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Hello everyone,
I am Frank Miles , My daughter is 18, she has not had a friend since 1st grade. I am divorced and she lives with me. I think that I am her best friend - only friend, but I would like to think that she will have a chance to have friendships above and beyond family. We live in a very small town filled with an abundance of over achievers who do not want to associate with my daughter or myself.

And here I was thinking Canadians were more polite than us Yankees!

Is your daughter able to drive? If so, then she would have more ability to make friends in neighboring towns that are not so snooty.

The short answer is yes your daughter can make friends regardless of her limitations.

However it may take more time. The best success, i find anyways, is to find people on the same level as her.

After i was diagnosed i lost all the friends i had at the time (except one life long one), not because of my diagnoses but because we were starting highschool and they were socially developing and i was not, they became tired of loud inappropriate behaviour and shunned me. At first i didnt understand but my dad explained to me that i needed to learn social skills.

I learned some very basic social rules such as standing arms length away from a person, no biting, no touching without consent, talk quietly, swear less, and do NOT talk about sonic if they did not ask. It was hard at first but i got the hang of it.

I decided then to seek out other people on the spectrum because i never met another autistic person at my level before. I found a adolescent camp and by pure coincidence i met a classmate from middle school who was picked on as much as i was. We became close friends and he connected me with his friends. Now i have a while group of friends on my level of social abilities.

So find some other people around your daughters age who can understand her social limitations but also will not be too high of a level for her.

If someone is more socially skilled it is harder to spend time with them because you need to use your social skills more often and constantly which becomes very draining and makes the social experience less enjoyable.

Also consider your daughters interests and desires. If she doesn't want to socialize so be it, but also let her find friends on her own, simply give her the tools to acquire friendship on her own terms.

I forgot to mention that the adolescent camp was for teens with HFA