Sometimes it has helped me to think of ASDs more in terms of "intense communications breakdowns" as opposed to "mental disorders."  (Please note, this is not intended to diminish the severity of the problems, just to approach solving them from a little bit different perspective.)  First, a little communications theory.  We've all experienced misunderstandings; but when you think about it, it is really amazing that we are all able to communicate with each other at all.  If I throw out a word, any word, how you understand that word depends on your own experiences with it (which are, without any doubt, not the same experiences as mine).  That we come to approximately the same understanding of the word relies on how much alike our individual experiences are.  We know that people with ASDs suffer from sensory issues.  This means that on a lot of basic levels, their experiences do not approximately our own.  Hence, it is logical that they understand some words very differently.

Now, let me tell you a little story about my son.

He was being bullied in kindergarten and when he would succumb to fighting back, he would get into even more trouble.  (mostly because he was a much bigger kid than his peers).  So we started telling him to "walk away" and ignore anyone who started bothering him.  Shortly after, we began getting complaints from his school bus driver that he wouldn't stay in his seat.  Thinking we were doing a good thing, we consented to restrain him with a seat belt.  Things got worse - much worse.  In the afternoons, his aide had to carry him to the bus with him kicking, screaming, biting, hitting, etc. all the way.  She understandably felt abused and was, quite frankly, ready to quit.  I've already related what one student was doing to him - pulling on the seat belt until it choked him.  No one person, not his peers, not his aide, not the bus driver (who had to keep her eyes on the road), and not even us (his parents) were understanding what was happening to him (and he had no words to tell us).

It took tears, time, some blame tossing, and a lot of brainstorming, but we finally figured it all out - He had started leaving his seat because someone was bugging him; and he was trying to follow my advice by just walking away.  Inadvertently, we rewarded him for listening to me... by restraining him in his seat, making it impossible for him to just walk away.  No wonder he was frustrated!  We couldn't come up with a good solution to keep him riding the bus, so I started driving him to school.  He continued to "walk away" in the playground and other places once we made it clear exactly when it was the best thing to do.  We also gave him other alternatives (a way of saying "you're bugging me", a way of saying to the playground supervisor that he was being bugged... and we (adults) all made a consistent effort not to ignore his plight when he drew our attention to it.  We had established a "feedback loop" and a lot of his "intolerable" behavior just melted away.