chasin' a dream

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I have a niece who is 11. She is diagnosed with ADD and Asperger's. She often complains about having no friends. Time and time again, two different girls in her neighborhood offer her play and she turns them down. On the other hand, my son who is also 11 and aspie will cling for dear life to any peer who even looks at him for more than four seconds. He's not picky at all. I observed these two girls while visiting my brother and his wife. These girls were really nice and a whole lot of fun. My niece will constantly try to throw herself at established cliques and gets rejected over and over again. I'm trying to figure her out along with her parents. It seems to me that she wants to belong to what she perceives as the "in" crowd BUT they won't have her. She stands out like a sore thumb. She CLEARLY doesn't belong even in adult eyes. She proudly announces that they are her friends. They insult her and treat her badly. I tell her to befriend the other two who obviously like her and start her own clique. She just snears at me as if they're not good enough. Is this child in love with the "concept" of friendship and not the actual friends? I'm starting to think that social skills training in certain instances doesn't work because the autism is causing the child to be unrealistic about actual friendship. Maybe they can't handle the closeness so they seek a cold group to reject them. In other words, "Look, I'm having friends like you want me too! But I won't let those who really care close enough to me because I really don't want friends." I'm boggled by my niece's behavior. Is it that autistics don't want friends but because it'a a majority-ruled NT world, they need them to survive in it? or to throw up a smoke screen to go unnoticed and to get people off their back?
As people get older, they're forced to interact with other people not because of want but because of need. It seems like the NT's want and need others where Atypicals just need but don't necessarily want. That's how Atypicals get labeled "Users". What do you guys think??

Honestly, this sounds like a typical case of wanting to be a 'popular' girl. Its even possible that encouragement to make friends has lead her to believe she must become an insider.

As a guy, I'm really no expert on teen girl drama, but my understanding is that certain friends are normally considered more desirable. Perhaps she needs to learn that the value of people is not measured in popularity?

This sounds so much like my 13 y/o dd. She has a processing disorder. My son has Aspergers. DD always tries to seemingly "butt in" to others conversations or another circle of kids/adults. There are times where it is so obvious that she didn't belong and wasn't invited to the conversation but she walks up and inserts herself. This is especially true when adults are having a private conversation. She walks up and stands next to us. I have to explained to her (every time as if it's the first time) that it is considered rude to include yourself in a conversation where she wasn't invited. She'll apologize and leave but the next day, it's the same.

I see the same when she tries to hang out with the "popular" kids. They seem to ignore her but she goes up to them and inserts herself every single time. But when I ask her to invite this girl or that girl, she declines. I have never "pushed" her to have a ton of friends. I know my kids are comfortable with just 1 or 2 really good friends and I'm ok with that. But not sure where this need to be inserted in all conversations is coming from.

I suspect that our girls are stuck between their disability and being a teen or in your case pre-teen. It's tough. I think my dd likes the idea of being with a group of friends and mainly the "popular" ones because she recognizes they get treated "differently". Yet I feel she really, underneath it all, just doesn't really care to have that many close friends.

It sounds like she is keenly aware of the way the girls in her age group have sorted themselves, but unaware of what it takes to join the group she is aware sits at top. I think it's a combination of girl drama and having AS. Girls are mean at that age, and your niece has seen or heard enough to know what group she does not want to be in. Just ... she hasn't developed the confidence or self-awareness to choose her own group, regardless of what she sees and hears.

Since I have a 10 year old stuck in the middle of all that drama, I feel like the best thing to do is help the girls with their self-esteem, to understand that their life will not be set by who they were friends with in middle school, and that throwing away decent friendships in the hopes of gaining entry into the "club" is simply counter-productive. Sure, she can observe how the popular girls do all sorts of mean things, but if she thinks she can get away with any of it, she is mistaken. If she thinks that ignoring the girls that do want to be her friends will keep her from being picked on or ridiculed, she is mistaken. If she wants to reject those potential friendships because she has nothing in common with those girls (entirely possible, AS kids don't seem to want to bother with people who don't share their specific interests) that is one thing, but if she is doing it because she wants to be in the other group, she is making a mistake. You'll have to understand her thinking better to figure out which it is.