My brother is professionally diagnosed as on "the spectrum" of autism. I suspect I also might be… We have a lot of similarities. My parents were young and broke, so it's entirely possible I was just never looked at
With some help through the school, we set a card system up for him. He would hold onto four plastic binder cutouts - green, yellow, orange, and red - and each one had things he liked written on them. "Nintendo" was written on the orange one, for example. "RC Cars" was on the green one.
He would always start the day on Green, and every time the teacher had to ask him more than once to stop disrupting the class, she would take one of his cards away. That night/weekend, he was only allowed to play with what he had left written on cards. If the green one was taken away, no matter how much he wanted to race RC cars with me, he couldn't because the teacher had that card.
A child psychologist recommended that system to us for two reasons:
1) It was a standard and consistent system, so even with his issues my brother still grasped what was going on. This is opposed to the seemingly arbitrary nature of "when I did this my last teacher only gave me a warning, so why am I in trouble this time?"
2) It directly tied "acting out" - doing things that hurt others - to things that hurt him.
The logic was that he'd understand that it wasn't cool to disrupt class because it made everyone feel bad just like when he can't race RC cars. I still don't really know if I buy that, but that fucker has turned into a stronger, better, more confident, more "normal" person than me, so take that for what you will.
So, barely on-topic tangent aside, >>28770 this anon is right, and given time the question can become a moot point. Until then, though, it's important to keep in mind that even though you should show them a little grace, too much leeway will lead to nothing improving or even getting worse in some cases.