The letter Q in IQ means "quotient." There is a denominator. And the reference score of 100 means a typical age-peer person, which in practice means a "neurotypical" person. The usage of IQ score promotes the concept that autistic people are outliers, and that neurotypical people are the norm that autistic people need to look up to.
So, the top 3 lies about autism are:
(a) Autistic children need to talk
(b) Autistic children need to socialize and make friends
(c) IQ should be used in autism assessment
If you look at these three points, none of them has any scientific basis. They all come from the implicit assumption that neurotypical people are better than autistic people. Precisely because of this underlying assumption, parents waste valuable time and resources to chase after "fixing" their children, instead of developing their children 's brains via the visual-manual route. The consequence of these three points is that the absolute majority of autistic children become underdeveloped. It is pure child abuse. It's a crime. And we continue to allow this crime to be committed on millions of children, everyday.
We achieve to develop deaf, mute and blind children everyday, without emphasis on verbal and/or social skills. We should wake up and adopt the same approach: emphasize solely on the development of cognitive skills, instead. A person doesn't need to talk nor to be social, for the person to hold a job, pay tax, and live independently with dignity.
And frankly, by going the route of cognitive development, autistic children have a much better chance of becoming verbal and social. And that is what I mean by
1+2+3+4+... = -1/12