is. reporter: the burden of caring for eric and nick will fall almost entirely on their families especially on their mothers and you re about to see what happens as they prepare for that life changing moment. reporter: in a sign of just how much progress nick has made his family is able to take him to his favorite place on earth, disneyworld. coming up in respect i think it s a cause for celebration, because he s come such a long way. reporter: but will nick and eric s progress continue without help? without purposeful things to do he will fall back into the autism world. copd makes it hard to breathe. so to breathe better, i go with anoro. go your own way copd tries to say, go this way. i say, i ll go my own way with anoro. go your own way once-daily anoro contains
that nick collects. that is about $3. right? nick donates the money he makes to the charity make-a-w h make-a-wish. he had make-a-wish a number of years ago and that was life-changing for him. thank you so much. not everybody works a paying job, but it doesn t mean that they don t contribute to their community. and right now, we re teaching him how do that with something as simple as collecting bottles and passing the money on to charity. for eric, the period of isolation and stagnation he went through after leaving the rebecca school is coming to an end. he has recently learned a new skill. he is taking the subway by himself. a big step on the path to becoming more independent. what are you going to do this weekend? and instead of weekly dinner
they lost when they turned 21. nick has had an especially bumpy road after depending solely on his mom for months, he finally got help in the form of a state funded program that sends aides to his whom and thhome and his to break up in order to keep his services and not long after, another change. he an bankrubruptly loses some services again. our experience when he graduated was falling off a cliff? i said to my husband this was the quich lents equivalent of gd off a cliff. new york state agencies put new conditions on how government funding could be used to pay for programs like nick s. he loses valuable members of his team overnight and quickly spins out of control. he is falling apart. he is a mess. and i need help and i need help like two months ago. after an episode of extreme
alright, eric i ll see you, man. reporter: eric gets on the school bus for the very last time, headed toward an uncertain future. while eric s transition was deliberately unceremonious, nick s is much more of a celebration. we re going to graduation? reporter: although nick hasn t been in a regular classroom for most of his life, he s participating in the school district s graduation ceremony at his parents request. his teacher holly stovall along with his sister tasha support him as he receives his diploma. just a few years ago, a crowd like this would have been overwhelming and stressful for nick. nickolas joseph kubicsko
and it s a tsunami of children who are aging to adult life. do you stop having autism when you turn 21? that is one of the general misconceptions about autism is that it only affects children. look, we re gonna play catch! reporter: the clock is ticking on nicholas kubicsko s services too. the long island teenager has just months left before he turns 21 and loses access to resources his mother says have changed his, and her, life. i never gave up on nick. i always knew that there was more to him. i knew that he was in there. i knew he was trying and when we supported him at home, i kept getting glimpses. i knew where that young man was. reporter: finding a way to reach nick has been a challenge. he used to live in a 24 hour residential treatment center. but lenore says the staff had trouble with nick s obsessive behavior. it was torture for him to