Eye Contact

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I was taking care of my infant nephew this weekend. He's about three months old and he's very aware of his surroundings. While playing with him I noticed every time he made eye contact, I would sustain it. Not only would I sustain eye contact I began to seek it out. I would makes noises until he looked back at my eyes.

I truly hate making eye contact. It makes me mentally and physically uncomfortable. But I felt none of the familiar malaise with my nephew. I talked to a friend about it and she suggested that because my nephew is only an infant he's not yet achieved a certain level of awareness. As far as I can tell I simply don't feel threatened when I look in his eyes.

Has anyone else experienced this or have any thoughts?

Well done! Way to go you!
I think it is great that you could sustain eye contact with him. I would see it as a start. Use him as practice with eye contact and then when you feel comfortable try making eye contact with others.
Start off small like try to make eye contact with young family members then older children in your family and keep going till you are comfortable making eye contact with adults in your family.

I find eye contact with babies is MUCH easier than with older kids and adults. They're innocent still, unassuming, non-threatening.

And that they find me looking at them amusing. :'D

What a great discovery. Sounds like you are off to a good start.

It is possible to train yourself to maintain typical American style eye contact and over time it becomes more natural.

I still have to think about eye contact and proper body language (both expressing and interpreting) when having a conversation. Even though I'm conscious of it, it is no longer awkward feeling.

I also find eye contact with babies to be easy...like with animals. I'm still not too good with the rest of the world though...usually fake it.

Yes! LOL What must be going on in their little baby minds?

When I last made eye contact with a very young child, it started crying and displayed a quite obvious fear of me for the next 2-3 years. I find animals are much better with eye contract than with humans in my own experiences, but that's solely due to my differences.

That's sad. Little babies have always liked looking at me. I have no idea why. And I've never had trouble making eye contact with an animal either. Except for cats. Cats hate me for some reason and always try to eat my face.

I can usually make eye contact with my 7 year old sister and my 9 year old brother without feeling too bad but only for short amounts of time. My 13 year old brother makes me feel uncomfortable however. Making eye contact with family is easier than strangers though. I can barely hold eye contact with my roommate of two years and we're really close.

I know this is a stupid question, but I hope there is an NT out there that can answer it. Whey is eye contact so important? I can fake it pretty well, but I really don't understand the point of it.

That's a question I havn't come upon an answer and just have no clue. It seems there are a few persons that I have no trouble with reasonable eyecontact. And animals I have no problems interacting and I get along with them reasonably well.

I use to help babysit my cousin on occasion and now he is in junior college. And the last time I saw this cousin and his grandad I just could not hardly look him in the face much less have good eyecontact. He's a good kid and I'm happy he does well academically and likes church. But I cannot tell you what an absolute frustrated idiot I felt like. It makes no sense that anxiety appears out of nowhere for different people and others I have descent eyecontact when speaking to them

I recently read a book on non-verbal communication that helped me identify this more clearly. One thing is that a true smile is separated from a fake smile by the face around the eye region. A fake smile stops at the cheeks, a true smile involves muscles around the eye region too.

Also, when a person is very interested in something the pupils dilate. The non-verbal signal the most people receive is that dilated pupils=attractive. Apparently that is part of the romantic appeal of the classic dinner over candlelight.

The Japanese people beleive that looking into a persons eyes is a very personal thing and they generally avoid direct eye contact except with people they are very close to. In their culture (and many others) the eyes are considered the window to the soul. They probably are right.