Download PPT
The transition from adolescence to adulthood is one of the most consequential developmental periods for autistic young people. For autistic adolescents with average or above-average cognitive abilities, this transition can be especially complex. Intellectual ability, academic achievement, verbal competence, or success in the structured environment of school may create the impression that a young person is prepared for adult independence. Yet cognitive ability and academic achievement do not necessarily translate into the ability to organize daily life, regulate emotions, manage time, solve unexpected problems, advocate for oneself, sustain employment, navigate relationships, or maintain physical and emotional well-being.
This discrepancy becomes increasingly important as adolescence ends. During childhood and much of adolescence, adults and institutions provide extensive external structure. Parents organize schedules, schools establish routines, teachers clarify assignments, professionals coordinate services, and adults frequently intervene when problems arise. As young people move toward adulthood, much of this structure disappears just as expectations for independent self-regulation rise. The young adult is suddenly expected to initiate, plan, organize, make decisions, tolerate uncertainty, solve problems, manage relationships, advocate for accommodations, and recover from mistakes with considerably less external direction. This creates a developmental paradox because, at the very moment environmental structure decreases, demands for self-management rise dramatically. Successful transition therefore cannot be understood simply as the acquisition of academic skills or the absence of significant intellectual disability. It must be understood as a developmental process through which the young person gradually acquires the self-knowledge, regulatory capacities, adaptive competencies, relationships, experiences, and environmental supports necessary to construct a meaningful adult life.
The central premise of the framework I propose is straightforward. Adult success should not be defined by becoming less autistic, nor should it be defined exclusively by conventional markers such as attending college, securing full-time employment, living independently, or appearing socially typical. Adult success is better reflected in the capacity to understand oneself, regulate behavior and emotion, solve problems, build meaningful relationships, participate in community life, make consequential choices, pursue personally valued roles, and obtain appropriate assistance when needed. The objective is therefore not independence at all costs, but resilient, self-directed adaptation.
Rethinking What We Mean by Successful Transition
Traditional transition planning has often begun with the seemingly reasonable question of what an adolescent must learn to do independently. That question is important but too narrow. A resilience-oriented approach asks a broader question: What combination of personal competencies, environmental supports, relationships, experiences, opportunities, accommodations, and self-knowledge will enable this individual to build and sustain a meaningful adult life? This distinction shifts how we conceptualize both intervention and outcome. Independence becomes only one possible component of adult functioning rather than its defining characteristic. A person may function successfully while relying on technology, family assistance, workplace accommodations, professional coaching, structured routines, or other ongoing supports. Conversely, a person may technically live independently while experiencing profound loneliness, chronic anxiety, vocational instability, poor health management, or a lack of meaningful activity.
Adult success therefore needs to be understood across multiple dimensions, including agency, competence, connection, adaptation, purpose, belonging, autonomy, contribution, and quality of life. These dimensions interact, and no single developmental pathway defines successful adulthood. This perspective is especially important in autism, where adaptive functioning can differ substantially from cognitive ability. A cognitively capable autistic adolescent may understand complex academic material yet struggle to schedule an appointment, recognize mounting stress, manage an unexpected change at work, determine when to ask for help, or organize multiple responsibilities simultaneously. Such difficulties should not be interpreted as laziness, immaturity, lack of motivation, or evidence that the young person simply needs to try harder. They reflect the complex interplay among executive functioning, emotional regulation, adaptive skills, social understanding, experience, and environmental demands.
Resilience as a Developmental Process
The resilience framework that Robert Brooks and I have developed across our work provides a useful foundation for understanding transition. Resilience is sometimes described as an internal characteristic that some people possess and others lack. I view it differently. Resilience develops through ongoing transactions among individual characteristics, experiences, relationships, expectations, opportunities, and environments. Young people become resilient partly because they experience themselves as succeeding, solve problems, encounter manageable adversity, make mistakes and learn that they can be corrected, and experience relationships with adults who communicate confidence without denying difficulty. They learn that effort can influence outcomes, identify strengths, develop realistic expectations, assume increasing responsibility, and discover that they can contribute to other people's lives. From this perspective, transition planning should do more than remediate deficits. It should deliberately create experiences through which resilience develops.
The foundation is self-understanding. Young people need an increasingly accurate appreciation of their strengths, interests, challenges, values, sensory characteristics, emotional patterns, and support needs. On that foundation, core developmental capacities such as self-regulation, executive functioning, emotional regulation, social understanding, and adaptive competence are built. These capacities support agency as self-awareness develops into self-advocacy, self-determination, and increasingly meaningful decision-making. Agency must then be exercised in the real world through education, employment, relationships, community participation, independent living activities, recreation, and healthcare. These experiences inevitably bring challenges, mistakes, disappointments, and unexpected events. The young person learns to cope, adjust, recover, problem-solve, and try again. Through this process, competence and resilience become increasingly internalized. The ultimate outcomes are not simply independence and productivity, but meaning, belonging, competence, autonomy, contribution, and quality of life.
Knowing Myself
The first developmental pillar of successful transition is knowing myself, because transition begins with self-understanding rather than compliance. For much of childhood, autistic young people are surrounded by adults describing what they need to improve. They may hear repeatedly about deficits in social skills, flexibility, organization, attention, communication, emotional regulation, or behavior. Although identifying areas of difficulty is necessary, a transition model built primarily around deficits risks creating an adult who knows what is supposedly wrong with them without knowing who they are. The adolescent instead needs opportunities to develop a personal operating manual that answers important questions about what they do well, what is difficult, what environments allow them to function effectively, what overwhelms them, how they recognize that they are becoming stressed before reaching the point of overload, what accommodations help, what interests and motivates them, what values matter to them, what kind of work might fit their strengths, what relationships they want, what kind of life they hope to create, and how autism fits into their understanding of themselves.
These are not peripheral questions. They are fundamental transition competencies because self-knowledge ultimately underpins self-advocacy. A young adult cannot effectively communicate support needs they do not understand, nor can they make informed decisions about education, employment, relationships, or living arrangements without some appreciation of the conditions under which they function best. The objective is therefore not simply autism awareness. It is the development of a coherent, realistic, useful, and fundamentally respectful understanding of oneself.
Managing Myself
The second pillar is managing myself. Adult environments place extraordinary demands on self-regulation and executive functioning. Young adults are expected to initiate tasks, organize materials, remember commitments, estimate time, prioritize competing responsibilities, shift between activities, inhibit ineffective responses, tolerate uncertainty, regulate emotion, and monitor performance. For many autistic young adults, these demands become harder than the academic tasks themselves. The objective should not be perfect executive functioning, but functional self-management.
This distinction matters because executive weaknesses are not always resolved through instruction. Instead, effective transition planning asks how the person can accomplish necessary tasks despite areas of vulnerability. External structure initially compensates for executive difficulty and is then progressively transferred to the young person through routines, visual supports, technology, calendars, reminders, environmental modifications, coaching, and repeated practice. A smartphone reminder is not a failure of independence; a written workplace checklist is not evidence that an employee has failed to master the job; and a predictable morning routine is not inherently pathological rigidity. These tools may represent intelligent forms of self-management. Successful adults routinely modify their environments to improve their functioning, and autistic young adults should be taught to do the same.
Directing Myself
The third pillar is self-direction. A major developmental shift must occur during adolescence as adults move from making decisions for the young person to making decisions with the young person to supporting the young adult in making increasingly consequential decisions. This transition can be uncomfortable for everyone involved because parents and professionals often have years of experience solving problems efficiently. They know which choices are likely to succeed and which may fail. Yet if adults continue making every important decision, the young person reaches adulthood with little opportunity to develop judgment. Self-determination develops through practice, which means young people need experience setting goals, making choices, evaluating alternatives, considering consequences, solving problems, communicating needs, requesting accommodations, understanding rights and responsibilities, and recognizing when assistance is necessary.
Adult autonomy does not mean doing everything alone. It means having meaningful influence over the direction of one's life. This distinction is essential because interdependence is a normal part of adult life. All adults rely on other people, institutions, technologies, and systems. The developmental question is therefore not whether an autistic adult requires support, but whether support increases agency or replaces it.
Connecting Myself
The fourth pillar is connecting with myself. Resilience develops in relationships, yet social interventions for autistic young people have too often been framed around appearing more neurotypical. Eye contact, conversational style, body language, or conventional social behavior may become treatment goals without sufficient attention to whether these changes actually improve the person's relationships or quality of life. Social success should not be equated with appearing neurotypical. The more meaningful goal is the capacity to establish relationships that provide belonging, reciprocity, safety, support, companionship, and meaning.
Transition planning should therefore intentionally cultivate social ecology. Family relationships remain important, but they cannot be the sole source of support. Peer relationships, mentors, educational connections, workplace relationships, community membership, and, when appropriate, knowledge of romantic and intimate relationships all deserve attention. Belonging is not an optional luxury added after employment and independent living have been achieved. It is a central component of adult well-being and resilience. A young adult who knows there are people to contact when difficulties arise is better positioned to recover from adversity. A workplace mentor may prevent a misunderstanding from leading to job loss, a trusted friend may provide perspective during a stressful transition, and a supportive family member may help without taking control. Relationships expand a young person's capacity to manage the inevitable demands of adulthood.
Building My Life
The fifth pillar is building my life. Transition cannot happen solely in classrooms, therapy offices, or planning meetings. Every adolescent needs real-world adult experiences before adult expectations become unavoidable. Young people need opportunities to work, volunteer, navigate postsecondary settings, use transportation, manage money, shop, prepare food, schedule appointments, communicate with healthcare providers, complete household responsibilities, engage in recreation, navigate the community, ask unfamiliar adults for assistance, and handle mistakes or unexpected problems. Experience precedes independence because real competence develops through doing rather than through verbal instruction alone.
We would not expect someone to learn to drive by discussing it alone, yet we sometimes approach adult functioning as though young people can learn independence through conversation or instruction alone. The young person who has practiced calling to change an appointment is better prepared to do so independently. The adolescent who has experienced a supervisor correcting a mistake has learned something about employment that a social-skills worksheet cannot fully teach. The young person who has missed a bus, sought assistance, changed plans, and still reached the destination has acquired more than transportation knowledge. That individual has practiced resilience.
Supported Risk and the Development of Resilience
One of the most important mechanisms in the model is supported risk. Resilience cannot develop if adults eliminate every difficulty, but overwhelming failure does not build it either. Repeated failure can instead produce avoidance, anxiety, helplessness, and withdrawal. The developmental target lies between these extremes. Supported risk means providing challenges that are meaningful and authentic yet manageable with appropriate assistance. The young person attempts the task, and the attempt may result in success, partial success, or a mistake. Rather than immediately correcting the problem, adults help the young person reflect on what happened, identify possible solutions, make adjustments, and try again.
Over time, this sequence produces mastery, which contributes to self-efficacy, which in turn contributes to resilience. Parents and professionals therefore gradually shift from problem solvers to coaches. This shift is often difficult because rescuing a young person from an avoidable problem can be faster and emotionally easier. Yet the relevant question is not simply whether adults can solve the problem, but whether solving it for the young person deprives that individual of an opportunity to become more competent.
Scaffold, Practice, Generalize, and Fade
A practical intervention sequence follows naturally from this framework. For each adult competency, we first determine what the person can currently do and where the process breaks down, then identify the environmental supports needed to enable successful performance. This becomes the scaffold. The individual practices the skill repeatedly in authentic situations. Once performance becomes more reliable, the skill must generalize across people, places, and circumstances. Supports that are no longer necessary can be gradually faded, while accommodations that remain functionally useful should be maintained.
The goal is optimal support, not zero support. There is little value in removing a support merely to demonstrate independence if doing so substantially reduces functioning. Some accommodations should be temporary because they facilitate skill acquisition, while others may appropriately remain throughout adulthood. Successful transition planning therefore requires judgment about which supports should fade and which should become part of the person's enduring self-management system.
The Environment Is Part of the Intervention
Adult functioning cannot be understood solely as an attribute of the individual because it reflects the interaction among the person, the task, the environment, and available support. The same young adult may function very differently across settings. An individual who struggles in a chaotic workplace with ambiguous expectations may perform exceptionally well in an environment with predictable routines, clearly defined responsibilities, manageable sensory demands, direct communication, and a supportive supervisor. The difference is not that autism disappeared in the second environment. The person-environment fit improved.
This ecological perspective requires us to consider whether expectations are explicit, the task is clearly defined, sensory load is manageable, sufficient structure is available, accommodations are appropriate, communication is predictable, access to a mentor or trusted adult exists, and the environment capitalizes on the person's strengths. Sometimes changing the environment yields greater improvement than trying to change the individual. This does not mean eliminating challenge. It means distinguishing productive challenge from unnecessary mismatch.
The Family Must Transition Too
The adolescent is not the only one undergoing transition; the family must transition as well. Parents of autistic young people often spend years serving as advocates, organizers, interpreters, coordinators, protectors, and problem solvers. They have often learned through experience that anticipating difficulties prevents crises, and these skills may have been essential throughout childhood. Adulthood, however, requires a different parental role. The parent gradually moves from manager to organizer to coach and eventually toward consultant. This does not mean withdrawing support. It means changing the nature of support.
The guiding question shifts from how a parent can prevent a problem to how much support the young person needs to solve it. That shift can be emotionally difficult. Allowing a young person to make a mistake may feel irresponsible when the parent can easily prevent it, yet manageable problems offer opportunities to build competence. The challenge is to distinguish situations involving genuine danger from those involving tolerable discomfort, inconvenience, disappointment, or failure. The goal is not parental disengagement. It is the progressive transfer of ownership.
Transition Is a Continuum
Transition should begin long before graduation and be understood as a developmental continuum. During early adolescence, the emphasis can be on exposure as young people begin to learn about adult roles and what adulthood involves. Middle adolescence increasingly becomes a period of exploration during which young people consider what interests them, what kinds of environments fit them, what they do well, and what they might want to try. Late adolescence should increasingly emphasize practice as the young person performs adult activities with meaningful support. Emerging adulthood becomes a period of participation during which the individual increasingly performs adult roles while using accommodations, coaching, technology, relationships, and environmental supports as needed.
Over time, the objective is self-direction. The person develops a more realistic understanding of what can be managed independently, when assistance is useful, and how necessary support can be obtained. This progression is rarely linear. A young adult may manage transportation independently while needing substantial help with finances. The same person may demonstrate excellent workplace competence while struggling to manage healthcare. Support needs may temporarily increase during stress, illness, transitions, or unfamiliar circumstances. This variability should not be interpreted as failure because it is part of human development.
Redefining Adult Outcomes
Perhaps the most important change in transition planning is to reconsider what counts as a successful adult outcome. College, full-time employment, and an independent apartment represent one possible adult pathway, but they should not be the universal standard by which autistic adults are judged. A more meaningful evaluation considers the person's trajectory across self-determination, emotional well-being, meaningful activity, education or employment, relationships, community participation, adaptive competence, physical health, personal safety, financial competence, autonomy, purpose, and quality of life.
The relevant outcome is not normality but a sustainable, meaningful, increasingly self-directed adult life. This reframing also changes how we understand progress. A young adult who learns to recognize emotional overload and to request a break has made progress. A person who discovers that full-time employment is destabilizing yet succeeds with a structured part-time schedule has learned something important about self-management. An individual who chooses to live with family while working, participating in the community, maintaining relationships, and contributing to household responsibilities may be functioning more successfully than someone who lives alone yet remains isolated and overwhelmed. Success must be considered in relation to the individual's values, capacities, opportunities, needs, and quality of life.
From Independence to Resilient Adult Adaptation
The framework can ultimately be summarized as an interaction among several essential developmental forces. Strengths and self-knowledge combine with self-regulation and executive capacities. Self-determination provides direction. Real-world experience converts knowledge into competence. Relationships provide belonging and resources for coping. Appropriate environmental supports allow the person's capacities to be expressed. None of these develops instantly. They require time, practice, and opportunity. The result we seek is resilient adult adaptation, the capacity to meet changing demands, recognize challenges, mobilize internal and external resources, solve problems, recover from setbacks, and continue moving toward a meaningful life.
This requires a fundamental shift in the questions we ask autistic adolescents. We should not ask only what skills they lack. We should ask what strengths can be developed and applied, identify the environments in which they function best and why, examine which supports increase competence rather than simply reduce difficulty, deliberately create experiences that produce mastery, and identify decisions the young person can begin making now rather than waiting until adulthood.
References
- Anderson, K. A., Sosnowy, C., Kuo, A. A., & Shattuck, P. T. (2018). Transition of individuals with autism to adulthood: A review of qualitative studies. Pediatrics, 141(Supplement 4), S318–S327. https://doi.org/10.1542/peds.2016-4300I
- Crompton, R. J., & Bond, C. (2022). The experience of transitioning to adulthood for young people on the autistic spectrum in the UK: A framework synthesis of current evidence using an ecosystemic model. Journal of Research in Special Educational Needs, 22(4), 309–322. https://doi.org/10.1111/1471-3802.12569
- Elster, N., & Parsi, K. (2020). Transitioning from adolescence to adulthood with autism spectrum disorder: An overview of planning and legal issues. Child and Adolescent Psychiatric Clinics of North America, 29(2), 399–408. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chc.2019.11.003
- Elster, N., & Parsi, K. (Eds.). (2022). Transitioning to adulthood with autism: Ethical, legal and social issues. Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-91487-5
- Goldstein, S., & Brooks, R. B. (2026). The power of resilience for autistic adults: Thriving in a neurotypical world. Springer. https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-032-09960-0
- Goldstein, S., & Ozonoff, S. (Eds.). (2018). Assessment of autism spectrum disorder (2nd ed.). Guilford Press. https://www.guilford.com/books/Assessment-of-Autism-Spectrum-Disorder/Goldstein-Ozonoff/9781462545964
- Hedley, D., Uljarević, M., Cameron, L., Halder, S., Richdale, A., & Dissanayake, C. (2017). Employment programmes and interventions targeting adults with autism spectrum disorder: A systematic review of the literature. Autism, 21(8), 929–941. https://doi.org/10.1177/1362361316661855
- Malik-Soni, N., Shaker, A., Luck, H., Mullin, A. E., Wiley, R. E., Lewis, M. E. S., Fuentes, J., & Frazier, T. W. (2022). Tackling healthcare access barriers for individuals with autism from diagnosis to adulthood. Pediatric Research, 91, 1028–1035. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41390-021-01465-y
- Moody, C. T., Factor, R. S., Gulsrud, A. C., Grantz, C. J., Tsai, K., Jolliffe, M., Rosen, N. E., McCracken, J. T., & Laugeson, E. A. (2022). A pilot study of PEERS® for Careers: A comprehensive employment-focused social skills intervention for autistic young adults in the United States. Research in Developmental Disabilities, 128, 104287. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ridd.2022.104287
- Pillay, Y., Brownlow, C., & March, S. (2022). Transition approaches for autistic young adults: A case series study. PLOS ONE, 17(5), e0267942. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0267942
- Roux, A. M., Chvasta, K., McLean, K. J., Carey, M., Perez Liz, G., Tomczuk, L., Lopez, K., Assing-Murray, E., Shattuck, P. T., & Shea, L. L. (2024). Challenges and opportunities in transitioning autistic individuals into adulthood. Pediatrics, 154(5), e2024067195. https://doi.org/10.1542/peds.2024-067195
- Roux, A. M., Rast, J. E., Garfield, T., Anderson, K. A., & Shattuck, P. T. (2023). Evidence from the Autism Transitions Research Project (2017–2022): Capstone review and services research recommendations. Autism Research, 16(3), 480–496. https://doi.org/10.1002/aur.2890
- White, L. M., Adams, D., Simpson, K., & Malone, S. A. (2025). Transitioning on from secondary school for autistic students: A systematic review. Autism in Adulthood, 7(4). https://doi.org/10.1089/aut.2023.0193
- Wisner-Carlson, R., Uram, S., & Flis, T. (2020). The transition to adulthood for young people with autism spectrum disorder. Child and Adolescent Psychiatric Clinics of North America, 29(2), 345–358. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chc.2019.12.002
- Wolpe, S. M., Lee, M. N., Koenig, J., Tien, I., McLean, K., et al. (2025). Acceptance, social preparation, and psychoeducation: Autistic young adults’ recommendations for transition to adulthood. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10803-025-07041-1
Copyright © 2026 Sam Goldstein, Ph.D. All rights reserved. No part of this paper may be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, stored, or published in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without the prior written permission of the author, except for brief quotations used for scholarly, educational, or review purposes with appropriate attribution.
