Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Twice Exceptional Improving conversational skills

That's a great point, notnafnaf, and one DD will be able to understand, as she is very attuned to issues of different ability.


Ummmm...no!


Also not ringing a bell!

Clearly my brain does not work like this! I can relate to sometimes feeling overwhelmed by the intimacy of eye contact, but the part where it makes you lose focus is totally foreign to me. If I am not looking at you, it probably means I am not paying attention. This means I "read" DD's not looking at me as not paying attention. I have learned that it does not have to mean that, but it's an example of a disconnect we face as child and parent. Parenting is tough sometimes!

Definitely, and ironically it is worse when the other person is a really, really attentive listener and the signals are in cadence but inherently out of phase. Faster conch passing helps that. In a group speaking situation, scanning past "that" person can be effective.

I'm a maximum eye contact kind of person, myself, so I've had to learn to release other people from eye contact so this doesn't happen to them.

It's also why you just shouldn't try to engage me in a deep conversation while I am driving. Especially if you are in the car with me, and wish to arrive at your destination intact and on time.

BTW, there are other cultures (some of the North American First Nations come to mind) where full eye contact with a speaker is considered quite rude, especially if there is a status difference between the listener and the speaker. A disproportionate number of Bureau of Indian Affairs students were punished for this back in the day.

Conversations in the car definitely came up when DD and I discussed this! She was like "But YOU CAN'T look at me in the car! We don't have any eye contact in the car!" Like--HA! Set and match, mom! And I thought--huh, we do have good conversations in the car, don't we?

I find the car very good for having those discussions DS doesn't want to have. He doesn't have to look at me in the eye and my attention is distracted. I think he figured I might get less upset or mad. That and there isn't much else to do but talk with mom or look out the window, since he gets terribly car sick. He really reveals more of his innermost feelings during talks in the car. I already have something I want to talk with him about that I was planing on bringing up during the drive to his music lesson this afternoon. Maybe I should re-think this plan to teach him to drive, since I'll miss all that conversation time.

I can think of another very obvious example.

She needs to know how this appears to others-- even if SHE can listen just fine without looking, others will feel slighted or annoyed, and that's why this is worth addressing.

I'd start by watching TV or movies with her and occasionally calling her attention to gaze, especially how people look when they're listening attentively, listening disrespectfully, or not listening.

Oh yes--I've definitely talked with her about how it appears *to others*, the feelings people feel when she uses this body language, and how other people do not feel as she does about this. However, as her parent, I think it is okay for me not to always insist on eye contact in intense conversations. It's a lot to ask of her, it seems. We're working on cueing it in "easy" discussions first. She actually asked me to use a cue word to remind her when talking to other people, so she is somewhat on board with being reminded.

Watching for it in TV is a good idea, although she doesn't watch muhc TV/movies (not of much interest to her).

My D is very similar, and is in college now. She has improved some with age, but I sure wish we had known this might be improved with Speech Therapy.

She also has trouble discerning other people's emotions, and I have wondered if this is because she doesn't/can't look carefully enough at their faces during a conversation. She undertook learning to read emotions better on her own (and learning to express them more like everyone else does) while in middle school by watching YouTube videos. Her own solution, I didn't hear about it until a few years later.

DS7 is the same way except that the poor eye contact mainly shows up when HE is the one talking. He'll be rambling on about something while he's looking around the room. I watched him once during a speech eval and his eye contact became much more normal as the session went on and he felt more comfortable with the speech therapist. So even though he does not appear shy or anxious, I do think there is something like that going on, leading to reduced eye contact until he gets to feel comfortable with someone. But even with me, eye contact is not always great. He might look at me periodically to see if I'm listing but otherwise look around the room while he's talking. I'm not sure what it means either, or how to get the eye contact to improve, but just wanted to say he is the same and has DCD, some characteristics of ASD and ADHD. We do have a social skills group in his IEP and they are working on things like this, as well as in speech therapy in school even though he scores average to above average on speech assessments they are keeping him in speech because of the conversational back and forth--he tends to ramble whether people are interested or not, and he doesn't ask pertinent questions to show interest in other people, for instance he might ask someone "What did you do over the weekend?" and if they answer, he doesn't keep the conversation going, he'll move onto talking about minecraft or something else that interests him. Probably some of it is age-typical for a 7 year old though.