~127~"Parenting Autistic Teens: Bridge the High‑School‑to‑Adult Gap – Insights with Susan Tatum"

www.cherylpankhurst.com

#autism #autismteens #highschooltransition

In this power‑packed conversation, host Cheryl sits down with Susan Tatem, CEO of Bright Path for Autism, best‑selling author, TV host, and autism advocate. Susan shares her hard‑won wisdom on the most daunting transition of all—high school graduation → adulthood for teens on the spectrum.

Together they unpack:

1. Why the “abyss” exists – the hidden developmental, social, and systemic hurdles that hit at age 17.
2. Three must‑do actions for parents of 8th‑grade kids – a simple roadmap to start planning now.
3. Real‑world strategies to build social connections, functional life‑skills, and employment pathways.
4. The “Swiss‑cheese” model – customizing support plans that fit each child’s unique holes.
5. How to locate & lock‑in scarce resources (special‑needs housing vouchers, community programs, volunteer hubs).
6. Power of parent networking – why your next conversation could change your child’s future.

Whether you’re a single parent, a caregiver, or a support‑worker, this episode gives you actionable steps you can put into motion today.

Susan Tatem - Audio.wav
Generated using Transcript LOL
=========================================

Speaker 1
00:01 - 00:35
Welcome to another episode of Parenting Teens Advice Redefined, where we empower parents of teens with autism to navigate the challenges of adolescence and beyond. Today, I am thrilled to be joined by Susan Tatum, CEO of Bright Path for Autism. Susan is an autism advocate, coach, speaker, international bestseller, TV host of Puzzled Parents, and YouTuber Puzzled Parents Unlocked. Her mission is simple but powerful to educate, empower, and elevate families because every piece matters.

Speaker 1
00:36 - 00:42
Welcome, Susan. I'm so happy to have you. Thank you so much. I'm really excited to be here.

Speaker 1
00:42 - 00:55
So anytime I can help spread the word and advocate and educate for autism, I'm just thrilled. So thank you so much. Thank you. I want to dive in, first of all, to your story.

Speaker 1
00:55 - 01:03
What's the point of the website? What's the point of the books? Who are you and how did you get here? Sure, sure.

Speaker 1
01:03 - 01:39
So I have been in healthcare for 30 years doing physical therapy, but I was a single mom with a daughter with autism that I raised by myself. And so my heart and passion has always been in the autism community and I'm retiring from healthcare and I really wanted to have an impact for the autism community and help Just elevate them. I'm of the mindset that we all rise together. So if I can help them rise, then as a community, as a world, we're going to be a better place.

Speaker 1
01:39 - 02:10
And that's my mission. What I do is I work with parents. to try and help bridge the gap for when kids graduate school so that they're not kind of left in the abyss. But beyond that the books and the speaking on stages and things like that is I really want to just educate people that aren't in the autism community that are neurotypical and don't really Understand what we go through I want to help bridge that gap because there's a huge

Speaker 1
02:10 - 02:54
gap between people who get it and people who don't Yeah, 100 i'd love to And there's so many paths we can talk about having kids with autism, but there's the one specific one We wanted to nail today is that whole that gap between high school and adulthood and what does that, I mean, that looks scary for any parent. How scary is it for a parent whose kid has autism? And, you know, I even think too, you know, our kids, you know, our eight to below kids will be graduating, they're 17, they're 18, you know, hitting all the milestones they're supposed to hit at that age, blah, blah, blah, everything on track.

Speaker 1
02:56 - 03:42
But, you know the expectations we have of our kids with autism and that whole brain development age difference and kids with ADHD like we are expecting our kids at 17 to be doing things that our 17-year-old stuff, but really, at some point, they're 12, they're 13, they're 14, and in every capacity, parents expecting their kids to be cleaning the house and driving the car, they're 13, they're not 17. So how brightening is it, and what does that gap look like for parents who have kids with autism? It can really be terrifying.

Speaker 1
03:42 - 04:15
And the terrifying thing is the difference between your 17 year old neurotypical child and your 17 year old kid with autism is not just what you were talking about, which is a developmental delay where their chronological age might be 17, but their developmental age might be 13, 14, like you're saying. But on top of that, they've got their other challenges, the social difficulties. There can be so many things.

Speaker 1
04:15 - 04:48
Autism never lives alone. There's always layers. The difference between having a 17-year-old neurotypical and a 17-year-old with autism the 17 year old yes they have to go out to the world and make their way but the child with autism not only has to do that, but then on top of all their other challenges, they have to go into a world that is not designed for them, that is not accepting of them, that thinks they are broken or less.

Speaker 1
04:49 - 05:35
You know, my thing is different, but not less. And so the challenge is even greater than you would see and so the risks are higher the chances that they're going to fail are more and failure for them is going to look different than failure for a neurotypical person because You know, like you were saying, there's different expectations and in school and things like that, they've got supports, you've got the IEP, you've got accommodations, you've got all these different things, structure, schedules, you know, balance. When you graduate, that's all gone.

Speaker 1
05:37 - 05:57
they don't have to get up at a certain time and be at a certain place and go through a day with a schedule and a time and a little bell that tells you when to move from here to there. It's, hey, here's life, woo-hoo. What do you do with that? How do you have a plan for the neurotypical 17-year-old?

Speaker 1
05:57 - 06:13
Maybe they're gonna go off to college in the fall, they get a job or whatever. They kind of have a direction and a plan. a little bit of supports from that for their parents and things. But what are you going to do for that abyss?

Speaker 1
06:14 - 06:40
My thing is, I want to get the parents early. I want to start in middle school. because we're so busy focusing on, okay, we gotta get through this year, what accommodations do we need this year? We gotta get this homework done, we gotta get these grades, we gotta do this, we gotta do that, that we're just getting through that day, that week, that moment, and we're not picking our head up and looking up and going, where is this leading?

Speaker 1
06:40 - 07:05
Where is this going? How is this moment going to shape my child into what they need to be to have a life that is both fulfilling and independent when it's done. Because that's every parent's job is to prepare your child for adulthood and for the world. That is so profound.

Speaker 1
07:05 - 07:28
Yeah. Yeah, we need to start doing that early. My daughter sat on a waiting list for services for 10 years. So imagine if I had started that when she graduated and she graduated at 22, because it's a long story, but imagine starting at 22 and having to wait 10 years.

Speaker 1
07:30 - 07:46
Oh my gosh. If I hadn't started when she was young and been prepared for that, she would not be living independently in her house that she rents. She would not be having the special needs housing voucher. She wouldn't have the Medicaid waiver.

Speaker 1
07:46 - 07:59
She wouldn't have gone to the program that helped teach her how to drive and all this stuff. You have to look up. Yeah. So let's go to middle school.

Speaker 1
08:00 - 08:20
You're sitting in a meeting with a parent who is, you know, grade eight, what do you, what are the top three things you're going to say to them in order to get them prepared, not just for high school, but to look up? What, what would you say? This is the absolute no brain. This is what you need to do.

Speaker 1
08:20 - 08:48
And I know there's going to be a list of a hundred, but let's, let's pick a few that were really like, if parents are sitting here in grade eight going, I have a kid with autism. Oh, I'm going to write this one down. Yeah, I think I touched on a little bit, but I'll definitely kind of pull it together for you. What you have to do is ask the question, how does this fit into the bigger picture?

Speaker 1
08:48 - 09:04
Why does my child need that? What is the benefit going to be? I'll give you an example. When I put my daughter back in public school after homeschooling her, she was 15 and they wanted to put her in 10th grade.

Speaker 1
09:04 - 09:28
And she was more like on a seventh, eighth grade level. And I was like, no, no way. Long story short, I ended up getting her in seventh grade. And when she got to the high school, They were very insistent, oh, well, she has to take this class in science and social studies and dah, dah, dah, dah, dah.

Speaker 1
09:28 - 09:40
She has multiple learning disabilities. And I said, absolutely not. She needs math, but not just algebra and whatever. That's not gonna be her.

Speaker 1
09:40 - 10:18
She'll never be a mathematician. What she needs to know is, How much is 10% off this if I go to the store and it's on sale? If I have $200 and I need to budget for this, this, and this, how do I do that? manage what we used to call balance our checkbook but now it's manage our account yeah yeah you know how does what i'm doing now plug in to that bigger picture function function function function turn out tune out all the noise and it's all about function how does this

Speaker 1
10:19 - 10:54
Log into that independent fulfilling functional adult that i'm trying to facilitate That is so good That is so good So and I mean, I know that you know social skills can be a big challenge How do we help our kids with autism? You know, and I mean, it's it's the same in middle school, I'm sure. But when they get to grade nine, it's all about social. It's all about those connections.

Speaker 1
10:54 - 11:09
And there's nothing harder for an educator to see a kid with autism sitting in the corner, not by choice. Sometimes it's by choice, not by choice. Right. And I know that, you know, social skills.

Speaker 1
11:09 - 11:27
I tried to explain this to teachers at the same time is they may never embody those social skills. They may never learn them, but they can memorize them. Yeah. And so tell me how, you know, my kid's in grade eight.

Speaker 1
11:28 - 11:32
She has autism. She's going to grade nine. There's all these different classes. There's all these different people.

Speaker 1
11:32 - 12:00
How do I help her or him try to even have those basic social skills so that they feel like they are connected in some way, shape or form? Yeah, that is such a huge, huge question. And you're so right about that. There's that saying, if you've met 1 person with autism, you've met 1 person with autism.

Speaker 1
12:01 - 12:38
I don't have a magic quote or formula. It's very much about the individual person and what their strengths and weaknesses are. I think overall, just trying to have somewhere where they fit. uh and for my daughter there wasn't any local support like that so my friend and I actually created a support group for the local families with kids that were in our situation and we had parties we would do outings and events and we did have some little kind

Speaker 1
12:38 - 13:04
of breakout session little classes and things but we would try to work on that in group settings where All the kids were struggling all the kids were dealing and so we let them be themselves But everybody would kind of guide, you know, and you have those talks um, there's a there's another saying An apple is an apple is an apple is an apple. It's not apple pie. It's not applesauce.

Speaker 1
13:04 - 13:36
It's not apple juice and Although you can try to teach social skills with social stories and things like that I personally, my personal opinion, my speech therapy friends are going to kill me, but my personal opinion is that. That's not going to really work because. they can read it and give you the right answer all day long. Living it out with other people in the situation is a whole other thing.

Speaker 1
13:36 - 13:59
I think that lived experience and teaching it in an environment where it's okay and acceptable will help carry over into that school setting. You know, I was very, very blessed. My daughter came to me And she said she wanted to do the Navy Junior ROTC at the high school when she went to ninth grade. And I was going, are you sure?

Speaker 1
13:59 - 14:26
I had my doubts. But she actually did really, really well. And because she was kind of in that group. She kind of found a little place where she belonged And even though you know, they were they know she's quirky and different things like that Because everybody's wearing the same uniform and going through the drills and doing all that stuff together It really made her feel like she

Speaker 1
14:26 - 14:46
belonged. Oh, yeah And so, you know, if your kid's into art, let them, you know, bond with the art kids or, you know, theater or something that they have in common. You know, high school's hard enough, even for neurotypicals. I mean, back when I was in school, you had the geeks, you had the art students.

Speaker 1
14:46 - 15:15
I was a band geek, so I was in band, you know. There's all those little, little tribes in it. And just remind them it's okay to be who you are. You don't have to become somebody else to make anybody else happy Yeah, you know you have your gifts and talents all on your own and that's for anybody not just for the neurodivergent but You know, you have something to offer and it's up to them to see it

Speaker 1
15:15 - 15:30
or not and so important that it can just be you know, we had a couple of kids coming in to grade nine and they were just All they wanted to do is a chess club. Is there a chess club? I want to have a chess club. They started their own chess club.

Speaker 1
15:30 - 15:40
Like, you know, give them the, and they could, because they were the expert in the matter. Boy, they were good. They were great at teaching. They were great at making sure people were there.

Speaker 1
15:40 - 15:50
I'd like me, they ran it like a bang. Like it was just amazing. And so offering those opportunities, I think like, you know, create them. If you don't have one, create one.

Speaker 1
15:50 - 16:22
I think that's brilliant. I'd love to, yeah, I would love to ask, because I'm thinking now the school system, from your experience, what are the really significant gaps that educators and or parents might overlook during like the transition? What are things, what are the nuances that they might just be missing that our kids with autism really need to have? That's a good question.

Speaker 1
16:22 - 16:44
I think the nuances are that individualized package. Every child is different. I'm a visual person, so I think of a giant block of Swiss cheese. and you cut out these slices, and it's all Swiss cheese, and it's all going to the same purpose.

Speaker 1
16:45 - 17:04
But if you compare one to the other, even right after the other, there's holes in different places. They're bigger here, smaller there. This one doesn't have that hole. So trying to really create a standardized plan for everybody, it's that square peg in a round hole.

Speaker 1
17:04 - 17:14
It's not gonna fit. You have to find what's gonna work for them. What are their interests? You have to find that individuals, what my advocate used to call currency.

Speaker 1
17:15 - 17:24
What's important to them? What are they interested in? Because if it's not interesting to them, they're gonna shut down. You're gonna get pushed back.

Speaker 1
17:24 - 17:32
They're not gonna do it. It's gonna be problems. They're gonna act up. But again, going back to my friend's son who loved fishing.

Speaker 1
17:33 - 17:47
Well, where does he work now? Where we live on the Chesapeake Bay, there's a lot of water around here. Works on a fishing boat. Happy as, you know, not to be punny, but happy as a clam, you know?

Speaker 1
17:48 - 17:57
Just really, really two things. One is knowing what the child is interested in. What do they want? What are they good at?

Speaker 1
17:57 - 18:37
And what will spark their interest so they'll want to do it? And then number two is, what resources are in that community that we can take advantage of, what businesses are out there that we can partner with. Doing volunteer work, that's another huge piece of it. Get your child out there, get them used to having to have a schedule, get them used to having responsibilities and answering to other people and just I'm not, I feel like I might not be answering your question, but these are things that I think are really important.

Speaker 1
18:37 - 18:49
Yeah, no. So, you know, making sure that number 1, you know, what their options are and if there aren't any create some. Yeah. Well, and you're right to get to the skills.

Speaker 1
18:49 - 19:02
I mean, to listen, I get so frustrated with teachers that say, you know, we've got kids on the spectrum. Oh, they're just doing that to get what they want. They they just want to get out of math. They just want to listen.

Speaker 1
19:02 - 19:14
I would do anything to get out of math. So they're not different for me. And to point that out. We are all, we are all motivated to do the things that we love.

Speaker 1
19:14 - 19:32
This is why I have a podcast. This is why you are an advocate. This is why the kids, they want to game because they love to game and that's their thing. We don't all have the same thing But we all are motivated by what we love.

Speaker 1
19:32 - 19:53
So when I hear people say Things like oh, they're manipulating to get what they want damn straight. I do I manipulate my life to do what I love to do maybe in a different way But we all do. So when I hear adults kind of separate themselves from, well, don't you do that? Don't you do what you love to do?

Speaker 1
19:53 - 20:08
Like, I don't understand why this is a different bucket for you. I get a little bit, boom, about that little mama bear on. Yeah. That's like when my daughter was in second grade and she was crying under her desk every day.

Speaker 1
20:09 - 20:30
And I tried to get them to have her repeat second grade because she wasn't where she was supposed to be scholastically. And of course, I didn't know what I know now. I was kind of new at that and I was, oh, surely the school knows best and they know what they're doing and so on. And she said to me, well, it's all behavioral.

Speaker 1
20:31 - 20:37
If she were to repeat second grade, she wouldn't learn anything. It's all behavioral. There's nothing going on with her. She's just doing it.

Speaker 1
20:38 - 20:51
And I'm thinking to myself, there's gotta be a reason. I mean, I didn't know, I had never heard Asperger's before. I didn't know that much about autism. She was diagnosed with developmental delay and ADHD.

Speaker 1
20:53 - 21:06
But to me, logically, there had to be an explanation for that. What's the underlying root of the problem? problem? What is this behavior trying to show us?

Speaker 1
21:06 - 21:33
What are they trying to communicate? What skills do they need in order to help themselves de-escalate before it gets to that level? And that right there is something that, especially in high school, that when you get to your and your therapies and things like that, that is something that can be broken down into smaller pieces and be worked on teaching them. Okay.

Speaker 1
21:33 - 22:09
you know green behavior yellow behavior red behavior when you start getting up here let's do these things to try to bring it back down and then getting the teachers in on that so everybody's on the same page and they can recognize oh well you know Jeremy's over here and he's I'm seeing this this is what we need to do we need to turn that and there's little things and like um If the teachers are able to do those little things, then it benefits everybody. Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 1
22:09 - 22:29
And I love even the post it. No, I mean, my kids used to carry different colored post-it notes and put one on their desk if they were feeling a little elevated. You know, language, in my experience with kids on the spectrum, and ADHD, language is the enemy. You say as little as possible.

Speaker 1
22:30 - 23:10
You don't need to, as parents or teachers, first you do this, and then I want you to do this, and then this, and I don't understand why you're, instead of washroom, Okay, like you know, it just becomes an enemy So these post-it notes and different ways to communicate again Like you said the behavior is just a way of them saying I can't meet your expectation Or I can't meet my expectation and this is the only way I can tell you no kid in grade two Wants to be under their desk crying No kid in grade nine wants to be flipping desks over and running down halls. No kid wants that.

Speaker 1
23:10 - 23:36
They are not manipulating at all. They don't want it. You can never convince me that this is just something I want to do to get out of math. Well, and you go back to that, how is this tying into that bigger picture of us as teachers, as parents, as therapists, our job is to prepare them for the world.

Speaker 1
23:37 - 24:07
How is this situation tying into that big picture? And maybe we need to look at their IUP. Maybe they don't need calculus or something. Maybe what they need is know let's go through that behavioral training let's come up with strategies and the strategies will change yeah yeah you know when my daughter was younger i had a timer that when you turned it up it was red and as the time went down

Speaker 1
24:07 - 24:22
the red went down and when it got to all white times with the phone away. She got over that strategy, didn't work. It wasn't as effective. I had made charts that were laminated, that I had pictures and words like, brush your hair, brush your teeth.

Speaker 1
24:22 - 24:42
So I had a picture of a hairbrush and a toothbrush, and she had to move the icon from one column to the other. It was Velcro, so it was tactile, it was auditory, it was visual. After several years and she progressed, she didn't need them anymore. So how can we get 9th grade turns the desks over from point A to point B.

Speaker 1
24:43 - 24:48
What does he need? Yeah. Is it the sticky note system? Is it something else?

Speaker 1
24:48 - 25:00
Yeah. That's what the job is. It's not make him behave. It's Teach him I actually said that to a teacher once I said You're the teacher.

Speaker 1
25:00 - 25:40
It's your job to teach her Yeah, yeah, yeah I would love to I mean we talk about You know that that gap I would love to ask one more questions about And I'm sure Canadians might be different than U.S., but in your experience, as high school ends and services are ending, how do parents tap into more resources, more funding? Do you have direct... Places that they can go is there something we can put in the show notes where they can find?

Speaker 1
25:40 - 26:07
So they're not like you said left left in the abyss. I mean Sorry parents much as we'd love to we are not going to live forever Right, and so we need to line these things up. So how can they access these resources and supports? sure one of the big things is to network with other parents and because that's where you're gonna learn the most knowledge.

Speaker 1
26:07 - 26:33
And I've actually had doctors tell me that over the years. I learned so much more about the resource, and that is actually one of the things that I teach in my, I have a class, I live in Virginia, that's where I raised my daughter. And so I know the Virginia resources inside and out, and I have a whole class on it. But I have friends who are from New York, And so they know all about the New York system's ins and outs and things like that.

Speaker 1
26:34 - 26:47
So network, network, network. You know, if I can't help you and I don't know the answer to your question, I might know somebody who does. Yeah. You know, and you know, I have people that I.

Speaker 1
26:48 - 27:17
collaborate with who are financial experts. They work with all kinds of families, but for kids with autism and their parents, they will actually teach you how to create that pathway so that when you are no more, your child is going to be okay. That was a big question for me, especially as a single mom. What's going to happen to my kid if something happens to me?

Speaker 1
27:18 - 27:39
I had to look at where she's going to live, and I was able to get her a special needs housing voucher. I found out about that by networking. In fact, special needs housing vouchers, there's only a certain number of them here in Virginia, so they don't come up every day. They only come up if somebody no longer qualifies or if somebody passes away.

Speaker 1
27:40 - 27:57
You really have to keep your ear to the ground on that. One of my friends from my support group that we had created called me and said, Hey, I just got my kid a special needs housing voucher. I think there's a couple more open. You might want to, you know, network network.

Speaker 1
27:57 - 28:15
I would have never known that they were open at that particular time. Yeah. If she, and there were only three in the whole state and I got her one dumped on it because I networked and my friend called me and said, Hey, You know, same thing, there's this program here. They go all over the world.

Speaker 1
28:15 - 28:35
I'm not sure if they go to Canada, but because we live on the coast, the Atlantic coast, there's this program called Surfer's Healing, where kids with autism can go learn surfing in the ocean for free. And so to sign up for that, it's really tight. It fills up fast. So what do you do, your network?

Speaker 1
28:36 - 28:49
Oh, so I heard this is opening. Let's get on, you know, if I can get in, I'll get my kid, I'll get your kid, you know, same thing as an adult network, learn your resources. You can look online now too, especially online. There's a lot of resources there.

Speaker 1
28:49 - 29:19
One of the things I'm developing on my website is a resource page. I haven't launched it yet because I'm still compiling some resources. So looking at things like that, what I would love to do is eventually have a state-to-state as I learned the different states where you can actually go in and I'll have the information like if you're in New York, if you're in Virginia, different things like that. Start early, don't wait.

Speaker 1
29:20 - 29:30
If you happen to wait, if you're already, let's say your kid's already in the city, already graduated, it's not too late. Yeah, love it. That's amazing. Thank you.

Speaker 1
29:30 - 29:42
Susan, I'm so grateful for you. I think we need to do a sequel. I think there's so many paths we could go on, you know, from parenting to educating to advocating. I think we need to do a sequel.

Speaker 1
29:42 - 29:59
In the meantime, I thank you so much for your passion and your expertise. I'm going to put all of Susan Tatum in the show notes for everybody. And again, thank you for for joining me, Susan. Thank you so much for having me.

Speaker 1
29:59 - 30:22
I enjoyed it. Thank you for listening to another episode. I hope you loved this one as much as I did. And I just wanted to share something with you because, you know, parenting teens is not just about managing these challenges that we talk about on all the episodes.

Speaker 1
30:22 - 30:49
It's also about evolving alongside them. And I'm Cheryl and not only the host of this podcast but I'm also the creator of Insight to Impact, coaching and consulting. And I help you moms of teens reconnect with your true selves so you can lead with purpose, you can parent with clarity, you can create stronger, more meaningful relationships with your kids. Because here's the truth.

Speaker 1
30:49 - 31:01
The transformation starts with you. Together, we will break free from the stress and overwhelm. We will rediscover your power. We will create the life and the family dynamic you always dreamed of.

Speaker 1
31:01 - 31:13
If you're ready to start this journey, let's do it. You might just not recognize your life in the next 90 days. It all starts with a call. There's no pitch.

Speaker 1
31:13 - 31:25
There's no pressure, just a call to see if I can help. We'll talk about your goals. We'll talk about what's making you feel stuck and what might be getting in your way. And everything you need to connect with me is in the show notes.

Speaker 1
31:25 - 31:39
Again, I'm Cheryl. Thank you so much for joining me here on Parenting Teens, advice redefined for today's complex world and the creator of Insight to Impact Coaching and Consulting. Have a great day.