He's never been classified that way as far as I know. I would say somewhere between level 1 and level 2. He writes very well. But speaking person to person, not so good. And as I described, there's significant rigidity in his behavior. For example, when he cooks, he can't generalize. Cooking is by time, not appearance, food has to come the same packaging etc.

My child is a level 1. It has cost me thousands and thousands of dollars to get her help because no one wants to give her resources because she's so high functioning. So high functioning! Yes my child who has random panic attacks and bolts in random directions. My kid who had a meltdown because I forgot to tell a friend that if she goes to one particular park, they have to get ice cream. My kid who is 7 and was suicidal from the social isolation that's starting up. And now that she's self-harming, now people want to give help! But not for the under lying issues. She's so high functioning (aka female and coping decently). She doesn't need pragmatic language help or social help or any of that stuff. Her spiraling is just purely chemical imbalance. Here's some pills.

My kid is truly high functioning. Only professionals tag her immediately. For everyone else it takes some long term intimate interaction to realize something is wrong. Any autistic adult who says this is great is coping. I have talked to too many high functioning autistic women and there only seem to be two camp: lots of mental health issues with possible commitments or intense treatment that their parents poured so much money into. And never of those is okay or what I'd wish on a kid. I didn't even know it was possible for a 7 year old to be suicidal without a major life event and apparently this is just a thing with some high functioning autistic kids. This is not okay.