Yes, this is what is now available for parents to access. However, our understanding of autism and even other learning disabilities is still relatively new. It sounds like the OP's husband is now a mature adult and our ability to diagnose "now" was most likely not really available when she was raising him as a child. Most likely his mother just tried to work around his behaviors as best she could and all these years later with all the knowledge and information about this challenge she is probably hearing and reading different symptoms that she herself had to contend with.

You are right golden, posters here can only offer their support and opinions based on what the OP has shared. Normally, the behavior she is describing experiencing would be considered toxic and abusive. However, given the husband's mother's suspicion about him possibly being on the autistic spectrum, my guess is this behavior she is dealing with may very well be due to a genuine challenge and not really be as purposely abusive as one may think.

When my daughter started first grade the male teacher she had would put up a morning message he wanted each of his students try to read. My daughter saw that morning message and very matter of factly said "Oh I can't do THAT" and went and sat down. Well, this teacher did not like this behavior he saw take place in her so he told her she HAD to read the morning message like the other children, again she firmly said, "I just CAN'T do that" and went and sat down. So he called me in for a meeting and told me how my daughter refused to do what he asked. Knowing my daughter it was not like her to lie or be lazy and if she did say she could not do something she was telling the truth. So, I made it a point to get her tested INSTEAD of FORCING her to try and read that morning message. Turns out my daughter was telling the truth and that is when I learned she has dyslexia and in order to be able to read that morning message she would need special help. At that time Yale was doing a study on dyslexia and my daughter became part of their study, they followed her progress right up into her collage years. And Yale explained to me the areas my daughter would struggle which helped me help her and support her INSTEAD of punishing her or shaming her.

Years later Yale did a documentary on all they learned about dyslexia and how truly challenging it really is for young children trying to learn. It happens to come from the way the BRAIN IS WIRED and how it's different from the normal brain where an individual CAN put letters together and learn words and spelling etc. These children are far from dumb too, they tend to have amazing WILL to learn despite how challenged they are, and how much longer it takes them to read and process what they are reading. Also, in this documentary different individuals who struggled this way talk about how much SHAME they experience with their challenge. And the truth is often their piers DO SHAME them for needing extra help, which is exactly what my own child experienced. When my daughter watched this documentary she just sat there and cried, why?, because someone validated her own deep personal challenge. However, what my daughter also got to see in this documentary was how amazingly intelligent and gifted people with dyslexia can be, how their mind can think in superior ways compared to what is considered the normal brain. There have been significant contributions made from individuals that have dyslexia, doctors, surgeons, architects, lawyers, entrepreneurs that created things no one else thought of. What was determined is that this challenge served a purpose to mankind and that is why it remained in our DNA and produced more of these individuals. It is believed that Einstein had dyslexia.

One thing I have learned is that often people can display behaviors that might be considered a huge detriment, yet it's important to be willing to look beyond the surface and make an effort to considering it may not really be as intentional as we may think.