Getting Kids with ADHD to Make More Eye Contact

[Anonymous]

How do you make your children look at people's faces and their reactions and expressions more? My child doesn't make enough eye contact and loses out on a wealth of information because of it. So many of his social problems are a result of not making enough eye contact.

[Anonymous]

How old is your child?

[Anonymous]

Take him to social skills group therapy. They work on issues like this and then reinforce, reinforce, reinforce at home.

[Anonymous]

He's 7 years old.

[Anonymous]

I don't know how well this would work in your older child, but an ABA type of approach has worked great for my 2 yr old. This is commonly used in kids on the spectrum, but I've been told that it works on anyone, really. For my 2 yr old, it involves rewarding the behavior with lots of praise (eg. "Nice looking at mommy!"), and holding desired objects to my face and rewarding with the desired object only when DD looks at me. After 1.5 months of ABA, I've seen an amazing increase in my DD's eye contact.

[Anonymous]

Interesting. Is lack of contact an ADHD thing? My 6 year old is horrible at eye contact. She has some other "symptoms" of ADHD. Hmmm.

[Anonymous]

Usually the eye contact thing happens with autism spectrum disorders. I guess maybe it can happen with shyness too, but I have never read about that particular issue with ADHD. I agree ABA type approach might work and social skills group.

[Anonymous]

OP here. Yes, lack of eye contact can certainly be with ADHD-only children and SPD-only children too. I just attended a lecture given by Cathi Cohen and she said it's common with ADHD kids. ADHD kids can be so distracted with their surrounding that their eyes don't calmly settle on people who are speaking to them. SPD kids can be so into whatever they're doing that they don't want to look away from it to make consistent eye contact. So with them it could be a rigidity/control issue. SPD kids can also be so overwhelmed with their busy environment that they're overstimulated with the visual stimuli that they don't focus on people. But ADHD and SPD don't have the other core symptoms of ASD children.

[Anonymous]

20:00 again...thanks OP. I learned something new!

[Anonymous]

Thanks for posting this, OP. So many assume kids who can not make eye or sustain eye contact must be 'on the spectrum'. It is also associated with weak eye muscle development, in that some kids with disorders such as hypotonia or cerebral palsy just physically cannot hold eye contact for long--as is my ds's case. Kids like this know that it is socially appropriate to hold eye contact, but physically cannot.

I, unfortunately, have had to teach medical professionals about this as well : (

[Anonymous]

OP, I'd work on improving listening skills. Some kids don't look at faces because they find it distracting when they're trying to listen to what the person is saying. They can't watch the face and listen at the same time, so they look away to listen better. When listening improves, eye contact improves.

This was true for my son, at least. As his receptive language skills improved, so did his eye contact.

If you don't have a speech therapist to work on receptive language, you can buy matierials from Linguisystems to work on it yourself.

We used this at home: http://www.linguisystems.com/products/product/display?itemid=10350

We made the exercises all into a game. My kids thought it was fun, especially the 3 step instruction exercises.

[Anonymous]

Oh, and after my son started having better eye contact, we worked on interpreting facial expressions and body language.

[Anonymous]

Im not sure if they are ADHD also, but we seem to have a strange connection. Its like they look at me and say " I know exactly what you are going thru" It freaks me out sometimes too. <a href="http://www.add-adhd-teen-help.com/">more details</a> here!

[Anonymous]

I was diagnosed of having an adhd when 6. new advice is similar to that in the diagnostic manual for diagnosing adult mental health disorders. see more details!

[Anonymous]

There are social skill groups for kids with ADD/ADHD as well as ASD kids. You may also want to talk with an OT for suggestions.

I saw this app featured on 60 Minutes. It's for ASD kids and your DS may be too old for it any way:
http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/look-in-my-eyes-1-restaurant/id349835339?mt=8