I don’t understand. In order to be diagnosed with autism, you must have deficits in social communication across three criteria groups (reciprocity, nonverbal communication, developing/ maintaining relationships) and repetitive, restrictive behaviors. The symptoms can change in severity throughout your life, but must be present throughout your entire life. And the symptoms can’t better be explained by intellectual disabilities.

Like, you either meet those criteria or you don’t. The spectrum is for those who meet all the criteria above as a way of explaining how different all of us with ASD are. My nibling is high support needs, nonverbal but I, as a low support needs adult, understand him better than I get most of my allistic peers. Allistic individuals might identify with parts of autism, but that doesn’t make them autistic unless they meet the above criteria