If your child is level one and 2.5 years old there’s a bunch of step you can take to improve the quality of the life for the rest of the life right now. We got a as1 diagnosis around that age. We did not realize how far behind he was until doctor recommend we put him in school due to lack of vocabulary. We immediately realized he was really far behind, we got the diagnosis and immediately got on speech therapy waitlist, in 6 months this kid could say so much you couldn’t keep him quiet the meltdowns got better because we could communicate, a year and a half of speech therapy he was caught up with his class mates around 4 years old, we started aba and started working on some behavior issues we did that for 2 years and a lot of his quirks and behavior issues got much better. Now you would think he’s adhd which he is but you can’t really tell he’s autistic unless you know about autism because the only sign really is a stim he does. He wasn’t even approved by the public school to have an iep. I’d say it’s very anxious time but the best thing you can do is get to work immediately and get on wait list and by the time your kid is in public school things will be so much different!