I know nothing... please inform me

I have a wonderful boyfriend! There is a great chance he could be the one. But, he told me in the begining that he has autism and so does his 5 yr old son. He says his is very high functioning, stage 3? or 1? gosh I wish I could remember exactly what he said. And his son is not as high functioning.
You can hardly tell that there is anything off with my bf, he is the most intellegent man i've ever known, very awkward when meeting new people, if anything.
I guess why im posting this, is that I want to learn more, so then when the time comes and we talk about it or discuss his son (who I'm not a part of his life yet, but it is happening soon), then I will be able to be educated and not lost and be as supportive as I can.
What are the chances of our children being autistic?
Thank you for anything you can tell me!

[KarenDiane]

I think the best source of info is  www.autismspeaks.org  Every single autistic person is slightly different in their abilities so you won't get a complete picture of his son until you meet him. I've never heard autism described in stages before. It is widely believed that autism is genetic so if you 2 have children, you will have an increased risk for autistic childrren.

[fordwoman88]

Thank you so much for your quick feedback. I read that website, I have lupus and the sun has fried my brain for the day, :) so excuse my in ablility to focus. I may have gotten confused with the whole stage thing. I'm curious, I haven't heard of many adults with high functioning autism, mainly everything is about the autistic children. Do you know if there is a higher risk if one of the parents has it, or just if they carry it...saying that it is genetic. Is this a common thing?

[KarenDiane]

The most likely reason that you don't hear about autistic adults is because, until recently (early to mid 90's), only severely affected individuals were diagnosed. Adults who are high-functioning are just recently being recognized. As far as I know, there is no test to determine if someone is likely to have an autistic child. The reason I say it's genetic is because if you have an autistic child, the likelyhood of having another autistic child greatly increases. It is pretty common to see a family with more than one child in the autism spectrum. I've known a family with 3 children on the spectrum and I read of a family with all 6 children on the spectrum. It's really hit or miss though. I have 3 (1 high functioning and 2 non-autistic kids) and one on the way.