It got me thinking .....

[TeDo]

Lovelyboy started a thread about Context Blindness and that got me thinking. When difficult child 1 was getting speech therapy to work on feeling words, putting a name to his feelings, and expressing his feelings appropriately, she started by having him identify feelings from pictures. Each picture had the face of a person with a slightly exaggerated facial expression. The people in the pictures were of varying nationalities. He quit doing them when he got a couple wrong but the more I think about it, it tells ME how much more he's going to struggle with this type of thing. He said a very Oriental-looking woman was angry because her eyes were half closed even though she had a frown on her face showing sadness. He also said an African-American man was worried because of his deep-set eyes even though he had a huge smile on his face showing happiness. difficult child 1 not only has the context blindness (VERY obvious to me) but he also misreads facial features as facial expressions. It is mostly about the eyes from what I noticed with this approach but throw that in with his lack of seeing the context, this kid is doomed.

On the positive side, by teaching in the moment, he has learned two new feeling words to go along with the feelings he's having. That's two less feelings he "acts out".

 

[TerryJ2]

Very interesting observations. Whoever makes those picture books could use a variety of faces to show the same expression. I've seen a few but they're pretty simple.

My son has lived with-me forever, but still, he gets my expressions confused. One of the reasons he was so mad at me when I picked him up from camp on Sat. was because he said I was smiling and I enjoyed punishing him. Actually, I was grimacing because there were people all around. Nothing I said could convince him that I was not smiling, and I finally shoved my lower lip over my upper lip and squished my lips together just to change my expression. I had to think of something, since there was no mirror around.

 

[TeDo]

Yea, we run into that alot. difficult child 1 is getting better at reading my expressions and his brothers but even those are not always accurate. It is just so hard to teach this to him.

 

[TerryJ2]

So, I was sitting on the couch about 10 min ago with-husband and difficult child, and made the same face I'd made when I picked up difficult child at camp. "Does this look like a smile?" I asked husband. "No," he said, it looks like you're frustrated.
"Does this look like a smile?" I asked difficult child.
"Yes."
"No it doesn't," responded husband.
I tried to engage difficult child to look at different expressions but he's in a bad mood today. Maybe tomorrow.