our boy is about to be diagnosed with asd my wife is pregnant

@Hope this is not about living up to examples of people on the spectrum who have made such achievements or comparing role models, it is about a panicking OP who needs to stop panicking and realising that there are positives as well as negatives.

Sharing a house with twelve people, well females are usually pretty good at masking and how do ASC children spend 6+ hours a day with hundreds of peers in a mainstream school if it's unmanageable. You don't know what someone's private hell is when they go through those circumstances.  Did you not know Jahmene Douglas who was on X Factor has Asperger's?  Or Abz who was on Big Brother?  It's amazing what people can live through.  Doesn't mean it doesn't affect them at the time or perhaps later though.  And how does Darryl Hannah manage acting?

And I don't disagree regarding acceptance at all, but that wasn't OP's point.

@Hope this is not about living up to examples of people on the spectrum who have made such achievements or comparing role models, it is about a panicking OP who needs to stop panicking and realising that there are positives as well as negatives.

Sharing a house with twelve people, well females are usually pretty good at masking and how do ASC children spend 6+ hours a day with hundreds of peers in a mainstream school if it's unmanageable. You don't know what someone's private hell is when they go through those circumstances.  Did you not know Jahmene Douglas who was on X Factor has Asperger's?  Or Abz who was on Big Brother?  It's amazing what people can live through.  Doesn't mean it doesn't affect them at the time or perhaps later though.  And how does Darryl Hannah manage acting?

And I don't disagree regarding acceptance at all, but that wasn't OP's point.