Researchers Zablotsky, Bramlett, and Blumberg set out to understand how parents perceive the “severity” of their Autistic kids’ symptoms.[9] They surveyed nearly a thousand families raising Autistic kids, and also measured the Autism symptom severity of the children themselves. What the researchers found was that parents did not accurately perceive the level of their kids’ suffering. Instead, parents based their ratings of Autism “severity” on how much their kids’ behavior bothered them and required a lot of their time and attention. Many children described by parents as “high functioning” were quietly coping with debilitating sensory pain, or were falling behind academically or socially in significant ways. This carries over to how Autistic adults are perceived, and the expectations that neurotypical institutions place on us to appear “normal.

— Unmasking Autism by Devon Price (Page 92)