Should parents fource their children to make eyecontact?

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No.

I can make eye-contact for short periods of time, but when I do, I'm focusing on getting it right at the expense of everything else, i.e. I find it difficult to process what's being said if I'm making eye-contact. It's also an uncomfortable experience. Why would you force a child to do that?

That depends.

When I younger, no one forced me eye contact. They all assumed, that is from my context, is that I'm just a shyster or meek than a liar or a snob or inattentive or something similar.


If anything in my case, I've been tricking everyone all this time before I found out what eye contact ever means to others.
For me, that's just a gesture of attention (out of my own natural body language) and not something contextual or necessary. Otherwise, it's distracting or annoying.

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Being encouraged to make eye contact or really at least just look at the person talking to me, has always been a part of my lifelong occupational therapy.

I think parents should get training on doing things like that.

Someone on WP said they had "Look at me when I'm talking to you !" tattooed on the inside of their forehead. Very apt. I totally relate.

The ability to do eye contact is vastly dependent on how I feel on a given day, and who I am talking to. Most of the time, I do it, or something like it. I'm not really sure how it's supposed to be. But there are people I absolutely can't look at, and I am also unable to do it and pay attention to what someone is saying simultaneously.

My parents have never told me to make eye contact. But maybe it's because we came from a society where eye contact perhaps isn't that important. I was young when I moved to America, so I may be wrong, but I don't remember anyone in my home country telling someone else, "Look at me when I'm speaking."

In fact, when I first heard the term "eye contact", I had to look up what it was, just to be sure.

No, because if a parent of an autistic child persistently forces the child to make eye contact, it could be seen as abusive.

I think kids should be taught about the importance of eye contact and how it makes things easier. Like what if you don't know someone's name so you call after them or ask them a question, you will have to look at them as you speak so that way when they look, they will know you are talking to them or otherwise they will ignore you thinking you aren't talking to them.

As a child I was told to look at them when they say a word because they were teaching me to speak and I had to see how the words were formed so that was different there and justified. My parents never "forced" me, they would hold a object up to their face and talk so I would look at them so I could see their lips moving. I never liked forced eye contact or "look at me when I talk to you" or "look at me" when it wasn't even speech therapy or trying to teach me to say a word right.

My mother forced me to look in her in the eye and I don't think I remember a single thing she said while I was doing that, my brain just couldn't function beyond maintaining the eye contact. I do think that parents should teach their children to try to look people in the eye on occasion or at least make it look like they. As was mentioned several times, look at other facial features that are close.

I don't think children should be forced to make eyecontact, but it is completely fine to try to teach them to do it. Where the line goes between the two, well, that might just be the complicated part here. I'd say that an order "look me in the eyes when I'm talking to you" might be considered as forcing, but asking "could you look me in the eyes while I'm talking to you" would not... maybe. But literally turning the child's face towards yours and physically forcing them to make eyecontact is out of question. I can't really explain, but I think it could make the situation where the child needs to communicate even harder because they'd be forced to do something that makes them uncomfortable without anyone explaining to them why they are forced to do such a thing... this is, of course, assuming that no one has explained why they think it's necessary for the child to learn it. People are different of course, but when I was a child the only explanation I remember getting was "because it's part of good manners." Yet nobody explained why looking in to people's eyes is better manners than not doing so.

No, not force, but teach - yes. I had to teach myself that and I still struggle, kind of first assess how often my conversation partner tries to look into my eyes and where he/she looks when she doesn't look at me, then I mimic that a little. When I look into their eyes sometimes I catch myself looking "through" them, not focusing on the eyes. It all can be taught to some extent at least and why not try and teach your child (my daughter is not autistic and just way more skilled at that than me and she's just 11!).