Help With Improving Eye Contact

My son has always struggled with eye contact. For four years, therapists have worked with him on it, and stressed how important eye contact is. I remember his first goal was to “maintain eye contact for three seconds”. His eye contact has improved since his first goal, but is still a struggle. The only tip I have been given in the past is to say, “Look at my eyes”, and to get down on eye level to make it easier for him. So, we have done this. I am always saying, “Look at my eyes” or telling him to look at other people’s eyes when they are talking to him. This does help, but it is still difficult.

Tonight after a winter break from horse therapy, we got to go to the stable for riding lessons. His goal today was eye focus. The therapist was trying to get him to look up and focus on a point. My son was struggling with this until she pulled out visuals. She put a picture in each corner of the arena. As he rode towards a particular corner, she told him to look at a picture, and he did it! When she narrowed his focus to a picture, he could focus.

After seeing that this worked, her thought was to play focus games to get him to look up at a particular thing. She said while riding in a car, you can play the alphabet game where he has to find things that start with different alphabet letters; she also encouraged “I spy”. She thinks that once we get him to look up and focus on different objects that his eye contact will improve. It makes sense and is worth trying. I hope it helps! I am always up for trying new things.