Teaching Eye Contact

Teaching Eye Contact

"My child is able to talk and has some social skills, but he won't make eye contact.  How do you teach them this?'  

There are two different things you can to do work on this.  The first one is to play with your child and move objects towards your face to draw your child's attention there then try to get your child to talk to you.  Some examples would be asking, "what do you want?" or "what color is this?"  Over time your child will hopefully begin to look naturally towards your face to request something.  

Another way is to teach your child about "thinking eyes."  Michelle G. Winner uses this term when teaching social thinking (www.socialthinking.com).  Explain to your child that where people look gives others an idea of what they may be thinking about.  Play a game where your child has to guess what you are thinking about by looking where your eyes are looking.  You can also pause movies (Toy Story for example) and ask your child to tell you what the character is thinking about.  Because you are giving a reason for making eye contact, your child is more likely to understand the importance of looking and be more willing to give eye contact.  Once you have taught your child about thinking eyes, say, "show me your thinking eyes."  Avoid the "look at me" as this phrase does not seem as effective.  

Once your child understands thinking eyes, then you can help your child understand that he or she needs to have thinking eyes before talking.  Otherwise the child won't know if the person is thinking about what the child is saying.  This was a big help at the dinner table for my family because my son would get mad that someone didn't pass him something such  as the potatoes.  I was then able to explain that he didn't have anyone's thinking eyes so nobody was thinking about what he was saying.  So he learned to say someone's name first to get their thinking eyes before asking for the food to be passed to him.