By: Miss Khadija Abbasi
Why is Eye-contact important?
It is often said that the eyes are a door to the human soul. And in therapy, this can be empirically tested as children who are more cooperative in maintaining eye contact are more accessible to the therapist. Maintaining eye contact helps children express their emotions and convey their needs. Eye contact is one of the most fundamental parts of the conversation. Without having eye contact you cannot impart what you are trying to communicate nor can you perceive a certain message as it was intended if you have not maintained eye contact with the person conversing with you.
Eye contact is a nonverbal and automatic behavior. Having children with autism or ADHD helps you know that the children are attentively concentrating on what you are doing or saying. So, eye contact is an important indicator to ensure the attention and concentration of children with developmental delays. Making and maintaining eye contact also helps you recognize and perceive social cues and gestural prompts during any social or personal interactions.
Why is Eye-contact hard for autistic children?
For many people with autism, making eye contact can be very difficult. As a parent, a therapist, or anyone who is trying to be a part of an active conversation with autistic children, it can be challenging to know how to approach the situation when you are working with a child with autism who doesn’t make eye contact like a child with normal developmental milestones.
This is particularly true because, for some children with autism, making eye contact with others can cause extreme distress and can be tremendously uncomfortable for them. It can also be a case where the child simply prefers interacting with others in ways that don’t require them to make eye contact as it can be tiresome for them. They might prefer looking at something else in their environment that attracts them or can be mentally soothing while communicating with the other person. The act of making eye contact is extremely stressful for some people affected by autism.
Why we should not force Eye contact?
Some children and adults suffering from ASD (Autism Spectrum Disorder) can learn to make eye contact to some degree but forcing them or trying to pressure them into doing so is likely not the best way to go about helping them to improve their ability and willingness to make eye contact with others. As a matter of fact, forcing any behavior on such children might deteriorate their progress toward the expected goal. Looking you in the eye might feel overwhelming to these children. So, forcing or demanding them to do so will only increase their stress and will make it more likely for them to get further dysregulated than before.
Having to process sensory information through eye contact during conversations where hearing is the necessary processing can bring sensory overload to children with autism. Having to process both audio and visual stimuli simultaneously can be sensory overload for children with autism or ADHD. Maintaining eye contact can be tiring, exhausting, challenging, and even painful for some children. So, we should never force eye contact rather we can use some strategies to help children make and maintain eye contact during their therapy.
Strategies to maintain eye contact.
Developing eye contact and then maintaining it with autistic children is an immensely important task. To do this effectively, the following methods can be followed;
During play:
During swings or other play activities, encourage eye contact with the children. They are more likely to maintain eye contact during that time as it is a comfortable place for them. At that time, they are not under undue stress and will be playful with you. You can use this to your advantage by encouraging eye contact at that time. 
Using verbal prompts:
Give verbal prompts to the children. “Look at me” “Look me in the eyes”. You can sing poems or rhymes to attract the children while keeping firmness in your voice. It is quite possible that once attracted by your voice, the children will concentrate on what you are saying and might also look toward the source of the sound enabling them to make eye contact.
Giving reinforcer:
Reinforce the children as soon as they make eye contact. Getting reinforcement is a technique of operational conditioning that helps encourage the desired behavior and increases the likelihood of that action being repeated. Be sure that the reinforcements are vigilant so that only the desired behavior is reinforced and reinforced effectively and the reinforcement is distinct for the children helping them understand what behavior is being appreciated.
Visual supports:
Use visual supports to encourage the children to make eye contact. Use flashcards or the children’s favorite toys and hold them close to your face. Make sure the child looks at your eyes while doing activities. As it is established already that making eye contact can be distressing and exhausting for children, so introducing attractive and visually calming flashcards can help attract children and maintain eye contact.
Pausing after the child’s requests:
Whenever the child is requesting something, do not respond or give him the thing he wants immediately unless and until he makes eye contact. Pause the children and ask them something. Do not respond immediately. When the child does not get the immediate gratification of his demand, he will eventually look at you to inquire why there was a pause and for the fulfillment of their desire.
Fixing the child’s point of view:
Fix the child’s point of view by placing both hands around his eyes. This will block their peripheral vision and they will be urged to look directly at you. This way their vision will not wanderaway and their concentration will stay congregated on you.
Getting down to the child’s level:
Sit right in front of the child and make sure you are leveling with him so that making eye contact isn’t a tiresome job for the child. Making eye contact is already a tiresome task for these children and making them put in more effort by looking farther away can produce immense unwanted distress.
Sanitization:
Remove attentional distractions from the session room so that the children are focused on you. This way the only center of attention of the child will be you.Children with autism or ADHD have a short attention span and can easily get distracted by extraneous stimuli in plain sight. By removing irrelevant stimuli, you can make sure that the child is entirely focused on you or that he is not getting distracted by something in their surroundings.
