Do people with other severe disabilities have more friends?

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I have a friend with Down Syndrome (male), and he has way more friends than i do. Can count the number of my friends on one hand (and it doesn't always last), but he has about 10 friends, all of them NT. They take him to outings, movies. I am extremely happy for him, that in spite of his disabilities he has a very strong social support network.

I've accompanied him to various events (enjoy his happy, fun-loving nature) - unfortunately his NT friends don't seem to take to me. When he meets acquaintances, people give him eye-contact, but i notice when i am there, people avoid giving eye-contact....sometimes they don't even call me by name which really hurts.

I would like to know his secret for being able to socialize so well....i figure i could learn more from him than an NT...

So what do you think, do people with other kinds of disabilities enjoy more friendships than Aspies?

IMO, people with other disabilities often enjoy more friendships than Aspies.

My MS friend has way more friends, but I find him extremely sycophantic and two faced.

But I guess most NT's seem that way to me

I don't know, probably because I don't bother about having "moar" friends. I prefer quality to quantity.

I have come across many highly sociable Down's people though and I suspect this level of sociability is a tendency for them. Locally there is a guy with Down's who travels back and forward by bus and is always going up to young females there. He is able to interact and talk quite merrily with them most of the time.

Around the time I first joined here, I recall anbuend posting that "people with Down's syndrome can run social circles around [autistic people]." So, these anecdotes are not surprising.

People with Down Syndrome certainly should have more friends. You know why? Because they are caring, loving people. At least the ones I have met are, and apparently, according to you, your friend is loving and caring as well. People with AS have their own problems, most of them related to social interaction, so it is expected for people with AS to have problems making friends, because it requires social interaction. I find very nice that you have a friend with DS. Instead of looking at the glass half empty, think of it as half full. Do you know how many people with AS do not have even one friend? And yes, I think it is a good idea to ask your friend for help. Maybe he could teach you one or two thinks and help you improve your social life. Good luck!

I don't know, I have a friend who has moderate Autism and is the same age as me, but even he has more friends than I do, of his age, and a lot of them are NTs. I have a small amount of friends but they are all at different ages and different races and met at random places and I don't hang out in a group, I just see my friends one at a time because most of them don't know eachother.

I must admit, I do have a friend who has Soto's Syndrome, and she only has about 3 friends, where as I do have more friends than that. Also when I'm out with her like in restaurants, the waitress usually makes more eye contact with me and I do all the talking really. This only happens when I am with this friend though - when I'm with NTs I get ignored.

There's an ironic effect that comes out when people have visible vs. invisible disabilities. The more obvious the disability, the less people expect you to act like a typical person. There's more acceptance of those with obvious disabilities as they are. Not to say that they don't have problems of their own--being patronized and underestimated, for one thing--but they do tend to have people accept them as atypical, rather than assume they are typical and just being rude.

I've always suffered from people not understanding me and people feeling that I'm not quite right in the head. As i looked like one of them why should I be different I was just choosing to act that way or too lazy to bother. I decided it freaks people out that I try to approximate normality but are a little 'off' so I gave them the scientist 'penguin' that has trouble relating to people as he's got a genius level IQ (part act/part true/ part what I believed) am a scientist, do have a genius level IQ and still can't get normal right but I can use rapid processing to mitigate some of my traits. This works ok as long as I don't get overloaded and freak out/ shut down as people don't like it (Have lost friends as they freaked because of it).

Living in London and socialising with the banking industry I've met two diagnosed sociopaths (and several I suspect), there wired differently as well but can read NT social cues extremely well and approximate a correct response (its odd, NT friend who works with them can't see there acting but I did even before I knew (edit: just been reminded that they did disturb him on a primal level) could it be the fact that NT's take the negative psychopath/sociopath connotations and relate them to us.

Downs etc have physical indicators so people understand there different and cut them some slack.

I don't get it - in some threads I am convinced that there are physical differences in Autistics, but in this thread it indicates that Autistics don't have any physical differences and so that's why we don't get a second chance. Have we got physical differences or not?

I've worked with children with all sorts of disabilities, from moderate ADHD to Downs and LFA. Other young people are drawn to children with Downs, because they are often friendly and they are obviously disabled and in need of friendship. With LFA, there's a barrier, because the kids can be stimming and shut you out, but generally they will be treated with sympathy. If you can teach a kid with low or medium functioning autism some basic social skills then their eccentricities will be overlooked to a large degree and they'll be treated in much the same way as a kid with Downs. With high functioning kids (be that with autism or ADHD or whatever), there isn't as much sympathy, and they'll be held to similar standards as NTs for the most part.

I would say, however, that most children with severe disabilities (be that Downs or autism- ADHD or OCD less so) don't really have many true friends. A lot of people will be nice to them, but that might be just to get a kick out of feeling superior, or just superficial niceness. I don't think very obviously disabled children are any better at making true friends than higher functioning ASD kids.

(I use "children" and "kids" because I am in no position to comment on the adult world)