I disagree with a lot of what you've written. Occupational therapists and nurses are not qualified to diagnose autism and there certainly is a "somewhere on th

I disagree with a lot of what you've written. Occupational therapists and nurses are not qualified to diagnose autism and there certainly is a "somewhere on the spectrum" vaguery to autistic symptoms. If I recall correctly only 15% of autistic people fall under the banner of "high support needs", these are the people who are obviously autistic. Many of these people also have another learning disability (undiagnosed or not) which obfuscates the severity of their autism somewhat. The remaining 85% are much less obvious. A lot of these people aren't even aware that they're autistic. These are the people that are "somewhere on the spectrum" and they all have widely varying support needs. My parents had no idea I was autistic, at no point did any school suggest an autism diagnosis. I left school with two C grades and nothing else, because I was struggling with undiagnosed autism and thus received zero support. When you are in this situation it's gutwrenching. I had no inclination I was autistic at the time because I had that same false belief that autism is only the severe cases. So instead I assumed I was just incapable of doing the same things as other people. This caused severe depression and a lot of imposter syndrome. You don't need to put your child on medication (there aren't any for autism anyway) but avoiding diagnosis seems reckless to me. My parent's avoidance to diagnose lead to unnecessary hardship and horrible uncertainties, it was only through going to therapy at 26 (mandated by my workplace due to autistic symptoms) that I was eventially diagnosed. This is a common refrain, plenty of autistic people fall through the cracks and don't get diagnosed until well into adulthood.