Forced to 'help' an Aspie I can't get along with.

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Correction: She actually has Autism. (I just couldn't think of the other nickname, if there ever was any.)

As usual, the new school year has brought new additions along with it back in September. In highschool, we call them freshmen.
And of course, some freshmen became students in the same special ed class as me. The class I'm in is normally for kids with high-functioning ASDs, but very few of us either have Autism or Aspergers. (Either that, or it's just not noticeable.)

Entering the period I was in was this 14 year old girl, she seemed nice, cute, and like she could use some adjusting to the place. I even thought we would make great friends. Boy was I wrong!

We didn't get to see each other for the first two weeks of school, since the special ed department needed to organize some classes and groups. That's when it was decided that we would be in the same speech and language group, since teachers thought me having high-functioning Aspergers and her having Autism would be a good fit for helping her develop better social skills.

During the first group meeting, I began to notice something about her... Since we usually start the year off by getting to know each other, I decided to try and make conversation with her. We'll just call her 'C' here.
Me: So how do you like highschool so far?
C: It's okay...
Me: Umm... Do you take any electives?
C: I take cooking.
Me: Oh, are you good at cooking?
C: No.
Me: Do you have any talents? I take art electives because I'm an artist and I've been drawing since I was 5.
C: I'm not good at anything.
Me: There must be something you're good at... Well do you have any idea of what you want to do when you grow up?
C: No.
Me: Okay... That's... No need to rush... (Jesus, you're giving me nothing to work off of! And ask me stuff too.)

So the first meeting with C didn't go too well. And apparently the teacher thought that I was the one who needed more help. Anyway, I noticed a few more things about her that just bugged me for some reason.

*Casual group meeting when we hear some kid scream*
Me: Hope they're okay.
Teacher: Oh, that kid is in another program here. He can't communicate very well and he tends to scream when he's frustrated.
Me: I just thought someone fell or something...
C: Can I have a picture of the boy who screams?
Me:

Needless to say, she tends to have a similar curiosity towards any other kid in special ed. It's as if their business is her own. Every now and then she even looks at other kids weekly schedules, since the ones in our class are all hung in one place. It's a little creepy.

She also tends to ask really inappropriate or irrelevant(?) questions. Once she asked our teacher if she made out with anyone on New Years, and another time she spend the entire day asking every single person saw if she should believe in herself, if asked why she said she wanted to feel loved.

What really irks me about her though, is her superiority complex. She seems to think she's better than everyone,that she has to be a straight-A student, and tends to throw fits about every B she gets. She also yelled out in class once "But I don't wanna be like *insert my name*!" All because she got one C in a math class that she's been getting all As in. She probably said this because I had a few weeks where I wasn't doing well in any of my classes, and got mostly Ds (which I quickly recovered from.) Needless to say, that was rude of her. I'll admit that I have had opinions like that about other people, but I never say them out loud.
Not to mention that midterms are coming up and she's rejecting our teacher's offers to help her prepare, as if she's taken midterms many times before, and she's repeating all of the teachers directions to me as if I don't know anything about them. (It turns out these will be her first midterms. As a Junior, these are my third, plus I have taken finals before.)

So maybe it's just me getting irritated and feeling degraded by the way she's been treating me, but if anyone else has any opinions, I'd be open to hearing them.

yes, she's annoying. she's also socially quite awkward and could use the help. try to think of her as doing the best she can.

Please don't let the teachers push you to be 'friends,' or a helper, or maybe even a small group member with this girl. It's not fair to you, nor would it be fair to her either. Maybe just something very straightforward of the sort, 'I don't think we're going to hit it off.' And don't let them push you off this.

And that does seem really way out and messed up that she asks, 'Can I have a picture of the boy who screams?'

Swimmer is correct, you can choose to opt out of helping this girl. As long as you remain her helper, remember, you're doing it because you haven't taken the trouble to opt out.

Your attitude toward this girl is very similar to the attitude that many posters here at WP accuse NTs of exhibiting toward aspies in general.

As long as you remain her helper, please consider talking to her about what she says that's offensive to you instead of talking about her. That will require more effort; it's more giving.

As to her asking for a picture of the boy who screams, that makes a lot of sense to me, in a primitive sort of way. If I were exposed to disturbing screams and was told that it's just one of the other students I would want to be able to identify him. In other words, she is being told that when this particular boy is vocalizing in a disturbing way, don't worry; he's harmless. I want to know which screaming boy is harmless, because in almost all other instances screaming is a signal of horror.

I always hated going to social skills groups because the kids were so infatuated with their own interests and hobbies. Some of them would even arrogantly show how they feel their interests and hobbies are superior to mine. I guess it is far to say that I find it difficult to get along with other Aspies because of that. Also, I do not enjoy it when my adults try to pair me up with some random "special needs" person in the school and engage me in conversation with them. I don't feel like I can relate to them at all because they strongly lack social skills, more so than me. It is very awkward! I think they do it because they are trying to make me feel lonely.

Disclaimer: Hi all, I’m not trying to judge who is right and who isn’t because I don’t have the right to do so. I’m just speaking my mind.

Yup, true. Many many people (especially teachers and authors who publish books about the autism spectrum) say that the best way for Aspies to master social skills is to pair them up with NTs around the same age at them because NTs are supposedly good at grasping social skills. (However, my own experiences have proven to me that many NTs aren’t really good at teaching social skills.) Maybe your teacher appointed you as the mentor because she thought that despite being an Aspie, you have demonstrated good understanding of social skills during your day-to-day interactions. There is a saying that goes something like “Learn from the best.”

If I sound as though I’m discouraging you from initiating conversations, I apologize in advance because my intention isn’t to discourage you but to examine why sometimes “icebreakers” don’t work. I suspect that one reason why my interactions with people around me tend to be filled with tension is that some “icebreakers” that work well on many other people don’t work well on me. Let me give you some examples based on your interaction with C…
If people ask me whether I like a place or not, my first reaction is to say something vague but polite such as “It’s okay…” or “It’s nice.” I don’t want to scare people away by talking non-stop about why I like or dislike a particular place especially if I’m not very familiar with those people. If people are interested in hearing more, I subconsciously expect them to ask me more questions to probe. You did the right thing when you asked C about electives.
Um, I’m not very sure how your school works, but based on my own experiences, sometimes people study certain courses not because they are good at these courses and/or they are passionate about these courses, but because they have no other choice—only these courses still have vacancies available.
I understand that you have been trying your best to show friendliness towards C, but argh, how should I verbalize this? When most people talk about talents, they mean talents related to sports, music or art. But if you ever stumble upon some of my extremely old posts on WP, you will realize that I tend to fumble when doing anything related to sports, music or art. I suspect that I might have dyspraxia. I always feel as though the rest of my body has been disobeying signals from my brain. Thus, if people ever ask me about talents, I genuinely mean what I say when I reply that I have no talent. By the way, you need to take C’s cultural background into consideration too. As an Asian, I dare say that in many Asian societies, kids are taught the notion that “empty vessels make the loudest noise”, meaning that if you are truly talented, you aren’t supposed to discuss talents. Maybe “What are your hobbies?” is a better “icebreaker” than “What are your talents?”, but let me warn you that I tend to clam up whenever people ask me about hobbies because “reading, spending time online and window shopping” don’t sound very impressive as compared to hobbies related to sports, music or art.
Many people know what they want to be in the future, but for people like me who suffer from on-and-off bouts of depression, we have a tendency to live day by day, so don’t please don’t interpret “I have no idea what I want to do when I grow up.” as an attempt to troll you. Even NTs sometimes say stuff similar to this, especially if they don’t want you to laugh about their ambitions. (For example, a guy who isn’t very strong might dream of representing his country in weightlifting in the Olympic Games one day.)

I’m very sure that nearly every person whom I know in real life is NT. I often overhear NTs gossiping about people. Let’s say there are 3 NTs, A, B and C. A complains to B that C has always been playing loud heavy metal music in his dorm until 2 or 3 am in the morning. B doesn’t know who C is, so B will ask A something like, “Can you tell me what C looks like?” Yes, I admit that B is being such a busybody when he asks such a question, but I learnt in school before that we people have the tendency to assign labels to other people because labels somehow make this chaotic world seems less chaotic to us. If B knows what C looks like, if he ever meets C in the future, he will be able to subconsciously apply the label of “the guy who always plays loud heavy metal music in his dorm until 2 or 3 am in the morning” to C. I’m trying to say that even NTs often ask the question “Can you tell me what so-and-so looks like?” when gossiping about people, so even though this question might be distasteful, please don’t let it disturb you.

Whenever I walk past a noticeboard, I tend to stop so as to read all the notices on the noticeboard out of curiosity. I don’t understand why anyone will perceive this habit as offensive. It’s a habit that harms nobody.

I notice that when my brain is too slow to filter my thoughts before I say them aloud, people tend to rebuke me for asking them inappropriate questions. Maybe C asked those questions because her brain didn’t filter her thoughts quickly enough. I suspect that a more plausible explanation (that always applies to myself) is that when an Aspie asks anything, the Aspie thinks that whatever that he or she asks is well-intentioned and therefore non-offensive, so other people are at fault when other people start groaning and moaning that the Aspie has offended them.

I think that belittling people isn’t an exclusively Aspie trait because in the past, some of my NT classmates made snide remarks about my grades such as “Why are you so stupid? Maybe bashing your head against a pillar might make you smarter.”

I'm sorry, but I think this girl sounds delightful. I loved that she wanted a picture of the boy who was screaming. I would have been tempted to draw her one and then draw something really funny. Also that she asked the teacher if she made out with anyone on New Years! hahaha My brother has HFA and he had some hilarious ideas that influenced me a lot growing up. Sometimes he would get the giggles about the couch or a stick, for example. You just have learn to appreciate someone's different thoughts.

Yes, people can be irritating, and autistic people can ask some pretty lol questions/say some off the wall things, but I think it's best to try to see the good things in it. Wouldn't it be worse if she were an NT girl that was saying really ordinary irritating things and you had to tolerate her? At least this girl is creative!

Maybe you should just lessen your exposure to her when she's getting to be too much for you and then try to see the humor in it when you have to be around her. And you can just tell her very clearly and kindly if she steps over the line for you.

From what I read, it seems like you have different tastes in things, I don't see anything wrong with that. Maybe because I too am autistic. I used to ask inappropriate questions in class, or I would be the one that burst out laughing of what my teacher said, to which my teacher would tell me: no not that in that way <name>.

I see what the teacher is trying to do: she sees you as a role model for this girl as she is really struggling with her social skills. She wants her to look up to you and learn from you. Yes, her behaviors may be strange and annoying at times, but that's because she struggles with things that you don't struggle with. It's important to be compassionate towards her, because you likely know how it feels to be the odd one out.

If you feel like her behaviors are too much for you, you can always ask the teacher for suggestions on how to explain social situations to her or how to assist her in the best way possible...or if you feel you're not ready for something like this, you can always opt out altogether.

I remember once when I was in third grade, I blatantly stated that a substitute smelled like my grandmother.

Have you explained that you feel hurt by the way she treats you (to her and to the teacher)?