Helping a teen with her social life.

Hi everyone; throwaway here instead of posting under my usual account to shield my daughter's privacy a bit.She has a lot of questions about friends and social life and we've talked about these things a lot, but I've reached the end of ideas or insight to be able to share with her. I told her I'd ask you fine folks for any comments that might be helpful to her.My girl, 15 and a sophomore, is delightful, but fitting in with/relating to her peers has generally not come naturally to her. She's the oldest child of a large family and an overachiever. She started school early and is a year younger than her same-grade peers, but earns straight As in pre-AP and AP classes and her standardized test scores are in the high 90 percentiles. She also plays several instruments in school band and at home, and has taught herself somewhat adult-like hobbies and skills that she spends her spare time learning about and perfecting, such as aviation (she LOVES airplanes and is fairly sure she wants to be a commercial pilot), crocheting, sewing (she figured out how to make her own clothes which she wears to school), and tending her houseplants. Her vocabulary and wit/humor are more sophisticated than most adults. She is mature, responsible, and good-natured; she doesn't have a mean bone in her body although she is not particularly outgoing or affectionate. She's really pretty, and maintains the basics of keeping herself clean and groomed, but has little interest in her appearance beyond what is necessary to avoid negative attention in that area. We have a warm and affectionate family and she gets along very well with her siblings.Adults love her to pieces and her peers are, evidently, somewhat mystified by her, and she is mystified by them.Through elementary school she usually had 1 or 2 friends to play with or eat lunch with, but starting in middle school it started to get a bit harder for her. She says frequently that she does not understand other kids, and they don't understand her. She doesn't know how to have relaxed conversations with others, and doesn't know what to talk about. She has trouble finding other kids whose interests she can share, and other kids don't seem to want to talk about her interests. From what she reports and what I've seen, she is not the subject of aggressive bullying; other students mostly seem to avoid her, or ask her questions to get her talking because she is quite entertaining (see above with wit and vocabulary; she has a really unique way of expressing herself). However, she often feels as though she is not really in on their jokes, and they are not in on hers. She is not sure why this is, and she's starting to feel lonely and worrying about whether she will ever be more at ease socially and be able to relate to her peers. She expresses concern about her college experience and future career, if she continues not being able to really get the people around her.On the advice of her school and pediatrician, she was evaluated for autism twice, at age 5 and at age 14, and both times she did not meet the diagnostic criteria. This most recent round, she was diagnosed with social communication disorder and mild OCD (and incidentally her IQ was measured at 127). I have encouraged her to read up (with me) on this diagnosis, for more insight into the unique and wonderful way her mind is constructed and for suggestions as to how to approach situations that are currently mysterious to her. However, she HATES even discussing it because she feels that means "something is wrong with" her, despite my diligence in explaining every time we discuss it that she is perfect just the way she is but that a professional diagnosis can just give us more information and has nothing to do with being a value judgement.My (and her father's and stepfather's) advice to her has largely centered around self-acceptance, positivity, and a wait-and-see approach. She's so smart and so mature for her age, and thinks about such different things than the average teenager, that we tell her that it's just a fact that she's going to find her people in college and in her adult life, and sometimes the best way to approach high school in a situation like hers is to just take from it what positive things she can and wait the rest out. I also had her read How To Win Friends and Influence People as it contains simple explanations and basic info regarding how others tick that she does not intuitively have like most people do. These little steps aren't always satisfying to her, though, and she has recently been asking more questions like why do her sisters have friends and she doesn't, and when is she going to have something to do on the weekends, and what if people don't like her in college or at her first job, either? Honestly I'm out of ideas as to what to say to her, which is where you folks come in.I appreciate in advance any insight, stories, personal experience, advice, or other comments that you may be able to share. I'll try to get her to participate in this thread, too, which might be fun and helpful to her.Thanks in advance :) via /r/Parenting http://ift.tt/2pgaDQq