Hi there, eNemum.
Think its a myth, about autistic children being good in one area.
There's some very good layman info about ASD here:
http://www.autism.org.uk/whatsitlike
We just received the psychological test results and the PD at NUH's child devt unit explained the results to us. Basically to be assessed as full-fledged ASD, the child needs to display pervasive behaviour in the assessment of all these 3 areas:
1) language delay
2) common actions of ASD like flaps arms or flick fingers frequently, or love spinning
3)doesn't interact
My child is language's ability is pretty decent, but just don't socialise and interact. He loved spinning things at a younger age, but now, does it rarely or only when a top is in sight.
He's said to be autistic, but because do not show symptoms in all 3 areas, so his case is also called "Pervasive Developmental Disorder - Not Otherwise Specified (PDD-NOS)".
As the doctor says, do not be bother so much by all these labels, whether its ASD or PDDNOS, we should focus on the results and recommendations - ie since he lacks social interaction skills, he will attend the occupational and speech therapies to address the problem aras.
2Xmum has put it across very well, "it may be costly but early intervention is critical". I'm also exploring signing my child up for kit4kids.
How do mummies cope - lots of patience of cos! The love is natural - you will find your ASD kid extremely cute (I DO!

) because of the things he do and say. The patience run out sometimes because my kid will insist on his 'weird' ways of doing certain things . So I just pass him over to hubby or maid and cool off somewhere else.
Nothing to be scared and worried. I find the people around me (my friends, colleagues, relatives) more worried than me

I'm not totally worry-free tho - cos I heard that ASD kids has more tendency to get bullied in school.But that'll be something like 4 years later (my kid's close to 3 now).