Please help. How can I make him more comfortable around me?

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Hey everyone,
I am a 17 year old neurotypical girl, who senior in high school. Even though I don't have aspergers one of my best friends does, and she's one of the most amazing people I’ve ever had the pleasure of knowing and I love her a lot! However, she is not the person I need some advice on...i may ramble a little, sorry...it must be nerves....

About a year ago, the son of one of my favorite teachers who I am very close with started substitute teaching at my school. Since he is the son of this teacher i was very interested in getting to know him. He was a long term sub for my French class for a few months and I still see him around from time to time. He is 24, very nice, funny, fun, smart, and all around a good person (ok I’ll admit it, I have a bit of a crush on him...but that's not the point). It wasn't until a few months into classes with him that I learned from a mutual friend that he has aspergers, which made sense as he had similar behaviors as my friend. However, no one else knows but me. the kids in my class make fun of him a lot which of course makes me very upset(even before I knew), and no matter how many times I try to make them stop they don't listen to me. I feel powerless (that's a whole other story) but I want him to know that I'm not like that and I want to be his friend, not at all because I feel sorry for him, but because I love and respect him as a person. Anyway, I'd usually be the first to finish up with my work so I'd go over and have some friendly talks with him which I think at first made him a little uncomfortable, but over time it got a little easier.

I guess my question to all of you is: is there anything I can do to make him more comfortable around me and open up to me a little bit more? I really like him, he's a great person, and I just want to get to know him better. I hope I don't come off sounding...idk... the last thing I want to do is offend anyone; I just thought that any advice that any of you can give me would be very helpful. Cause I don't know how he would feel or say and i don't want to do or say anything to make him feel bad or uncomfortable around me. Plus I'm good friends with him dad. I hope to build a friendship with him (nothing more even though I wouldn’t mind that as I see him around a lot and I want him to know he has a friend in the class and someone who he can trust and won’t judge him. I guess it's cause he's a few years older that i'm kinda uncertain of what to say. Again, I hope my question doesn’t offend anyone, I just didn’t know who else to ask.
Any advice, storys, feelings, or positive thoughts would be greatly appreciated. Thank you =)

Usually, finding out about his interests and talking about them sincerely with him, with honest interest, will be enough to make him feel more comfortable.

I would tread carefully, to be honest.

He might misinterpret you talking to him as an advance, especially if you aren't very good at hiding that you think he's attractive. Which is understandable. If he's trying to get his foot in the door as a permanent teacher, then the last thing that he can afford to do is be caught "flirting" with a student. He may not know what is considered to be an "acceptable" amount of interaction between him and the students and is taking a conservative approach.

A lot of it depends on what kind of teaching environments he's been in before. If he's more used to environments where talking casually with students was a no-no, then it's going to be harder for him to open up.

Maybe you could try talking to him a bit less often. He might be a little surprised that someone is talking to him all of a sudden, and it might be a little overwhelming (which, again, might lead to suspicion).

I second Katie's comments. As a Aspie man if I were in his situation at the age of 24 I would find it extremely confusing and difficult to deal with. And because of the absurdly prudish society we live in, an innocent friendship between a 17 year old and and 24 year old might be misunderstood.

If he is anything like I was at that age, the kind attentions of a woman could lead him to obsessing over you and behaving badly. This could easily hurt his career. It can be fun to flirt with someone, but an Aspie is likely to have a hard time knowing the boundaries. He could easily mis-interpret your motives and this could send him on a wild ride of conflicting emotions.

One way of looking at it is that in some ways, at 17, you probably are the more mature person at dealing with emotional relationships. With that in mind, you have the responsibility to behave in a manner that helps him not run into harm's way.

I encourage you to remain friendly but to treat him as you might any other friend of your parent's age. Keeping a bit of distance will probably make him more comfortable. He will be more comfortable if he is fairly certain of how he is supposed to behave around you. If you flirt with him or even just act very friendly with him he is likely to end up in a bad state of confusion. The major problem that people with AS have is having a great deal of trouble interpreting social cues. If you keep the cues simple and obvious, if you don't send him any signals that could be mis-interpreted, he is more likely to be comfortable.

I hope this helps,

Lars