As the mother of an autistic child I have to say that meetings were a place of intolerance and torture for my child. No allowances are made for normal children and even less for autistic ones.
My son could not keep quiet for 2 minutes let alone 2 hours. He would talk to himself constantly throughout the meeting and line up pens between the chair legs. Elders would tell him to control his children so my husband would take him out to discipline him and then tell him not to cry when he came back into the hall but as soon as he saw me he would burst into freash tears and go back out to be disciplined again. In the end I would take him out supposedly to discipline him having the appropriate stern face and we would go into the second school where he could chatter to his hearts content. I was always shocked how intolerant others were and how they did not get that it wasn't a discipline issue.
When my son started self harming in school and hiding under tables fearful of bad books falling from the sky I told my husband that he could not go to meetings in the evening. Autistic children need to adhere to a strict routine so taking him out late twice then once a week messed with that and made a bad situation worse.
Field service was hard as if he was cold, hot, tired, hungry, bored or uncomfortable he would play up and make a fuss. A non autistic child can be encouraged to be polite and not complain on the door but an autistic child will always tell it like it is. I would have to limit first call and then switch to calls or go on calls with just me and the children so that we could do what we could manage without limiting others. Others were obsessed by time so it was a struggle. Assemblies were even worse and often we left early because our son had had enough.
When the elders asked me how they could help me get back to evening meetings I told them that when they could guarantee there would nott be a discussion about God's judgement, murder, death, crime. people dying in flames, earthquakes and other natural diusasters, persecution and violence then we could come as these things played on my sons fears of unlikely events leading to fear and stress. They said that there was no way they could do this. When I said that I could not see a place for my son in the organsiation they agreed with me.
Autistic children are excluded from much of the social scene because other children see them as odd. My son had no friends in the organisation.
I thank my son because he opened my eyes to the casual cruelty and intolerance of an organisation that said it spoke for god. I could not believe that God would set up a place where vulnerble children did not feature.