Kids often share autistic traits with their parents. The parents are either diagnosable themselves or very nearly so. My son is the third or fourth generation

Kids often share autistic traits with their parents. The parents are either diagnosable themselves or very nearly so. My son is the third or fourth generation to be likely-diagnosable, for example. Currently-middle-aged parents without intellectual disability had almost zero chance of being diagnosed as children, because when we were kids autism was defined such that you usually had to be nonverbal or intellectually disabled to qualify. A very commonly-reported experience is for parents to be diagnosed after their children are diagnosed.