When you take a drug to treat high blood pressure or diabetes, you have an objective test to measure blood pressure and the amount of sugar in the blood. It is straight-forward. With autism, you are looking for changes in behavior.

Sometimes we forget about common sense. Autism is used too much as an excuse for bad behavior.

I'm seeing too many geeky, nerdy kids get addicted to video games and they're going nowhere. It's making me crazy.

I think that the definition of autism is too broad. You got to remember, autism definition is a behavioral profiling.

Autism is a big continuum, going from someone who remains nonverbal, all the way up to geniuses on Silicon Valley. And some kids are visual thinkers like me. Other kids are pattern thinkers - your mathematicians, your programmers. And there are others, they are word thinkers. Uneven skills. You need to take the thing that they're good at and you need to work on developing it.

I'd rather see a kid get fixated on something they can turn into a career.

If you have a 2-year-old who is non-verbal, don't wait until you get a diagnosis at 4. The child needs one-on-one teaching with an effective teacher now. This can be a grandmother or a teacher or someone from the community. Grandmothers are especially great. There are a lot of grannies around. Go to your church for help.