Social Thoughts
"Use good eye contact." "You need to look at me."
Therapists, parents, teachers - we have all said these words or heard someone say these words to our children. They respond by picking their head up or turning the head toward the speaker but their eyes don't always move with the head. The head may be facing the speaker but the eyes are off somewhere else. What exactly are we asking them to do when we tell them to 'make good eye contact'.
At s2s we teach the students to 'think with their eyes'. We connect what they are seeing with what they should be thinking about. We want them to understand that when people look at someone or something they also have a thought about that person or object. This means that they should direct their eyes toward the speaker or follow the speaker's eye gaze to see what they are looking at - sharing attention. It does not mean staring at the person.
For example, imagine you are sitting in class and the door opens. Everyone looks up to see who it is. As they look they notice if it's a male or a female, an adult or a student. Is it someone they know? What are they wearing? They wonder why the person is there? Did someone do something wrong? Is someone in trouble?
All of this happens in a split second. Most of the time we aren't even aware that these thoughts are running through our minds. For some of our students this is not an intuitive process. They need to learn where to direct the eyes and what they should be noticing. They need to learn what to be thinking about as they direct their eye gaze and observe what is happening. And they need to learn how they should be reacting to what they have observed.
Thinking with your eyes is the key to reading and understanding non-verbal cues - body language and facial expression. You need to be looking at and thinking about the people around you to fully understand the meaning of what they are saying.
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