So... How important is eye contact and should I be pushing to get it?

[Ineedmorepatience]

This has been bugging me for a while. It doesn't worry me that I don't get much eye contact with Dd3 [11] because I can tell when she is listening to me usually!

However I have started to notice how she actively avoids eye contact when meeting people she doesnt know well. To the point that she will face in the opposite direction. She will answer questions in short sentences or with yes or no answers but she rarely looks in the direction of the speaker.

This can I suppose make her look rude which she isnt. I can sympathise with her because I also find eye contact really hard but as an adult I have learned that most people do like it.

So, do you think I should be trying to encourage her to give eye contact when talking to people even if she doesnt know them well or should I just carry on?? It is part of her Asd after all.

What do you think?

Thanks in advance, have to go out in a while but will be back later

Yeah, I do things like that too polter . When I am with Dd3 it is easy to check that she is remembering the social niceties I have tried so hard to teach her but I do worry that people will find her rude when I am not there to prompt her.

I suppose I worry more about it than she does but she is growing up fast and spending more time away from me. People are quick to judge arent they.

I'm the other side of this. I taught DD2 eye contact by rote from the age of 4. Literally - 'you look at the lady, you smile, you can look away again.'

I'd say it's actually caused us problems:

-The first thing profs say is 'she has some nice eye contact.'
-She feels pressure to be 'polite' and give eye contact when she's feeling uncomfortable (something she's only told me last month because it didn't occur to me to actually ask until then )
-She can be seeming to pay attention because she's looking at someone but still be in her own world.

Her eye contact, interestingly, has vastly deteriorated since she's revealed her stress at school and she's sucking her hand constantly. DD1's carer went away for 2 weeks holiday and said that the difference was quite marked. She tried to converse with DD2 and her eyes were anywhere but the carer.

Well the only person who didnt notice how bad Dd3's eye contact was was the HT/Senco at her old school. She even wrote on the SALT questionairre that eye contact was fine at school On the SALT report it clearly stated that eye contact was fleeting at best!!

I worry that if I try to force her her anxiety levels will go back through the roof and Tbh I am not even sure how I would go about it.

She wont engage with social stories although I could maybe try a comic strip, which she will engage with on her terms if she is in the right mood