Her son is both autistic and now in engineering school? That’s remarkable.
Good for him. He must have the right kind of instructors to help him learn.
"Autism" is a "spectrum" and we're all on it ...
One of my colleagues is formally diagnosed with "Asperger's Syndrome". Whatever...
He's married, has children ... without the "diagnosis", I would just have called him a nerd. He's a good solid engineer, and a good father.
I worked with a guy that has Aspergers which is somewhere on the autism spectrum. He has a computer science degree and primarily writes code and does Unix administration. I could walk by the guy in the in the hallway and he would totally ignore me even if I said hello. If I knocked on his door and asked him a question, he seemed completely normal.