Do you ever wonder why your autistic kid, for whatever reason, refuses to look you in the eye? Like, whenever you’re trying to have a serious conversation or talk to them, they just—they’ll do their own thing. They’ll doodle, they’ll play with their hands, but they will never make direct eye contact. Well, here’s why, at least in my experience, why I don’t like eye contact. Basically, what it’s like is a lot of animals, where direct eye contact can almost be considered like a sign of aggression. For me, I feel like direct eye contact makes me feel really anxious, really nervous. Like, don’t get me wrong, if you’re trying to have a serious conversation, I can understand that, but direct eye contact makes it all the more—how should I put it?—threatening, scary, you know? And I can feel like a lot of autistic kids don’t like direct eye contact because of feelings like that, where it makes us feel threatened or exposed or something like that. Anyway, just wanted to clarify that, yeah, there’s a reason that autistics don’t like looking people directly in the eye, especially in serious conversations.