Just how naive is an aspie supposed to be?

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I went to an aspie support group over the summer, and the facilitator was standing in front of the room, educating us about things that most people recognize as common knowledge, but we just don't seem to get. But most of the crap was incredibly obvious- like don't hand strangers your wallet or give out your social security number if somebody asks. I didn't say anything, but I was already familiar with WP, and nobody here sounds that dumb. It would take something a little more extreme than AS to give a stranger your wallet. Any insight? Was the facilitator catering to the worse case scenario? There was some other stuff that I made me wanna ask the members if they actually found this useful, but of course I didn't.

I am naive about somethings with people, such as certain social interactions, but I really don't think anyone with aspergers
is stupid enough to had over their wallet to a complete stranger, I have to wonder where that facilitator got her information.

I've got a history of taking rides with strangers; for some reason, as an adult, I've thought that rule didn't apply to me?

I ended up in a stranger's hotel room and I had to call my roommate and his friend to come rescue me . . . yes, he offered me a ride to the grocery, and after I got in, he said he had to make a slight detour and it progressed from there . . . but I thought his intentions were pure (as they normally seem to be) yet my roommates thought I was an idiot.

Apparently, I should have known earlier, or even before I got into the car. Now that I'm aware, it seems like "common sense" and I've turned downed rides from seemingly innocent strangers. But I never knew before and frequently took offered rides.

Was the header NT? He could have under estimated our naivety. Aspies are known to be trusting and just because we are honest, we tend to automatically assume someone else will be too. I've done that before but I will never ever give out my card number or social security number or even lend money to people or my stuff. I even dared to not give anyone my Game Boy when I was in high school and then expect them to give me the money for it. They had to have the money up front before I give it to them. My school counselor got on my back about it because he was expecting me to say I would give it to a middle school kid if he wanted to buy it from me and I kept saying he has to have the money first before i give it. Then he said if I gave my game Boy to that kid, I might never see him again. I knew that.

I think it varies. If someone asked to look at my wallet years ago I may have let them, but these days I would not. Someone could ask to look at your wallet then when you show it to them they could snatch it and run off with it.
My eldest sister tricked me into licking soap. My sister closest to my age gave me dog treats and said they were chocolates. People pulled that kind of crap on me all the time when I was a little kid, so I became mistrusting.
Some people could be adults and still fall for that stuff, and some others may think the stuff was obvious. You shouldn't really call someone stupid for having a lack of common sense, they could just be more severely affect people with AS than you.

Kids did the same to me

But then I got smart and started to get cynical. I quit taking things that were eatable that weren't in a wrapper or anything. I even got a girl suspended from school because she tried to have me take a drug and she claimed it was candy. I didn't trust her because of what has happened at my old school so I showed it to a staff to see if she knew what it was. It turned out it was a drug and the girl was suspended. It was unintentional of course. I didn't even know she got suspended until she told me when I was 16. She brought it up in class asking me if I remember that incident and I said I did and she said "I got expelled for a week." At least she didn't hold it against me.

Some are that naive, or even more so, whereas some aren't much different to normal folk (usually through learning it the hard way though).

The facilitator sounds like they were just making sure everyone got the most out of the group by mentioning everything from the not so obvious to the really, really obvious. It was like this when I went to an AS support group as well. It was kind of like the facilitator was talking to us like we were stupid, but I accepted that some people may not know the really, really obvious things and took what I needed from the discussion. Every person with AS is different, we are not all as naive as one another, but I remember it was only a couple of years ago that I learned not to discuss my bank account details with people (& sometimes I still forget) so I can't judge anyone else.

I think that there are two competing features of Asperger's - on the one hand most people with Asperger's can be very analytical to the point of seeming paranoid, but on the other hand there is a strong belief in rules and correctness. I find it really hard to accept that people break rules and social conventions, to the point that I don't see it when it happens. In that respect I wouldn't trust my wallet to my best friend, but a bank employee could probably rob me.

Just to add, a lot of "help" that people with an ASD need, especially those who're higher functioning, is basic life skills and how to survive. It may seem odd that adults don't know these things, but when you realize that those with an ASD don't innately "get it" by looking at all of the people around them as they're cut off from this influence and way of learning, you start to understand.

The social stuff, like how to make friends and all, is far, far down on the list of importance (plus it's a lot harder too).

Like most anything else, it is a question of degree.

Having AS means you tend to not get things that NTs grasp. We take things in a literal/straightforward fashion.

However, having AS doesn't mean you are totally impaired in this fashion. Like NTs we learn from getting burned by bad experiences, but not always as fast, and we don't always attribute a lesson from one incident to similar (but not identical) situations.

So, if you are severely afflicted with AS, you might find those lessons useful. If you're mildly afflicted, you would likely find them blatantly obvious.

The way that I am, really depends on the situation that I'm in.

This is why i don't get anything out of group sessions, presentations or senimars. They have to cover everybody there and I'm generally far to clever/knowlegable etc to find anything of use in the bulk of it, then i find it impossible to switch myself on to the parts that are useful.

As others have mentioned i guess that's the issue here, *someone* may benefit from any single one of those points.

I'm having a very hard time at the moment with people explaining things to me, most of the time i get annoyed that they're treating me like i'm stupid or patronising me and i show that reaction or sigh and hurry them along, but the other few times i pick up something they considered completely obvious that i'd just totally not understood.

The things i miss seem to be so random that i have to sit and be annoyed by 100 things just to learn the 1 or 2 things i didn't understand.

I could easily imagine doing that. Among my other ultra-naive moments:

* Letting a stranger come into my apartment and walk around the entire apartment inspecting it room by room in a lot of detail.

* Sleeping in the same bed with a guy multiple times and figuring since I didn't mean anything sexual then he didn't either

* Allowing two total strangers to, as an adult, walk up to me, claim to be my friends, touch me, talk about sex, and tell me they had a toy just like mine in a car. And not realize until hours later that I had been in danger.

Etc.

The problem is half that I really am that naive, and half that I spend so much energy just trying to keep up with any given situation that I have little space left in my brain to question it or to apply previous knowledge.

I think that there are two competing features of Asperger's - on the one hand most people with Asperger's can be very analytical to the point of seeming paranoid, but on the other hand there is a strong belief in rules and correctness. I find it really hard to accept that people break rules and social conventions, to the point that I don't see it when it happens. In that respect I wouldn't trust my wallet to my best friend, but a bank employee could probably rob me.

The main ways I'm naive is when it comes to believing really outlandish things that people say to me-- no matter how far-fetched or crazily ridiculous it sounds. For example, a guy told me a few years ago that there were boys in the forest playing with wood nymphs (????) that makes no sense lol, but I actually did somewhat believe that it was actually true. (I realize now that the guy was probably schizophrenic or something.) But when it comes to things like giving someone my wallet, I would never do something like that. As a child I may have (if I had had a wallet lol), but that would have been more out of fear from an adult telling me to than anything else.