Teaching Your Child to Read Facial Expressions.

Children with Autism often have a hard time figuring out what others are thinking and feeling and they struggle with reading facial expressions. There are a number of reasons, one simply being that individuals on the spectrum often don’t look at faces. When they look at faces, they may not understand the emotions that are connected with each expression.

There are a lot of ways to teach your child to read facial expressions, but before we start, it is very important to consider where to begin your instructions. Some children with autism will be able to read basic expressions, such as happy and sad, but may have difficulty recognizing expressions that display different feelings or more subtle emotions.

Informally assessing your child, by asking him or her to identify facial expressions in pictures and video, may be helpful in determining what your child already knows and where instructions needs to begin.

Breaking Down the Task

If your child could learn to read facial expressions by immersion, they’d already be doing it. So begin first with the basic, then progressively teach more and more complex skills, always building on what has been mastered.

• First, your child learns to recognize and discriminate the facial expressions for the basic emotions: happy, sad, angry, scared. At this point the emphasis is only recognizing the expressions.

• Next understanding the emotions behind the basic facial expression is taught. What does it mean to feel happy, or sad, or angry, or scared? What types of events causes someone to feel angry and how is a person likely to act when he or she is angry. 

• Once your child can recognize basic expressions and understands the emotions behind them, they are ready to begin exploring other emotions.

As your child gains a greater understanding of facial expressions their social understanding and communication skills will improve. We need to keep in mind that for many children with autism, learning to read facial expressions can be like learning a foreign language. We don’t expect to land in a foreign country and immediately begin understanding all that is said. We learn it a word or a phrase at a time, and with lots of repetition and practice. The task of learning facial expressions needs to be broken down and taught one expression at a time, with ample opportunities to integrate what’s been learned.

Written By 

Jerusha Jaffery

Consultant, EAP Malaysia