I'm a professional, as the director of TechieForLife. Think of brains as a round ball of putty and that would be a "typical" brain. They are never perfectly round. Now if you were to roll the round ball into an oval, it is what we call "a-typical". Autists are neuro a-typicals The distance from side to side, top to bottom, and front to back in this oval of putty is like how we think in social, emotional and intellectual ways. Sometimes the shorter side distances with the oval shape makes it really hard to function in certain ways, usually socially and emotionally, while the long distance could be the intellectualism with STEM type pattern thinking. Often there are strengths and weaknesses that are more accented with autists. If the ball of putty is rolled too far, then the abilities get too far out of pattern to function and the strength is lessened. Not all autists have heightened "smarts", but they often do have unique quirky pattern thinking type attributes that can be focused on and used to find a path in life, and some are truly brilliant. Schools like Techie For Life support strengths and capitalize on those to get them education in Tech and Coding and help them find jobs that they can do well. Many of those on the spectrum are under or not employed and their ability to be self-sufficient is seriously impaired. A brilliant analyst or coder can't keep a job if they can't make it to work.
