You need to instill a habit of establishing eye contact with your child before moving into the four core skills.

Where do I start? Part two

As you will see in the four following tips on teaching core skills, the first step in three out of four of the key skills is, “Look at the person.”  You need to instill a habit of establishing eye contact with your child before moving into the four core skills.  If your young child has not yet created a habit of looking you in the eyes while talking, here are a few suggestions:

• Begin by looking for small opportunities to catch your child’s eye and then simply smile and/or say something that your child would love to hear like, “You have such pretty eyes,” or “I like it when you look in my eyes.”
• Starting with brief glances at first is great.  You may need to get used to eye contact yourself.
• Try having a staring contest.  Making a game and being playful creates positive associations with eye contact and makes later teaching easier.  Plus you can teach the cue, “Sweetie, look at my eyes.”
• Once you have a few successes and a level of comfort, start asking your child to look at you when you have something important, hopefully positive, to tell him or her.  It might sound like this, “Sarah, I want you to look at mommy in the eyes. (Pause) Good job.  You did a good job on the potty today.”  A warm hand on the arm or shoulder would be a nice affirmation too.

For children and adults, open and honest communication begins with eye contact.  I believe that being intentional about teaching eye contact will make the challenge of parent-as-teacher more rewarding.

Next: Part three -  Following instructions

Source: www.professionalparenting.org

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