@QueenofWhisperz
"Made Better?" I'd say no to that.
Enabling the child to cope by using different parenting techniques and ensuring their environment is not overwhelming as much as possible is a good start, but once the child is overwhelmed, then you'll see the 'I cannot cope with this' reactions.
Autism is driven by anxiety, so the more calm the child's environment is, the more calm the child is, the less you will see their different behaviour.
If I were you, I'd read about sensory processing, most autistic kids have it to some degree. If it can be recognised and the right interventions put into place by removing a lot of the things that are hard to cope with or going to different places, your child will be happier. There's a YouTube video done by the Nat Autistic Society which shows what walking into a shopping centre can be like for an autistic child with sensory processing difficulties, (an English small shopping centre, imagine the hell a Mall would be) lights too bright, noise from all directions, people milling around, not knowing who wants to interact with you and why. You can feel the seams in your socks rubbing and the labels in the back of your clothes feel like barbed wire, the smells from the shops and the people, food, perfume in other words, all of your senses are totally heightened and overwhelmed and your brain cannot filter out all the things that NT people can called background noise and background stimuli. What can you do? What can you do when you cannot describe this sensory assault and your anxiety is at Defcon 1?
Scream, because your own noise can drown out a lot of the other noises that you want to go away but have no control over.
Put your hands over your ears.
Drop to the floor absolutely overburdened with sensory overload.
Run in a mad panic, anywhere, you have to get out of this hell.
All of the above.
Buying online is a good solution. If you have to take your child to somewhere that affects him like that, ear defenders are helpful - if he's not overly irritated by the feel of them on his head. Tell him e.g. for a trip for new shoes, exactly where you are going, what's going to happen and when you can head home. If he can't cope with that in practise, order them online and check for fit yourself.
Most autistic kids thrive in a structured environment, they know when things are going to happen and in what order. They feel they have control, but when that structure changes without lots of prompting and explanation, then they are all at sea and don't know which way is up. Everything made sense and now everything makes no sense and they cannot understand why or cope with it. Overwhelm sets in and what NT people call bad behaviour results.
Our Paediatric Occupational Therapist who specialised in Sensory Processing was an absolute star in explaining things like this to me, suddenly I understood why my child behaved differently to their peers and tried my best to keep the sensory stimuli to a level they could cope with. there's the whole opposite of this where kids are under-stimulated by sensory input and they need to seek more, called sensory seeking. That can affect things you're probably as yet not even aware of, like their ability to sit still and listen. A wedge cushion with bobbles on provides proprioceptive input and can enable some children to be able to focus on what's being said instead of focusing on not falling off the chair.
I won't list everything I've found that helps us because your child's not necessarily going to respond the same way as mine (now adult). the OT can provide a Sensory Diet based on exercises, nothing to do with food, after assessing which overstimulation and understimulation symptoms your child has.
Advice, absolutely ignore friends and family and idiots who say stricter parenting with consequences is essential because it reinforces good behaviour. More often than not, the autistic kid has no clue why they are being punished or what they have done wrong. They have reacted to stimuli in the only way they know how.
Read as much as you can about autism and its co-morbids and how they affect your child.
Observe your child, what causes them to over-react, how can you tone that thing down to a level they can tolerate?
Coping strategies - be inventive, if it works for your child, then go with it. Ignore all strange looks and comments about your child doing things differently.
Don't think it will always be like this. Your child, with help from you, will learn to be able to tolerate lots of things that he cannot tolerate or cope with right now. It takes time, infinite patience and awareness of your child's needs.
This may help to explain his autism to other people, most have some totally ridiculous misconceptions when they hear the word autism.
the-art-of-autism.com/understanding-the-spectrum-a-comic-strip-explanation/
Good Luck with whatever you decide will benefit your son the most to help him cope in the NT world. 