Particle IPO curve problem

Hello,
I posted before, but I wanted to make my post clearer.
All the IPO curves in blender have animation frames as the x-axis, so any gradual change introduced using IPO curves will happen over animation time.

However, the blender particle system is different, it appears that IPO curves associated with a particle emitter object offer a gradual change over particle lifetime (even though the blender frames are on the x-axis). Is there any way to have particles change over animation time as opposed to particle lifetime?

I.E. if I have a material change color over 50 frames, each individual particle will appear to change color over their like 2 second lifetime after it’s emitted. But the overall, the color of particles won’t change over 50 frames like it should.

If anyone has any suggestions, I’m all ears.

Thanks