Activity 1

To initialise eye contact , show the child some very fancy toy or a colorful toy placing it close to your eye and remove it . There could be a half a sec eye contcat that you receive from the child . Reinforcee this behavior . Keep doing this with different objects that the child likes . It could also be an edible , or a song .

Give visual cues to the child to prompt the child to give you an eye contact . it can be two fingers of yours pointing to your eyes that can act as a visual cue to the child.

keep reinforcing the positive and desired behavior even if it lasts for just a second .

Why is maintaining eye contact important?

During a conversation eye contact plays a very important role . Its helps in understanding the meaning of expressions , it helps in understanding if the other person is paying due attention to what you are saying , so on and so forth .... Eye contact plays a very important role in the social context .

Some children find it difficult in maintaining eye contact ( especially in children with ASD)be it even for few seconds . There could be various contributing factors to this . But from what i have read many claim that it is due to the number of sensory inputs that goes in while maintaining eye contact with the other person . Processing of these sensory inputs become too much for the child to cope and hence they prefer not maintaining eye contact ...

Some even feel that maintaining eye contact is not all that important as far as the learning and performance of the child is not hindered and hence it should not be forced on to the child .. But there are people who feel that maintaining eye contact cannot be completely ruled out ...

Why i feel that maintaining eye contact is important is :
1. Helps the child improve a social behavior
2. Helps the child in understanding the meaning of various expressions
3. Helps the other person to understand whether the child is interested in what you are saying so that he/she can change the style of presentation.

so in the next post i will be dealing with some activities that can be used in improving the eye contact of the child ....

Intro:

Hi all ,

This blog will contain activities that can be used by parents, teachers, spl eds and other therapists to make the teaching /learning experience more enjoyable and practical. All are welcome to share more activities so that everyone benefits out of this sharing .