Should parents fource their children to make eyecontact?

Post Reply New Topic

I see this a lot: parents tryingnreally hard to make their autistic child to make and maintain eye contact. I for one, dont agree with it.

Personally i have never been able to make eye contact at all, i dont even look at peoples face when i talk to them. I understand and listen much better when im not looking at anything.

I dont even know how making eye contact can benifit a child at all, especially if the child has severe autism.

That being said, if a child who is autistic can actually make eye contact theres nothing to argue about.

What do you think?

Interesting that you say 'force', rather than, say, 'teach'.

Is a parent, in teaching their child to speak, 'forcing' their child to speak?

I mean: at which point does teaching become forcing?

Much learning is very uncomfortable for a child.

I think it depends on their own level of ability, but if they're high enough functioning then yes. The reason I say this is because mom and dad are not going to be around forever, and at some point that child will have to navigate the world on his/her own, and the majority of the world makes eye contact. Best to get used to doing it and figure out how to handle it.

There's no way to desensitize a kid from making eye contact like there is to an extent with sensory issues. A good compromise would be to teach kids to look at someone's nose or mouth instead of their eyes. It's close enough to look like eye contact but not as uncomfortable. Very few people would notice the difference.

No. Better to teach them tricks that will fool all but the closest NTs into thinking they have eye contact.

I can look at the eyebrows, look at the hairline, look at the mouth, look at the nose, look slightly to the left or right of the person's face and still pay attention to what they are actually saying/doing.

I cannot make sustained eye contact and fully process a goddamn thing.

I'm extremely high-functioning; I was taught that eye contact was absolutely necessary from the time I was small (by some of the family anyway).

ASD individuals don't ever stop having a problem with eye contact (and it's never "right enough" to fool someone who is close to us, no matter what). We just learn that the appearance of listening, attention, and connection is more important than the real thing.

Much better to do some explaining - it is a convention of politeness to make eye contact and then some tricks as other posters have written above, or a bit of a simple script, for example an eye contact at the start of the conversation, to set things on the right path and a brief return to eye contact now and again. That way we are making a reasonable adjustment for NTs who have a stereotyped and repetitive behaviour of looking into the eyes and they become distressed if they are not able to do it all the time.

I was never forced to make eye contact. My aspieish mother has told me that eye contact makes her uncomfortable too and didn't think it would be fair to force it on her kid. She also didn't really know it was a social expectation either.

I'm able to maintain eye contact for a few minutes. I think it really depends (even though I answered maybe) on the situation. Teach your child to do it in situations of importance, also as was suggested, teach them the tricks.

What is your thought process when you make sustained eye contact ? Do you become self-concious , do you question yourself - am I staring etc. Do you feel sustained eye contact makes you feel vulnerable - feel like your eyes reveal things about you like your autism.

This is what I was taught in fourth grade. It served me well.

I think the more appropriate question to be asking is, is why is it so painful for an aspie to do it and not for an NT. Or is it painful for an NT to do it and it's done as some form of endurance test? If the later is true, then I would accept the challenge. But I got a feeling that that is not true because as far as I can tell, NT's seem to enjoy doing it, or at least that how I perceive it.

As far as I know. parents of NT children don't have to teach their NT kids to do it, they just do it on their own. In fact, they now have a test that uses a laser to track the eye movement of babies to see if they make eye contact with other faces. They use this test to detect signs of autism.

Forcing eye contact, especially in children, can cause other problems with social interaction. My parents are/were quite firm and strict with me if I wasn't making eye contact, and it has contributed to me being anxious in social situations, especially if they are also present. They managed to associate social interaction with chastisement in my head by continually berating me over 'mistakes' made in interactions.

the only people who ever berated me about my eye contact - or lack of it - were the speech therapists who tried to convince me that other people would pick up on it, consider it, and it would matter to them like it mattered to the speech therapists. of course, they were wrong, as far as i know.

nobody besides them has ever brought up my eye contact as an issue. i imagine only in formal situations like job interviews it would be a big deal, but those situations are so uncommon relative to the rest of my daily life, that i can just suck it up and make true sustained eye contact there.

no, i don't think parents should force eye contact, but they'd do good to teach it. if there's problems, maybe this will do, it has served me well:

in some oriental societies, youths are taught to avoid the eyes and instead look at the knot of the tie when speaking to a superior. that might work in this case, but it's probably easier to pick up on when compared to the eyebrow or nose. (and they they might ask if they tied it wrong)

i never heard of that until i had children, i saw/heard a mother commanding her child to look her in the eyes
it struck me as evil, to make your child little and oppressed, openly out in public on top of that, what's decency here ?
thirty years further it's a 'normal' thing?

I had eye contact drilled into me as a youngster, but it's just not natural for people on the spectrum. It's like gazing into a cat's eyes, they hate it because they see it as a dominant behavior.

maybe it's a 'the other people' thing
observing, toddlers from strangers, when you make eyecontact and smiles, the mother, even grandmother, will prevent that asap, as (if) they have a duty of being in the eye of the apple of their eye exclusively -
what's going on with this?

we are the mother people,
Think you better know
I'm another person
> who are the brain police ?