My pet peeve on "the autistic kid"

I have been reading some blogs about autism today.  All of the blogs were interesting and  informative with good ideas.  But my biggest pet peeve is someone saying "the autistic kid"   - come on, are you seriously going to use that label????   I have a child with autism and he is just that - a child with autism.  Not the autistic child.

For those of you reading this and not understanding what the differences is - here are a couple examples:

1. the diabetes kid                  or a child with diabetes
2. the cancer kid                    or a child with cancer
3. the heart problem kid        or a child with a heart problem

Now do you see what I am trying to say?

The health,  mental, social, physical challenges/problems with children should not be the definition of a child.  When I think of Adam - there are hundreds of characteristics that come to mind before autism.  And I hope all of the people in his life feel the same way about him. 

Well this ends my little soap box rant.  I'm off to put Legos together with ADAM.