Improving eye contact

Sometimes it can help to suggest that they look at a person’s nose rather than their eyes. It doesn’t intimidate a child as does looking someone in the eyes and yet it gets their eyes looking in the exactly right direction.

I actually tried that, but he seems to forget. But I’ll keep using that one, thanks for the suggestion.

Why isn’t he maintaining eye contact. Is he being distracted, has trouble maintaining attention, has difficulty processing auditory or visual input, etc? It may be just as important to find out why. Getting him involved in activities that force him to maintain his attention on the person talking may be a good start. Another mistake people make is expecting too much at once, ,ake the time he has to maintain eye contact for very short durations initially, then increase it as he gets better at it and make sure there are lots of positive activities he is doing this during. Teaching my son to ride a bike has been good for his eye contact and I have to cue him still frequently but it’s getting less.

I dislike giving people eye contact and so does my son (both of us are LD). I think my primary reason is that I have a lot of difficulty blocking out back ground noise therefore avoiding eye contact let me close myself off.I give eye contact now but still perfer not to for the most part.

I told my son that his teacher feels bad at school when he does not look at her. I said… she wanted to be a teacher to help you and other kids, and because you are not looking at her, she thinks she is not doing a good job and feels bad. My son who is sensitive to others feelings started looking at her because he felt she was human not just a teacher.

If he is focused on an object or you are working with one, hold it up near your eyes-it will be easier for him to ‘find’ your eyes.

Pause until you receive even brief eye contact when doing an enjoyable activity.

Pick a one word prompt such as ‘eyes’ so you are not lecturing all the time-if youre anything like me, a reminder sentence can turn into a novel ;)

distraction-of course-the eyes draw you in and if you are already having trouble staying on task, they are the last thing you need!!!!

Thanks for the feedback

My son is an auditory learner. I ask his teacher to allow him to not look up when they are learning. Eyes to the front of the room is very distacting for him. Teachers fill the room with visual stimulii. Overcrowded bulletin boards, every inch of space has something on it. I am sure this helps all those visual learners but he does better when he just listens.
Also, he does better when information is presented in print in an uncrowded format. Too much information on the page really throws him.

He doesn’t have a problem with eye contact otherwise when dealing with individuals in conversation.

Funny I have a friend whose Dad is a successful businessman. When I introduced my son to him when he was about 5 my son looked down when he shook the man’s hand. The man grabbed his hand back and said “Look at the person when you shake their hand.” He did this in a nice cajoling way.

After that my son would practice this whenever he could. He would say shake my hand and would stare me down intently while he did it. Now he just seems to do it automatically.

So is my son. He is also anxious, and maybe a little overwhelmed in certain circumstances so its easier for him not to look. But I hadn’t considered that looking away when he is listening might just be his strategy for using his relative strength. Thanks for the insight.

Thanks for sharing your thoughts. I think in my son’s case there are multiple things going on - too much sensory input sometimes, anxiety sometimes, and maybe just habit. I suspect as we address these issues he’ll feel more comfortable making eye contact.

I enjoyed reading all of the advice on eye contact. But I have to wonder, who does the problem belong to? If a person choose not to maintain eye contact for whatever reason, why is it their problem? It sounds like an issue with the person on the other end who needs to have it, right?

My child was diagnosed with Aspergers predominantly for lack of eye contact (thats what the neuropsych was so preoccupied with). This is absolutely ludacris. As I read these responses, I can see my son’s lack of eye contact to be due to the auditory learner, visual overload, need to focus and anxiety with uncomfortable situations. All perfectly normal explanations.

Should we work on that? I guess, but is it worth worrying about? Probably not. The person who doesn’t like the fact that he looks away when they talk to him just needs to get over it.

.

I havne’t read what others said so I may repeat. Sometimes eye cotnact is just too much for a kid or person to handle to be honest. I still have trouble doing it and only do so when I have to for work and stuff. It distracts me. I can either look at you or I can talk to you but it is very hard to do both. You can have him learn to look close to your eyes but not in them , like at your nose, so that it looks more like eye contact but isn’t so distracting. TO be honest, I start kids on eye contact with non verbal activities like catch to help with this skill in isolation. Then you can gradually add short conversation sentences. A game like Uno is great because he would only need to make eye contact once in awhile, maybe to say “Uno.” Go Fish would be ok too, he could make eye contact at first just to ask for a card and then add being able to do it while needing to listen if he is asked. Break him in gradually. Do it on days when he is not overwhelmed. Don’t ask him to do it on a regular basis outside a time you pick each day to do it. And remember it is about being overloaded not about being rude.

Interesting, b/c my son has yet to be diagnosed with anything. But aspergers came up I think due to a total lack of eye contact during a psychiatric evaluation. My son has issues, but he doesn’ t have aspergers.

I digress - I wanted to answer your question about why eye contact is important. I’m realizing as he gets older (he’s 8) that he’s missing or misinterpreting social cues because he’s not looking at people. It can be hard to have a conversation with him also, because you don’t know if he’s with you. I don’t care if he looks at the teacher while she is teaching, but in conversations I do think its important.

I know he’s not rude, but unfortunately the rest of the world doesn’t. Thanks for the suggestions!

.