Is this "blame the parent for autism" month?

For the second time in 2 weeks, we've had someone blame us for J's behaviour.

Today, J was playing at the splash pad at our local park. He slipped and banged his face on the cement - banged him self up pretty badly - his cheek is all scraped and has a huge bruise. In typical J style, he reacted badly to the injury and threw some sand at a mother. Not a good choice of behaviour, and he knows it, but understandable for any 7 year old, especially one with Aspergers.

Well, the mother freaks, grabs him by the arm and says is he ever does that again she's going to spank him on his bum. Luckily I wan't there, because I don't know why I would have done. But my wife was, and after apologizing for the sand, my wife tells this mother that J's on the spectrum. The lady goes on a rant about how her kid has autism too (no idea if that's true), and that we need to get him into ABA because behaviour like that is not acceptable, and it's our job to prevent it.

While nothing she said was technically incorrect, I find it shocking that anyone familiar with children on the spectrum would accost a parent like that. Anyone parenting a child with autism has been in my wife's shoes, having to apologize for some behaviour. You'd think a little sympathy would be in order, not threatening to hit our kid, then blaming the parents.

Needless to say, my wife is a bit shaken up today. It still amazes us how much intolerance of ASD there is out there.