Self Management and students with Autism

I found it interesting to note that in chapter 11 there was a breakdown of the effectiveness of self management with students with severe disabilities. This made me think of students I have worked with who have autism. To me, self management would be quite successful. I have had students that were fascinated with time, which tells me they would be great at monitoring how long it would take for them to complete a task or how long they must stay on task. Often these students would remind me of what they were supposed to do and when, so I say we should be taking advantage of these strengths within our students with autism. I have been told by my superiors that many children with autism want to follow "the rules" and gain a lot from structure. If we could work with students to have them create and be responsible for their own aspects of structure, this could be very useful. However the down side I see is a student becoming upset when getting only 4 points instead of the 5 points he wanted. So teaching some flexibility is also important, and focusing on a range of appropriate behavior and not just one possible way to be successful. Do any of you have any thoughts on this subject? Autism is definitely one of those areas we will most likely deal with and brainstorming solutions now can always help us in the future.