Mini Training Series: Ep 2 Preventing Running Behaviors

Hi, I'm Sasha Long from The Autism Helper, and in today's mini training series, I'm going to talk about how I deal with running behavior in the classroom. So in the ABA or special ed world, sometimes this behavior is called eloping or elopement, but today I'm just gonna call it running and keep it real simple. This behavior can be potentially really dangerous and really scary if you are a teacher or a parent or a paraprofessional who's in this situation with a student that is running out of the classroom, you know how stressful it can be. The number one priority for our classrooms at all times is keeping all of our kids safe, and it's a lot harder to keep our kids safe when they're outside of our room. So we want to make sure that we deal with this behavior really carefully. So first of all, it's important to remember that all behavior is communication, even negative behaviors or challenging behaviors like running. So it's important to think about what this behavior is communicating. This child is telling you something and they're telling you something in, in a very strong way. They are running out of your classroom. They're running out of your classroom to get attention, to escape a task, to find someone or something in the school, or maybe a combination of some of those things. So it's important to really think about what the behavior is communicating and first and foremost conduct a thorough thorough FBA to make sure that you're looking at the function of this behavior, why it's occurring. Once you figure out why this behavior is occurring, you can start to teach a replacement behavior. So you can teach the student a positive communicative way to express those same wants and needs. So if they want attention, we can be teaching them an appropriate way to ask for attention instead of running out of the class. But because this behavior can be so dangerous and that process of conducting your FBA and teaching replacement behaviors might take some time, there are some important steps that you're gonna want to do in the meantime to ensure safety of the student and get your staff on the same page with how you're dealing with this challenging behavior. So your first thing when you're having a student that is running out of the classroom and engaging in this behavior is your number one goal is to keep them in your class. You want to keep them in those four walls because that's what you can control. The second that student's foot hits the hallway, all bets are off. And once that student is halfway down the hallway, you're likely going to be chasing them. Yes, you are reinforcing that behavior. You are giving them what they want in that moment, but safety is number one. So you're gonna have to make sure that kid doesn't run outside of your school and onto the street. So you're gonna have to go get them. So in order to avoid that, you want to do everything in your power to keep them in your room. Your room needs to be a Las Vegas casino. They have everything they need right there. Why would they possibly want to leave? So make sure you work really on making your classroom a reinforcing place. I always use the analogy that your classroom should be a chocolate chip cookie because who doesn't love a chocolate chip cookie? So really work on building in all of that reinforcement into your classroom, into your schedule, into the activities in your room. Also, you want your class to be a maze, also like a Las Vegas casino. You want to make sure that your student never has a direct path from wherever they're working to the door. When I am in a situation like this, I literally take the student's schedule and I walk around myself and I go to every single center, every single part of their day, and make sure there's no parts of the day that I forgot about. Maybe when they're putting their homework away, or when they're going to their locker, or the reading center. Maybe there's some part of their day that is really close to the door, or there's a direct path right to the door. You want to make sure you avoid this. Your classroom should be maze-like. There should be obstacles in place. I'm not suggesting breaking any fire codes or doing anything sketchy like putting a lock on the door, but arranging desks and shelves so there's no straight shot. You just want to give yourself a few extra seconds. Sometimes even 4 extra seconds for the student to have to run around a shelf is enough time for you to get your attention together and get— make sure that student is staying in your classroom. With all things in our classroom, it takes a village, and you need your classroom assistants more than ever in this endeavor and making sure your student stays safe. So you need a really clear schedule of who's in charge of this student at all times. I highly suggest making a schedule on Excel that shows exactly minute by minute for your whole day who is in charge of that child so there's no miscommunications and it's very clear and concrete to everyone in the room who's supposed to be with that child. You don't want to run into a situation where the child does run out of the classroom and no one is sure who exactly was in charge at that time. You also want to have a plan for your staff on how that handoff looks. When the student is transitioning from morning circle time to a paraprofessional run station, who's facilitating that transition and when does kind of the shift of power happen? When does it go from one teacher to another teacher on who exactly is in charge? Because sometimes transitions can be really challenging for our kids, and that might be something that might be causing some of those running behaviors as well. So make sure that even during those transitions, there's a clear schedule of who's in charge at each time. So obviously we're doing everything in our power to make sure our students don't leave the classroom, but we all know things can happen. We have a lot of students in our room, we don't always have the amount of staff that we should have, and, you know, things might happen and the student might run out of the classroom. So how do you respond then? It's a tricky situation we're in because we know the student is communicating something by running out of the room, and by us chasing them, we are reinforcing that response. We're kind of giving in. But in that moment, safety is most important. So yes, we are going to go make sure that student doesn't get outside the building, doesn't get lost in the building, doesn't run onto a busy street. Course. So we are going to chase that student, and it's for that student probably really fun. They're getting to play a game of tag in the middle of the school day down the hallway with people that probably wouldn't be playing tag with them. So they're probably having a great time. It's important to have a really clear plan with your staff on how you respond when the student runs out the building. We don't want this game of tag to turn into this, you know, class-wide game of tag where half the room is running out of the class. And we also don't want 3 staff members running after the student. So have a really clear plan on when the student does run, who is responsible for going after the student, who's responsible for the rest of the students in the room. If you know that the student maybe always goes to a certain part of the school or to a certain classroom or a certain place, make sure one of those staff members goes there first. Maybe you chase the student and another staff member goes to that certain location. I once had a student that ran out of the room a lot and he always ran to the music class for the keyboard. Simple solution: we got a keyboard in our class and that slowed that behavior down. But we always had one staff member that went right to the music room so we were kind of there when he was gonna— when he was running there. So make sure there's a really clear plan in place. In that plan, also make sure that you minimize the attention you're giving when you're chasing that student. There's likely an attention component to this behavior. The student is running outside of the class. It's a pretty loud and dramatic behavior, so there might be some function of attention. And yes, we are providing attention by running after them, but we can minimize the amount of attention we give them. We can, once we find the student, lead them back to the class with no eye contact, no yelling, no lectures, no "you shouldn't have done that," "you've known better." We don't need 3 adults there all reprimanding them at once, we're just kind of causing a bigger scene and giving more attention where it doesn't need to be. So you can quietly reroute the student back to the room, go back exactly to the same task that they had left from, and just kind of regroup and go on with the day as normal. So along with having a plan for when the student does run out of the classroom, you also need a plan for the worst-case scenario. I think we all avoid making these plans. I know I do because we don't want to ever think that something like that could happen, but we need a plan in place for what we're going to do if we lose the student in the school, if they get out of our eyesight, if they get out of the classroom and we notice maybe a minute or two later so we don't know exactly which direction they ran. We need a plan in place for that. You need to work with your administration and especially with your security guards on how you can all be on the same page for this worst-case scenario. You need to know where all the exits in your building are. This seems really obvious, but in some really old school buildings, there's a lot of exits. There's a lot of hidden exits in the basement or on the first floor or in the, you know, furnace room, things like that. So you want to make sure you know where all those exits are so you can be checking them. You also probably want a system of walkie-talkies among your school. Some schools already have this system set up, but if yours doesn't, I would definitely approach your administration about getting your security guards, your administrators, and maybe some classroom teachers that are near some of the exits, walkie-talkies. So if you're in that emergency worst-case situation where you don't know exactly where your student went, you don't know which direction they ran, you can walkie-talkie and do an all-call. So you could have 8 people looking for that student at that second instead of just you and your classroom assistant running around as the only ones looking for him. So I know it kind of— you don't want to think it's ever gonna happen, but just have that plan in place. Just in case it ever does. These behaviors can be really tricky to deal with. If you have a student or you're a parent and your child engages in these behaviors, you definitely don't need a gym membership because you are probably tired and running all the time. Those cute wedges that you bought are in your closet collecting dust because you wear gym shoes to school every day. And that's okay. This behavior, even though it seems like it might be extreme right now, you can definitely reduce these behaviors by figuring out why they're occurring and teaching an appropriate replacement behavior and consistently reinforcing that replacement behavior. But in the meantime, I highly recommend using these tips to make sure your classroom is safe, the environment is set up so your student is staying in the room, and your staff is really prepared for how to handle situations where the student does run or an emergency situation happens. I hope you found these tips helpful on how to deal with running behaviors in your classroom. Please follow us on Facebook or sign up for our newsletter to check out the other editions of our mini video training series as they come out.