Best buddies club

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At my school there is a club called best buddies. They basically make "special" students and "normal" students hang out together. It's a wonderful concept, but I have one issue with it. I notice that the "normal" students always treat the "special" students differently. They treat them like they're younger than they actually are. I can understand this, but it makes me paranoid. When I talk to the "normal" students in best buddies I'm often scared that they think I'm "special". I feel like they treat me differently, but I don't know if that's because of my paranoia or not. I've only been to that club a few times because I was bored during lunch break.

I haven't been there so I can't really evaluate how they're speaking to members, but I'd hate to "befriend" someone who spoke to me as if I couldn't really understand. Seems like it would just reinforce feelings of inferiority to be expected to be appreciative of something like that, unless someone really needed simpler speech and interaction.

There is a best buddies club at my college. My only interaction with them was when I stopped by their booth at the student involvement fair at the start of the semester. Those 2 min was enough for me. The way they said "buddies" made me feel that if I told them that I was interested in joining the club as a "buddy" and not as one of the "normal" students they would start talking to me like I was 3. So I don't think you are being paranoid.

I was really disappointed that this was the case because I would really have loved to have been paired with an older NT student to help me adjust and fit in to college. I really would have loved that. But in fact, only one of the buddies is actually a student at my college and the rest work on campus, for example in the cafeteria.

It seems to be based on a good concept like you said. A lot of programs for "special" people seem to have the same mentality, even if it is unconscious. I have had professionals come up to me and talk to me like I could only understand anything of what they were saying if they spoke with very basic words. I really hope that these attitudes will change and I am hopeful that they will sometime in the future.

I would and continue to have no interest programs like that, I think it would be very condescending and I have better things to do then hang out with people who think they are somehow better then me or feel sorry for me. Intentions may be good however I want and accept no less then to be an equal in any friend or social interaction for the exception of workplaces, there you get paid to work and interact beneath other people. Maybe I am wrong to think this way.

I have Asperger's. My social skills abandon me now and then, but I don't need as much help as people think I need. Its weird when people behave differently toward me in an attempt to make me feel comfortable. For example, it really isn't necessary to kneel down when you talk to me so that your presence is psychologically less threatening; I know a li'l psychology too and I know why you're doing it, so I'm only going to get MORE nervous, not less, if you attempt to interact with me in a "calming" manner.

Lol, I had a professor last semester who did this too. She treated me normally right up until I told her I have AS, then the next time we spoke, she bent down so she was at eye level with me, smiled really wide and laughed indulgently at anything I said that was mildly funny. She also raised the pitch of her voice a little, like she was talking to a little kid. She liked invading my personal space as well, so I had to keep backing up... and then she'd follow me! She also had this weird habit of angling her head so that she was within my line of sight, like she was trying to force eye-contact, because I never looked at her while I was talking. I've had other professors do that too, some quite blatantly, as if they're trying to point out nonverbally that they're weirded out by my staring at the back wall while talking to them.

I can rather imagine a faculty meeting wherein someone from Psych Services came in and did a PowerPoint presentation on "Communicating Effectively with ASD Students". Each of the items you mention seems a likely bullet-point on a teaching slide. Oy weh.