Just look at me! - A Beginner's Guide to Establishing Eye Contact

As soon as infants open their two small eyes, they have made their way to the world. They start to be interested in their surroundings, they explore, move their heads, look at faces as they giggle, cry or smile. Eye contact begins as early as 1-2 months in, they observe their surroundings and gradually learn to look at people who are talking. Though for some, especially those with Autism Spectrum Disorder, eye contact, they lack /ignore eye contact, as research shows (ASD: American Psychiatric Association, 2013).

Today, we will talk about ways to develop more eye contact with your child.

Praise

Despite a positive effect in general, to most children, praise alone is not reliable enough to maintain eye contact among children on the spectrum. it is noted that some children may not react positively to praises, other methods can be used, requiring eye contact upon getting what they want.

HOW: provide regular short and long praises when your child looks at you, e.g Great looking!/ Nice I like seeing your big round eyes when you talk!

Make it natural

Having compared several methods in training eye contact, the importance of a combination of methods: proving edible rewards, videos, praises are emphasized.

Despite high reliability in providing edible rewards to elicit eye contact among children, we do not want to train them by giving chocolate once they look at us, another if they look at us again. This would not only seem inhumane but also create reliance. We do not want them to use eye gaze as a tool to get what they want but as a way to express curiosity and interest in social interactions.

HOW:

Initially, sit at eye level with them, face to face, this is to ensure that this eye contact can be made especially at our beginning of practice. When playing, you can hold the toy at your eye level, once you catch them looking at you, praise them by explaining why e.g 'Oh I like seeing your beautiful eyes! (slightly tap their eyes if they do not understand).

In a natural context, if they want food from the high shelves or play the tablet to watch videos, wait until they look at you/a moment where their eyes catch yours then give them what they want by complimenting 'I see your eyes, now I know you want...'.

This part can be difficult for some parents as great patience is needed. Some parents are such excellent mind readers that they just satisfy their child everything they want, without any actions form the child, this creates reliance.

Avoid negative reinforcements

Negative reinforcers/punishments are not needed. Here we mean, for instance, if the child does not look at me, I will verbally and physically shake and move their heads to a direction for 3 seconds. A study proves that eye contact can be achieved without negative outcomes as long as specific prompts and consequences are given.

Eye contact with your child with Autism can be established without the use of negative reinforcers.

-------Cook, J. L., et al, 2017

HOW:

When your children do not respond to what you are saying nor doing, stay calm and do not blame them for it. They just do not have the awareness because they do not know. What we should do is teach and explain how and why it is important to look at someone while talking instead of shaking or shouting in their face.

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Hope all of you have enjoyed today's topic, to learn more, here is a really helpful article from Autism Partnership on practical ways to practice eye contact with your child.

Check it out and feel free to drop a message and tell me what you think. Have you tried any of the methods? Are there other tricks that you can think of?

Have a great day and don't forget to smile!

Joyce Lau