we're both aspergic, will our child be severely autistic?

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Why thanks. It is always nice to extend personal opinions over general ideas.

Of course, and general ideas are never set in stone.

i think i have a slightly different view of what "high functioning" means. i think of HF in the sense that you "pass", not that you are necessarily successful. i consider my SO HF. he has stumbled through life like many NTs do. he had goals that never came to fruition, dropped out of college, has had a spotty employment record of mainly low paying general labor jobs (lumber mill, security guard, furniture delivery, etc). he is extremely intelligent, has been in a serious relationship for 12 years, has kids, but he has never gotten on top of his problems. i imagine if our son had never been diagnosed, we would never have realized WHY my SO has had the lack of success that he has, and he would have lived the rest of his life and died believing himself to be NT.

i guess when i say HF, i mean HF for an autistic, not HF in general which would imply a certain measure of success. that sounds bad, but i cannot think of another way to express it. not that autistics cannot achieve just as highly as any NT, but the playing field isnt level. autistics start with, on average, a lot more to overcome than NTs do. there are a whole lot of NTs that never manage to get on top of their problems and live unsuccessful lives, yet we dont call them LF.

maybe thats one reason ive never liked functioning labels. they are so vague. neither intelligence or functioning label are an indicator of the success someone will have in life. whether you are asd or NT.

You've used success three times. Could you care to qualify what you mean by success?

success is personally defined. when i use the term success, i see it as being able to achieve personal goals, the ability to be self sustaining and independent, establishing a career and maintaining employment, supporting a family if you choose to have one, achieving happiness.

I still think we mean about the same, azurecrayon, but we say it differently.

Good answer