Hard to make eye contact / rarely looks at things together / doesn't imitate

Joint attention (looking at something together) and imitation are not things you can force into being. The trick is to reverse the order—have the grown-up imitate your child's movements and sounds first, and build up experiences of "looking together" by joining in on what interests them. The feeling that "my actions get through to the other person" becomes the foundation for imitation and back-and-forth exchanges.