Can a child with ASD recognise facial expressions?

[noblegiraffe]

DS's school have said they think he has ASD so I've been doing some reading and also booked an appointment with the GP. From some of the questionnaires I've looked at, he certainly ticks some boxes and has obvious difficulties with some things, such as social and personal boundaries (hugs people a lot, likes touching people, joins in with the conversations of random people on the street, but also gets very upset/aggressive if someone invades his personal space), but also doesn't tick others.
I was reading an extract from a Tony Attwood book from a recommendation on here and it said something along the lines of AS children being unable to read facial expressions, or make expressions themselves on demand. It didn't say 'some AS children', it was simply a statement and it said that other children would find this easy. So I 'tested' DS, asking him to read my expression while I pretended to be happy, sad, angry, frightened, confused, disgusted and he could do them all (although tbf I did exaggerate them). The next day I asked him to pretend to feel the same expressions and he did, fine, no problems. He's not quite 5 so it's not hard-won learned behaviour, if you see what I mean.

So is this something that an ASD child should definitely struggle with and is school barking up the wrong tree? Do I need to be looking for something more subtle? If I'm going to talk to the GP I want to be confident in my facts.

Kids vary. Ds can recognise many of my expressions be wise he has had years of practice with them. Strangers less so.

DS has difficulty reading the more subtle facial expressions but he knows if I am upset or angry or happy.

DS's eye contact is okish. He only finds it uncomfortable if it is prolonged or if he is feeling upset or unsure. So the same as people without ASD but more exaggerated.

I would be about anything that said 'all people with ASD' or 'noone with ASD' because people with ASD are individuals.

I work with children with ASD pre, post and during diagnosis and I have a lot of contact with older children with ASD on a social level.

The more people I meet with autism the more I realise I have to learn.

Also, whilst ds can read my expressions, the chances of him thinking to look at them for clues about how a social interaction is going is practically nil. So in real life it might look like he can read them but it is more a case of him just not being interested in them.

Sorry, might look like he can't read them.

Argh why can't this whole thing be more straightforward? If the doc says to me 'what do you think?' I'm going to have to say I don't know, and how can that be when a mother is supposed to know him best?

We've had a lovely summer holiday so far, soft play, a week away, he spent four hours the other day playing nicely with a friend without incident. Stuff that ASD children might struggle with, from reading threads on here. But then he cried inconsolably over getting the 'wrong' sandwich for lunch the other day and school say he has really struggled with appropriate behaviour towards the other children.

as others said. asd varies. Dd has asd (low functioning) but can read easily facial expressions - at least the basic emotions: happy, sad, surprised, tired, scared, disgusted ,angry...

I've got two with ASD (both high functioning), and they can both tell me when they look at a picture (or me) what the expressions are.

However, they seem to have more of a problem with understanding what that feeling feels like from someone else's point of view iyswim. If I'm angry, for instance, they quite often laugh because rather than being able to understand my anger, they're (I've been told) trying to stop it by changing the mood. It used to make me even angrier because I thought they were laughing at me until someone explained it, because what kid laughs at someone who's angry with them?

They can both deal with playing with other kids if it's fairly controlled. My youngest is going to have a sleepover with three of his school friends for his birthday for instance, but they're all kids that have been over before and we'll be talking him through exactly what's expected. It also helps that they're all NT and can talk him down if he goes over the top (here's hoping!). My eldest is dreading it though because he says they'll all misbehave (he's kind of a rules guy).