Although she is only 8, I thinks some of my daughter's classmates think she is "cool." I think they think this because she is gifted artistically and truly has her own sense of style (I design and make many of her clothes because she doesn't really find "off the rack" stuff appealing...it's "boring"). I think the fact that she does not see herself as different helps, too, because she is very confident in her eccentricities. Her view is that she has school smarts, but lacks social smarts, and other people have social smarts, but lack school smarts. So she is absolutely OK with lacking social smarts because she views herself as making up for it in other areas. I do think her "coolness" may have peaked in 2nd grade, though. I think the social discrepancies may be getting more noticable and I don't know how much longer her "coolness" will last, before she is just seen as weird. Somehow, though, I think she will be mostly fine with that.
I kid that I graduated with (back in the 80's) clearly has AS by today's standards--never even heard of it back then--and while he was not "popular," he was considered "cool" in his own way. Again, I think largely because he was very confident in his eccentricities. He was so sure of himself (honestly, looking back, in a socially clueless way), that you kind of just went along with him. He was truly brilliant, sometimes in a mad-sciency sort of way, and that also helped because he had a certain sense of mystery about him. Like you always wondered what was going on in his head. He was also "championed" by the star athlete in the school, which I also think helped a great deal. They had been friends since childhood, and I think if anyone ever had a thought of picking on the Aspie, it was quickly dismissed because doing so would have brought the wrath of the star quarterback, who was a genuinely likeable guy but who would have stood up for his friend without a second thought.
Now that I think of it, I think that also helps...having one "popular" person on your side. My son has a boy in his class who is "popular" and for some reason he likes my son. They aren't "friends" per se, but the boy high fives him and things like that in the hallway and if they see each other at the mall or some other place, he makes it a point to come over and talk to him, and I think it discourages less popular kids (like the middle of the pack ones) from picking on him.
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Mom to 2 exceptional atypical kids
Long BAP lineage