you also have a pretty intersting list. I think raising an autistic child takes a lot of emotional stamina. I'm really curious as to some of these insights.
Overall, I live a (purposefully) rather quiet life. With my medical condition, getting out and about is rough. That and the older I get, I find my tolerance for stupidity steadily decreases. It's safer staying home. For me and the idiots around me. 
I'm going to have to write a series of articles (I think I've written a couple already) on the ways that he sees things differently. Mostly, it's a case of a slightly 'off' perspective that opens our eyes to stuff that we see as background filler and brings it into a focus that's inspiring.
Example - having a new baby in the house is always interesting. Since M (I'll call him M for his privacy) is the second child, he got to experience both of the youngest two. For the youngest son (#3 in order), his morning ritual was to climb out of his bed (and he got a big boy bed at 18 months 'cause of the new baby) and run into the room next door to look in the crib and say "Hi, baby!" Always excited about it, rather than upset that he wasn't the baby, anymore. If he couldn't say good morning to his baby brother, his entire day was off. And to this day, the two of them are as close as peas in a pod.
Another example of M keeping our life interesting. One morning, in the church nursery, our daughter was being held by one of the nursery workers. She was 6 months old at the time, and M was (and still is, I feel sorry for her boyfriends later) very protective of her. Almost hovering at times. One of the teenagers, a good friend of the family, came over to her and started tickling her, like folks do to an infant to get 'em to giggle and smile. Well, M comes over and kicks the girl in the back of the leg and hollers, "Leave my little sister alone!" Now, what are you going to tell a 3 year old autistic child with that one? We wanted to encourage him for the protectiveness of his sister, but we also wanted to discourage the kicking ... and only one of the ideas would be able to stick. Talk about a dilemma. If we tried both, it would only confuse the poor kid and neither idea would stick. So, we decided to encourage the protectiveness and work on the "don't hit/kick people" idea later.
So many stories ... so little time.
Definitely an idea for a series of articles. Since, I won't have many (any) customers calling in to work over the next couple weeks, sounds like a convenient time to write them.