Parent Asks How To Protect Son From 'Catching' Autism From His Friend, Gets A Wake-Up Call From The Commenters

While the internet can be an amazing place to learn about the world, unfortunately, not everyone uses that opportunity. Even with so much information about autism available at our fingertips, there are still some pretty ignorant people out there who believe nonsense and can’t find even 5 minutes to Google the scientific truth.

Case in point, one person’s incredibly insensitive question that they posed on Quora has gone viral, and internet users can’t believe that someone could be so ignorant. Somebody said that their son hangs out with an autistic child, exclaimed that they don’t want their kid to become autistic, and asked how they could “nip this problem in the bud.”

Well, Reddit user Kewlgemini06 shut the person down with a strongly-worded and witty answer. They didn’t hold back. Scroll down, have a read, and let us know what you think about the situation in the comments below, dear Pandas. Bored Panda reached out to Kewlgemini06, whose real name is Ron Sarraf-Berrios and who is a step-parent to a child on the spectrum, and spoke to him about the situation. Read on for the full interview.

"I think the single biggest myth about autism is that it is a disease that can be “caught” either from someone else or from a vaccine. Autism is a condition where the brain is wired differently, like being left-handed or a musical prodigy," Ron told Bored Panda.

He said that he was "floored" when he first saw the question on quora. "It didn’t occur to me that they could have been a troll until redditors started commenting that, and yet the fact that they deleted their question on Quora after I posted my response tells me they weren’t a troll. As a step-parent of a child on the spectrum, it really disgusted me, so I framed my response to shame them as much as I could."

He added: "I just want every person out there to know that raising a child with autism is not easy but neither is raising a child with a sports talent or musical ability and having to deal with all that comes with it. Raising a child is hard but an autistic child can bring so much love into your life. My kid is 18 and never went through that 'I hate you' phase and still wants daily hugs and to spend time with his parents. I would never want that to go away."

There’s a bit of drama surrounding the Quora screenshot, as some people appear to be trying to get a lot of karma on Reddit without crediting the original poster (there was even a mock trial on Reddit about this). Kewlgemini06 originally posted about their Quora comeback in Reddit’s r/autism community where their post got 11.2k upvotes.

The original poster’s answer got a lot of people’s attention and some saw it as an opportunity to get some of that popularity for themselves. So much so that some redditors posted Kewlgemini06’s Quora answer on different subreddits without properly crediting them. Most recently, the story got reposted on the r/MurderedByWords subreddit where it got over 62.9k upvotes and on the r/memes subreddit for over 147k upvotes.

Bored Panda asked Ron to share his thoughts about some of the drama surrounding his post. "To me, the most important thing is that it is read by as many people as possible to spread awareness. However, as an actual human with emotions and feelings, I’m a little hurt, it would be nice to be credited or if Reddit had methods to correct for intellectual theft like YouTube has. But, as long as more people see the post and realize how ugly that person's question was, I’m happy."

But back to the main topic, there are a lot of misconceptions and myths about autism. For example, some people believe that those who have autism don’t want friends. Meanwhile, the truth is that some people with autism struggle with social skills which makes it hard for them to interact with others in the same way.

There’s another widespread myth that people with autism can’t feel or express any emotions. That’s not true: they simply communicate their emotions and perceive everyone else’s emotions in different ways. And no, autism doesn’t spread by talking to people who have autism! It’s a developmental disorder that appears during infancy or in childhood.