used to stimulate creative activities, revitalize the physical body and, for some people, alleviate headaches; orange to stimulate appetite and create a friendly atmosphere; yellow to stimulate learning; blue to decrease appetite; and green for stability and comfort.

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Updated January 8, 1999
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