It's difficult because the variance is so wide.

To compare: Three profiles of people with diagnosed Autism.

Blindboy Boatclub: An Irish satirist who wears a plastic bag on his head in public appearances. Formerly of a band called The Rubberbandits. Today he is known for his podcast and has authored three books of short stories. He comes across as eccentric, but he's quite capable of managing in society otherwise.

Side note, one of the other members of The Rubberbandits went by the moniker of Mr Chrome, but is better known to people as Bobby Fingers today.

My stepson: Just a teenager navigating one of the more emotionally turbulent times while being noticeably different. He has fine motor issues and some social deficiencies. The best I could describe it is that he's emotionally a few years behind where other kids his age would be. He has few accommodations, mostly extra time and the ability to leave a situation that is overstimulating him. He's odd, probably always be a bit odd. May never be able to tie his shoes, but with work, he should be able to navigate society as a functioning adult one day.

Wife's student: My wife is a special education teacher and she has a student who is completely non-verbal. However, he is noticeably intelligent and can form complex thoughts and can attempt to express them. Managed to use his visual communication device to insult one of his teachers based on her appearance. He will likely have issues for his entire life and will likely need constant therapy.

Now, what one thing can we do for these three very different autistic people?

There's a reason people say "When you've met one person with autism, you've met one person with autism". While there are some commonalities and typical comorbidities, what we regard as autism presents in so many different ways, it's incredibly difficult to construct a single program to address it.

And I can see why we'd want to break it up. But that gets difficult as well. My stepson started low-verbal. Didn't speak for a while. Spoke rarely for a while longer. And now he speaks a lot. And he's learning when it is appropriate to speak and to handle people speaking around him but not to him. So he was non-verbal. But then became verbal. But not all autistic children cross that border.

All that to say: I dunno. Shit's complicated, yo.