<p>^^^
I have had only compassion for the OP’s D and have been imagining my own D’s sadness and frustration if she had a similar situation . . . BUT I have also from the beginning of this thread wondered why OP’s D doesn’t even try any of the strategies suggested here for claiming the space as hers, also, by having friends in, setting a schedule of room use, or whatever.</p>
<p>^^^
There are so many types of people in this world and that includes people like Ellsie. </p>
<p>TO THE OP–I have read through this post and the post about the young lady with the “over the top mom” and I am, even at my age, learning something new. I remember the cruelness that my son encountered when he was a little boy because of medication. He put on alot of weight and his face became so round that his eyes were merely little slits. The worst cruelty was from adults because one expects that adults should know better…they don’t. I have never forgotten the feeling of wanting to cry everytime someone stared at my son or said something so incredibly stupid to him, me, or one of my kids. My son developed a thick skin and took the approach of giving the scientific explanation as to his condition and how the medications caused the interesting reacation they were seeing. I remember that he was only 9 years old the first time he did this…the insulting adult got a scientific lesson about his disease that left her mouth hanging open. It was brilliant!!
My son even experienced a “well meaning principal” that did not want son to take excellerated classes in the middle school because it would be too taxing on him. My son, completely on his own addressed the issue with the principal. I received a phone call later that day from the principal telling me that my son taught him something very important that day about how he perceived situations and that my son would certainly be admitted to all the excellerated classes. </p>
<p>I know that this has nothing to do with the OPs daughter but it is about the feelings of another human being and the judgements we put on those around us. It has taken me a while to forgive the many strangers that my son came across but to this day I can’t even look at one neighbor up the street without wanting to slap her face. </p>
<p>So today I am thinking of Elsie and her parents and I am hoping that they are better at forgiving the unkindness of people. Life is way too short folks.</p>
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<p>I don’t see where anyone has suggested that the OP’s D not do so. HOW she “correct” her living situation was the point of the thread, I thought, and the overwhelming consensus seems to be by moving, not by finding a way to make Elsie move.</p>
<p>There are many many many other students on campus with whom the D can interact; she’s not being held hostage by Elsie. She is free to talk, conspire, party, enjoy, visit with, etc. lots of other people; she is not lacking for opportunities to mingle with others. Elsie is ONE person of many at the school, not the sole source of possible friendship.</p>
<p>" OP’s D doesn’t even try any of the strategies suggested here for claiming the space as hers, also, by having friends in, setting a schedule of room use, or whatever."</p>
<p>I can understand her not wanting friends over when her roommate is basically sitting there talking to herself and not interacting with anyone. The D and her friends probably would feel weird to be talking to each other while someone else is in the room loudly relating to herself or ignoring them. They’d probably feel like either they were disturbing her or being rude to her by socializing while she was not involved with them. </p>
<p>One of my freshman year friends had a roommate who was odd-- not as odd as the OP’s D’s roommate, but still odd. All that the roommate did when in the room was study. She would speak, but didn’t make small talk. She also didn’t go to social events, clubs, etc.</p>
<p>It wasn’t fun to be in that room if one was looking for a hangout, so my friend and her friends socialized elsewhere. Her roommate was, at best, a wet blanket.</p>
<p>“So today I am thinking of Elsie and her parents and I am hoping that they are better at forgiving the unkindness of people. Life is way too short folks.”</p>
<p>How are people here being unkind to Elsie? Obviously, she is different than are most people and isn’t the type of roommate that the OP’s D wants. Many people here have said that it’s fine for the OP’s D to move out and room with someone else. Several have also said it wouldn’t be OK for the D to ask the roommate to move.</p>
<p>I don’t think that there’s any indication that people here or the D and her friends have said or have done anything mean to Elsie. </p>
<p>Just because the D doesn’t like rooming with Elsie doesn’t mean that the D is a bad person or mean.</p>
<p>Pizzagirl, I interviewed for my college for many years (but stopped over a decade ago) and I would never “ding” someone for the kind of affect or social skills described by the OP. It was never my role to “ding”, my role was to describe.</p>
<p>It’s up to the adcoms to look at the whole picture- teacher recc’s, EC’s, guidance counselor, and my comments/description to determine if the student would be a net addition to the student body or not.</p>
<p>I took on a position of advocacy only once-- a young man coming from exceptionally disadvantaged circumstances, who showed so much tenacity in getting through his terrible HS, and showed over-the-charts maturity in everything he did (including taking a Greyhound bus from out of state and then two different modes of public transportation to get to my home for the interview…) and I was concerned that the teacher and GC recs would not adequately capture the kid in question. In that case I advocated strongly- this was a kid who could not be described on paper and indeed, the whole was significantly greater than the parts.</p>
<p>But most of the time my role was to summarize what I saw and heard, and I left the judgments to the professionals.</p>
<p>I interviewed for Brown which when I was there had a very high tolerance for “weird” or different. So I would have described “Elsie” as best I could, not based on my suspicions of her medical diagnosis-- just my interactions with her, her responses, etc. It’s up to the Adcoms to determine if she would add, subtract, or contribute in some meaningful way to the student body.</p>
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<p>Interview is required at S’s school; he’s there, with merit aid. Draw your own conclusion.</p>
<p>The college I interview for asks interviewers to be advocates – to persuade the adcom to admit the student if we think the student is a great fit. The instructions specifically ask us what we think of the student as a potential roommate, dining companion, language lab partner, etc. If a student gave me the impression that she was going to be an Elsie type and refuse to share meals with fellow students, I’d give her the lowest possible marks. Eccentricity is fine, but a lack of interest in interaction with classmates is a disqualifier according to our criteria.</p>
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<p>I sympathize with the Aspies, but neurotypical people have feelings too, and it needs to be give and take. Not “well, whatever makes the Aspie happy and other people need to work around it.”</p>
<p>Pizzagirl, I get the feeling that you are disturbed by the fact that this conversation ended up turning into a discussion about how to deal with Aspies instead of of focusing on the problems of the OP’s daughter.</p>
<p>The reason why it turned that way because the OP made it loud and clear that her daughter does not want to deal with Elsie, and she will just move out. She does not want advice, this relationship is over. That is why people are no longer putting in sympathetic posts, it is futile, end of story, no problem. But this thread is still interesting to those of us who know/have/or want to learn about these non-typical kids.</p>
<p>It wouldn’t make many neurotypical people happy to be socializing in a college dorm room where there’s a roommate sitting with headphones staring at the computer and talking to herself. </p>
<p>I certainly wouldn’t be happy in that situation. Is there anyone here who would be happy and comfortable in such a situation?</p>
<p>My son has had Tourette’s which has since resolved. I am not unsympathetic to neurological disorders.</p>
<p>Av8r, it’s interesting that you put down OP’s D for not wanting to deal with Elsie, but you excuse Elsie from not wanting to deal with D. It takes two to tango. Apparently you think all the accommodation should come from one side. I don’t see Elsie making an effort to get out of her comfort zone even if it is just to say hello or inquire about the day.</p>
<p>Av8r, I think your estimation of other people’s posts is off base. I haven’t counted them, but to me it would appear that the majority of posters are sympathetic to both the OP and her D, AND to the room mate.</p>
<p>Pizzagirl, good point.</p>
<p>I know a kid who is apparently “on the spectrum” whose behavior upon occasion has been astonishingly rude. For example, at a HS awards ceremony, she actually picked out my S and shook her fist at him upon receiving an award–apparently because she had achieved her goal of getting a higher place on a national exam than he did, after years of finishing below him. This really did not matter to him at all: he had plenty of such awards. As we were all leaving, she literally <em>shouted</em> at his back from 20 feet away through a crowd, “X, I’m sorry I beat you on the test!” The only reason that <em>I</em> knew about her obsession was that I asked him what was going on after the fist-shaking, because I was incredulous. I’d never seen a kid behave like that at one of these things. The only reason he knew about it was that she had informed him and another kid that her goal was to “beat” them on this test. </p>
<p>The fact that this kid is “on the spectrum” was apparently the accepted explanation for her often strange or rude behavior. It explains it, but it doesn’t excuse it. As it happens, S was not particularly bothered by this although it was embarrassing to be single out in this way in public–or at least he said he wasn’t. But what if he were? Don’t other people have feelings?</p>
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<p>Maybe the D should give it a try, rather than just imagining how the roommate would react, the friends would feel, and what would happen. Sheesh. So much speculation, so little reality!</p>
<p>Consolation, maybe so. My estimation of what the OP was looking for originally was definitely off base. Pizzagirl, I am not putting down the OP’s D at all. I have followed this thread from the beginning, and I am trying to explain what I think is apparent. Many of us thought that she was looking for ways for her daughter to deal with Elsie, and when she seemed disinterested in any of our suggestions, it was frustrating. </p>
<p>I realized, as did others-that she was not soliciting information on how to deal with the child, but asking for opinions on whether or not her D could get Elsie to move out of the room. And that is fine, no problem-it was merely a misunderstanding of what she was looking for. Stating these facts are not putting down the OP’s D at all, I have no idea why you would think that. I am merely pointing out that it is futile to give advice to the OP anymore, she has left the thread and was not interested in coping techniques anyways.</p>
<p>“The reason why it turned that way because the OP made it loud and clear that her daughter does not want to deal with Elsie”</p>
<p>“But this thread is still interesting to those of us who know/have/or want to learn about these non-typical kids.”</p>
<p>I’ll just point out again for those that have forgotten or missed it that OP’s D is also a non-typical kid on medication for anxiety/depression issues in addition to being an 18 year trying to adapt academically and socially to her new situation. I’ll give her the benefit of the doubt that it isn’t that she doesn’t want to deal with Elsie but that she no longer can at this young point in her life.</p>
<p>Owlice, maybe Elsie should give it a try, to say hello and goodnight and how was your day instead of imagining that it would be the end of the world to have to interact with others. Having this issue does not cure her of the need to show basic civility to people and I am troubled by the assumption that Elsie is excused from not even making an effort to try to meet D at all, much less halfway. </p>
<p>Should someone this disabled, incapable of saying hello to someone else in a non threatening situation, be away from home? This is a serious question. My bfriend’s son is mentally challenged. He wouldn’t know how to approach a police officer, etc if he were in danger. So - he needs supervision and won’t ever truly live independently. If someone is truly incapable of navigating basic benign social situations, once they get that college degree, what are they going to do with it? How will they handle coworkers, the landlord, etc?</p>
<p>Definitely, annoyingdad. And it is hard enough to deal with an Aspie if you have no issues in your own life. Even as a loving parent you can feel like you just want to give up when you feel like you are getting nothing back.</p>
<p>But learning about it, understanding, makes all the difference in the world. When you realize what these kids are struggling with and how to get through, you discover that it is not a rejection of you and has really nothing to do with you whatsoever. And that little bit of time you spent educating yourself was absolutely worth it.</p>
<p>OP here–I decided to stop by and look at this thread once again. (I think this a way to avoid the massive amounts of cooking awaiting me). One poster polled her college-age kids, who said “the daughter should take a different approach. Instead of trying to figure out how to ‘get out of the situation’ the continued effort should be on how to live in the dorm as happily as one can and to engage Elsie in social interaction.”</p>
<p>D is already living in her dorm “as happily as she can” (and that’s not happily at all)—which means being out of the room as much possible. D is home now, and just told me last night that she continues to invite Elsie to join her when she’s going places (I thought she had given up), but she never accepts. It’s also very hard to engage someone who has headphones on all the time and appears to have no interest in campus life or other subjects. Elsie lives in her half of the room, D in hers. (And it’s quite firmly divided in half–Elsie had no interest in reorganizing the room to a more pleasing, homey configuration, one that would give both girls a feeling of more space, as many students did, but would require an intermingling of their furniture.) I can’t imagine what anyone thinks D, who is neither a therapist nor a social worker, could do to improve the situation. It is what it is, and D’s options are to deal with it or move out. </p>
<p>One thing I want to make abundantly clear is that D has in no way been anything other than courteous and respectful to her roommate. I have no idea why anyone would think otherwise from what I’ve written. D’s idea of engineering a room change was just that, an idea. I think she was correct that Elsie wouldn’t have cared about moving–the main concern, the one that put the kibosh on the idea, was that it would have been unfair to an unsuspecting new roommate. Moreover, having worked with kids on the spectrum for quite some time, and having NVLD herself, D is far more knowledgeable about the subject, and more empathetic, than the average 18-year old–but all the knowledge and empathy in the world won’t improve her living situation or make her more content with it.</p>
<p>And while all the discussion of students with spectrum disorders is certainly interesting and enlightening, I wouldn’t jump to conclusions about Elsie. I find it interesting that she talks quite animatedly and lengthily to her family via Skype and wonder if that fits with the Aspie syndrome. To my great surprise, she is not heading home (not to her own or anyone else’s) for the 5-day Thanksgiving break. While I suppose this could be a matter of finances (she lives a few hours away), I think I would have moved heaven and earth to get my kid home, knowing that she would spend the entire time all by herself in her room–though D believes she will love the privacy she’ll have. </p>
<p>Thank you (most of you, anyway) for your expressions of concern and sympathy and your suggestions. And a very happy and healthy holiday to all.</p>
<p>“Maybe the D should give it a try, rather than just imagining how the roommate would react, the friends would feel, and what would happen. Sheesh. So much speculation, so little reality!”</p>
<p>How comfortable would you be inviting friends over to socialize in a small dorm room in which your headphone-wearing roommate were staring at a computer and talking to herself while not choosing to interact at all with your friends?</p>
<p>This isn’t the kind of environment that I’d choose to live in or entertain in. Is there anyone here who would want to do either?</p>