My whole life, people thought it was funny that sometimes I would stare over their shoulder if they asked me a theoretical question, or maybe something that I had to think back in history about...but then when I had my first child with autism it starte to make sense. The reason I look away is that I needed more processing power. That's what my daughter is doing too. And maybe your son. For Hope, I realized that when there is no other competing need for "brain power" she doesn't have an issue looking directly in my eyes. So we started practicing staring contests (only a few seconds in the beginning) when it was quiet and there were no other distractions (not even me telling her to look into my eyes). I would lay down an position her face to mine and press her forehead to mine. After a while when she got good at it. I tried it standing up. And then when i notice she was trying to do it with other people, I realized she did want to look at them. So I told her, if you are having trouble looking them in the eyes, just stare at the end of their nose. They won't know. And tell you what. It works. And she loves that she can look at people. Hope that helps in some small way. (And having your child laying on you looking directly into your eyes helps connect your souls....which is good for everyone!)

I can't speak for all autistic people, but for me, eye contact is distracting and seems unnecessary. If I look in someone's eyes while I'm talking, I forget what I'm saying, get flustered, agitated and it leads to a very bad day. Also, I don't hear with my eyes. My synesthesia isn't that severe :) When people try to force eye contact with me, I feel like they're not interested in what I need, but rather, what they need, and after a while, I get resentful.

As a child, it caused a lot of problems (one psychologist interpreted my lack of eye contact as Oppositional Defiant Disorder!), but as an adult, I've learned to understand the importance of eye contact to other people, so I try to oblige. I never meant to make other people feel uncomfortable or like I didn't want a connection with them. I feel connected to someone just by being in the same room, so the concept of making eye contact to feel a connection is rather alien--and overwhelming!--to me.

My son is similar to me, so I don't press the issue. If I need to make sure he's listening to me, I'll ask him to look at my mouth, where the words are coming out. He was being taught at school to make eye contact (sometimes too aggressively for my liking) and one day, when I asked him to look at my mouth, he said, "Eyes?" And I said, "Eye contact is overrated. Words come out of the mouth, not the eyes." He smiled really big and has been much more attentive ever since. And, yes, we make eye contact quite frequently, although we can't talk much while doing so.

when I have something important I want my son to see or understand and I need his full attention (ie eye contact) I kneel down beside him and point to things i am discussing and try to use his angle of view rather than my own right next to him. This does many things for us, emphasizes the importance for him and for me, calms his anxiety because I slow down and touch gently. I think it also models empathy at the same time, I do this because I believe all the details of measure are coming in too fast for him to process or scrambled because of sensory disorders. He is not good at self regulation yet so I need to do it for him. If you don't pay attention to his emotional state and have a strategy non of it gets through to him.

It has been explained to me that a large portion of communication occurs in the non-verbal facial expression. Think of it as 1000+ tiny signals your face puts out as you speak or communicate. Now apply that to a person who has autism who can be "overloaded" with such intense input. Some individuals with autism have also expressed that the face (due to all of this input) becomes a disturbing blur which leads them to look away.

One of the issues is that these individuals may have defects in the G alpha proteins involved in their vision.
They are actually attempting to look at you when they are looking away. Multiple optical issues have been observed in these children and adults, some centrally mediated, others peripherally influenced.