Autism and eye contact

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It just came to me that professionals (I mean neurotypical doctors) helping children with autism should not ask them to keep eye contact with them as we (Aspies) avoid eye contact to focus on communication, paradoxically no eye contact means full focus on given task.
Not sure if thats a known fact but I remember watching some documentary on Autism where a therapist kept making eyes to eyes hand movement between him and his autistic patient. Had to be quite hard for the kid. That's why people with AS should be considered better specialist to work directly with Autistic kids.
That's my first post here, so hello everyone.

Welcome to Wrong Planet!
Yes
Someone working with autistic children should understand and respect the way their brains process information.

I also agree with you, 100%.

Welcome to WP.

Yeah, as of today I can make eye-contact perfectly, in the sense that my eyes look at the other person's eyes, I can feel they're trying to convey something but it's completely meaningless to me, it's just a learned skill, I give myself the instruction "eyes up" and that's all, completely pointless, the information NTs exchange via eye contact is just not there, I get all the info I need without looking, if the other person is not at ease, well, let me say they seem even less at ease when I stare at them.

I struggle to make eye contact, i find it more difficult to look at a person close up... and what bugs me is when people think im not listening when i'am, i just for some reason find that strange....
I dont mind so much when i like the person... but then i end up staring at them
I still don't understand why i find that difficult?

I can keep the general "look at face" part of eye contact, but i find that if i am talking, i have to either look away or blur my vision to respond so as not to break it. My parents used the whole, "Look at me when im talking to you," bit when i was growing up. Heh, for a while if something had my attention and my parents wanted to talk to me, i would turn my head without moving my eyes from what i was focusing on . I found that i can process some facial expressions, but i require at least 30 sec to look over and register it . . . and conversations do NOT give you a 30 sec window unless that person is talking, but even then you are concentrating on what theyre saying, not how they look. Hell of a situation either way. ><

I have no problems with eye contact.

When I was really little I had reoccurring dreams that my mom would tell me to never look into the eyes of someone on TV or else the world would end or something else really horrible would happen, and I always woke up because I accidentally glanced into their eyes and I went into a trace and then felt myself dying.

I've found I can make eye contact with close friends and family, I can look into ONE of the other person's eyes if I've known them for a while but are still on a professional basis with them (i.e. work and school), and if I don't know them at all...then it gets tricky.

The only people I can look at in they eyes and feel comfortable is my siblings and my closest friend. Anyone else and it gets tricky. I do practice when I'm having conversations but not to read people, like someone earlier in the thread said, it's just a learned skill, and nothing to do with reading emotions. The emotions I do read are not from the eyes and are usually from what I've had to learn myself, it's not a natural skill it's just years of reading about body language and experience that made me know what I know now.
And replying to the OP, I think autistic kids should be learned eye contact and the importance of it as it will improve their communaication skills as they get older, true you shouldn't force them but do atleast teach them. I didn't know about eye contact until I was about 10/11 so I wouldn't have had the chance before then to learn.

Ooh, I hate the whole eye contact thing! I never know how long to hold it before someone thinks I'm staring. It makes me uncomfortable to meet anyone's eyes. I sometimes wonder if people think I'm lying because I avoid looking then in the eye. I tend to stare at things slightly over someone's shoulder instead, which of course makes people wonder what I am looking at, and that makes them nervous. I've never been sure WHY eye contact was so hard for me -- that it's because I'm processing makes so much sense!

As another poster said, even when I do remember to make eye contact, it means nothing. I don't get any information or sense of connection from it. NTs exchange a lot through body language and facial expression and none of it makes any sense to me. It just makes me feel awkward and I guess I pass that on somehow (darned if I know what I do, though). NTs don't react positively to that.

When look at someone walking down the street while on the bus etc I start to think about them, trying to read them (maybe to fit in, understand) and when I do that I contemplate and cut off very quickly, so maybe it just it's frustrating/uncomfortable to us because our brains process thoughts differently? In this case forcing to keeping an eye contact can lead to confusion and frustration.
Why forcing us could possibly help? It would but only according to therapeutic theories written within the last 50 years, because there was no research on that before.
I don't mind when someone isn't looking at me, at least then I can relax then and focus on the conversation by starring at this mathematically simple, not distracting me, corner of the table.
Anyway,

I agree that the therapist shouldn't be trying to force autistic kids to use eye contact - like others have said, it's not that easy. I also agree that neurotypicals don't always make the best therapists for autistic people, in the same way as white people don't always make the best advocates for black rights. The poor dears just don't understand how it feels from the inside.

I'm quite happy to work on my eye-contact reluctance, but it has to be at my own pace. Granted I've made only a little progress in the last 57 years, but it would have probably been even worse if somebody had been standing over me telling me to gaze into people's eyes all the time.

How many people even know when to do eye contact, or for how long? From what I can gather, you only "need" to do it all the time when somebody's talking to you. When you're taling to them, it's enough just to glance at them as you begin, then look away as you continue to speak, looking back at them only occasionally to check how they might be feeling about what you're saying, and finally look at them at the end, to transfer the speaker's role to them. And as they're likely to be looking away while they're speaking, they probably won't notice if you're not really looking at them for their whole speaking time.

Aspies usually have a lot of trouble working out what other people's expressions mean anyway, so without that it would seem pretty pointless trying to ape a neurotypical with their gazing behaviour. We'd be better off getting some training in recognising expressions and body language first. Nor can these things be easily controlled anyway - like somebody once said, subliminal communication is mostly unconscious, so if we try to modify it, we'll probably just do something strange with our feet while we're concentrating on keeping our eyes looking "normal."

It might be possible to do some kind of training exercises with subjects who know that it's a training thing, and if a few basic skills could be acquired through frequent and regular repetition, until they're second nature, we might then be able to transfer those skills into real life. But forcing things that we haven't learned well is just likely to make matters worse.

Another way through might be, rather than bothering too much with eye contact as such, to use other ways of communication to convey the same information. My wife used to get quite annoyed with me for looking aloof when she was talking to me, but once she realised that I was actually listening, she began to feel a lot better about it. You can use your replies to prove you've heard them, you can even email them to explain in more detail your thoughts about what they were saying. The main thing is to show them that you aren't ignoring them.....people are often very touchy about being ignored, so if you want to keep them sweet, listen to them and demonstrate that you've listened, through whatever channels you have available to you.

Looking at somebody else's eyes is so distracting! I miss half of what they're saying.

I tend to look at their mouths (this partly compensates for my bad auditory processing) or past their heads.

You know, OP, if you are teaching autistic kids something, it might make the most sense to teach them to fake eye contact by looking near the person's head, but not at their eyes. This, IMO, maximizes communication between them and the NT, because the NT can see their faces that way, without them getting distracted by eye contact. (For some, even faking eye contact can be too distracting... and I wouldn't work on this until you've got speech or some other kind of communication pinned down. It's kind of peripheral to actual communication.)

Some autistics don't have too much trouble with eye contact. For those that do, forcing it can cause problems. Doesn't always, but definitely can.