If you have a runner in your classroom, you don’t need a gym membership and have long ago put away those cute wedges. Every time the door opens you head jerks around to make sure it isn’t your little guy. The starbucks barista has your venti triple shot ready for you every morning before you get there. A lot of us have been there. From our kid’s perspective, running is effective. Whether it’s to get attention, escape a task, or find that keyboard in the music teachers room – it works most of the time. When looking at these behaviors, we of course want to analyze the function (or the why) behind the behavior when developing interventions. Interventions will definitely include teaching some type of replacement behavior. Today let’s also look at what else you can be doing while these interventions start to take shape.
Running is a scary behavior and potentially dangerous behavior because your student could get outside of the school. He could get lost, hit by a car, or walk into a stranger’s home. If your child or student has these types of behaviors, your mind has definitely gone to these worst case scenarios. I remember losing sleep regularly thinking about a student who had high frequency running behavior and stressing like crazy over what would happen if he ever got out of the school.
This is really the golden rule when it comes to runners. Do whatever you can to keep them in your room. Once that foot gets one inch outside your door, all bets are off. Once they are outside your room, you are chasing them and they are loving it. You’ve completely reinforced the inappropriate behavior but you had no choice. You had to keep them safe. Some schools may have systems set up with different staff at different spots in the hallway or building so you can avoid that. But unfortunately many of our classrooms don’t have that much staff to do that. The number one goal is keeping them safe, so do whatever you have to do to get them once they leave your room. But the goal is avoiding that. The goal is keeping them in your room where you can be teaching replacement behaviors.
In the effort to keep them in your room, think obstacles. Go through your student’s schedule and make sure that at every single point of the day there is not a direct pathway to the door. When I do behavior consults, the teacher and I literally do this together. We walk around the room and go to every single spot the student will be at. Sometimes you forget about a specific center or time of day when the student is very close to the door. You classroom may look like a maze. That’s okay. That’s actually good. A maze means it will take your student 4 seconds instead of 2 seconds to get to the door and the extra 2 seconds may be enough to prevent that escape. Use furniture and dividers to create zig zag pathways around your room. I know it’s tempting to do something potentially unsafe like put a lock on the door – but it’s majorly breaking fire code so steer clear of that. If you have two doors in your room, block one up completely so you only have to worry about one.
Have a super clear and straightforward schedule of who is in charge of this student at all times of day. Make sure the transition handoff is clear. Clarify with staff what they should do if they need to go to the bathroom or get up to get a pencil when working with this student. Make sure the goal is clear to everyone – keep him in the room.
Sometimes we are doing everything right, working on analyzing the function of the behavior, teaching a replacement response, added in loads of preventative interventions keep the student in your classroom – and life happens and you blink and your student is halfway down the hallway. As we talked about, yes you are going to run after him to get him because above everything safety is important. But minimize the attention that goes into this. Picture two scenarios: 1 – Johnny runs down the hallway. Three adults start running after him, one of them yelling. They catch up to him. One adult yells to the other, “got him.” Another adult, starts lecturing Johnny on we he shouldn’t be running. The three adults walk him back together talking amongst themselves about how fast they are getting. They re-enter the classroom and announce to everyone in the room loudly, “he one got to the end of the hallway.” Basically it’s a circus. I see this ALL the time. And it’s unintentional. None of those adults wake up thinking let’s turn Johnny’s behaviors into a parade today, but it happens. We get scared, adrenaline is rushing, and we don’t have a clear plan in place. Let’s rework this scenario. Johnny runs. One adult makes eye contact with another adult in the classroom and says, “I’m on it.” One adult runs after him, another waits in the doorway of the classroom to watch. When the adult gets him, she says nothing and walks him back to the classroom. He goes back to the exact task he was doing before without any eye contact or talking/lecturing. Attention was minimal. Attention may be a function for many of these behaviors so even though we have to give attention by chasing we can minimize the magnitude of the attention.
Seem obvious but I worked in a school for ten years and honestly still didn’t know where all of the exits are. Really old buildings have a seemingly endless amount of hidden doors to the outside. I finally had the school engineer walk me around the basement so I could find them all. Once you know where the main exits are, you can divide and conquer with staff. If your student is running the direction of an exit, one staff member can run ahead to that door or go meet him where the door opens outside. #themoreyouknow
Seem obvious but I worked in a school for ten years and honestly still didn’t know where all of the exits are. Really old buildings have a seemingly endless amount of hidden doors to the outside. I finally had the school engineer walk me around the basement so I could find them all. Once you know where the main exits are, you can divide and conquer with staff. If your student is running the direction of an exit, one staff member can run ahead to that door or go meet him where the door opens outside. #themoreyouknow
You guys know I’m all about having an emergency plan in place and you likely already have one with your classroom staff (if you don’t – make one!). But take that emergency plan beyond just your classroom staff. Work with your school’s security guards to get them in the loop. If that horrible worst case scenario happens and your student does somehow get out of the building, what is the plan? We tend to avoid making a plan for this because we think it never will happen. Agreed, plan for it never happening. But just in case at the rare, rare, rare chance it does – you will be much better off with a plan in place.
Walkie talkies can be your saving grace here. Many schools already have a system of walkie talkies in place and if you aren’t part of – get part of it. If you student has left the classroom, you will be much more efficient getting him back to the class if you can alert 8 people throughout the building of it versus doing it yourself. If you school doesn’t use walkie talkies, approach your admin about getting a set for your classroom staff and a few key people through the building (security guards, secretary, etc.).
Latest posts by Sasha Long, M.A., BCBA (see all)
- Planning for the Fall: Part 4 and 5 – Visually Structured Tasks and Routines - January 30, 2026
- Using TAH Curriculum for Homeschooling from a Homeschooling Parent - September 10, 2022
- Using The Autism Helper Curriculum for Homeschool - August 8, 2022
38 Responses
Sasha, thank you so much for the great info! Very timely as the class I work in as an SLP has a runner who is getting braver by the minute! I plan to forward your advice on to the teacher in hopes that we can turn the situation around before it becomes a big attention seeking issue. Right now “the runner” has a straight shot to the classroom exit and your classroom set up suggestions might just give us the extra few seconds we’ll need. Thanks again!
Are those behavior response flowcharts available in your TpT store?? I love them! I have been looking for a user friendly way to share our protocols with other school staff and paras… would love to have these.
Glad this was helpful! Sometimes those few seconds are all we need! 🙂
Yep! Here they are – https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Behavior-Plan-Flow-Charts-and-Tools-2903956
These are a great resource – worth every penny!
This is spot on! Thank you for the post and I will be sharing with my staff today. Thank you!
What type of replacement behaviors would you start with? Kindergarten child, attention seeking?
Thanks for reading! 🙂
I would look at making sure the child has a way to ask for attention and that the response is consistently reinforced for a while! 🙂
Thank you very much for the information. This will be my first full year as a Para and I needed this.
Happy to hear! Thanks for reading 🙂
What if he lies on the floors and won’t move ? Other kids in the class and 1:1 is not all disrupted.
I’d look at function of that behavior and figure out why that is happening!
I’ve worked with runners, it’s very stressful, but we learnd real fast one was to let who ever worked with this student that he is a runner, what worked to redirect him into a safer enviornment … I made sure all exits were covered and knew the students schedule to help assist him with transitioning from one class assinment to another or and Lunch and Recesses were always a challange for him and other student..
Hi Cassandra, Great suggestions! Thanks for reading 🙂
Can I ask why we’re not suppose to make eye contact with them or lecture them after they run away? How do they learn running away is not ok and not safe? We do social stories before phyed ever day and just lately the student has been running away a lot. We give the student lots of breaks in resource room but then student doesn’t want to go back to the classroom. We have wallow talkies and an extra staff member for phyed now but still seems to take off. We have tried to reward with something student likes but it’s not working either.
Hi Ashley! If running is an attention-seeking behavior, we want to remove as much attention as possible from running so we don’t reinforce that response. At the same time, we need to teach a replacement behavior (SO KEY) to teach the student how to gain attention in other ways. My behavior change course covers this in great detail and will be reopening for enrollment soon! https://theautismhelper.com/courses/
This is very helpful for a para my first year
So great to hear this was helpful! Thanks for reading 🙂
I have had an opportunity to work with a very smart, gifted runnier, who I developed a caring supportive relationship with, also his parents. He just seemed unable to control his impulse to run very well. I let him know, through it all that I loved him, He often asked me if I was ok, and communicated that he did not like the way he was, in his on way. That relationship we cultivated will always be cherished. The information in this report was spot on.
Good information. I have used walkie talkies with code words in the past.
Great suggestions! Thanks for sharing!
This was my first year as a Para. We had a runner actually get outside and was gone in a flash! My supervising teacher handled the situation using pretty much all things you mentioned. Walkie talkies surely would have been helpful in this situation! We will check into getting some!
Thank you for this heads up. We use blocked off areas in our classroom to help keep our students safe. The info was good to know in addition to what is currently practicing in our classroom.
Happy to hear this was helpful 🙂 Thanks for reading!
Thank you for the information
Thanks for reading!
It would be more inclusive to remove the sexist language. In this, it is assumed the runner is a boy (referred to as ‘he’) and the adults are referred to as she. Perhaps it could be changed to them? Thank you
Very informative, Thanks!
Thanks for reading 🙂
Thank you for the information
Thanks for reading! 🙂
I have been looking all over for the law that says you cannot obstruct a student from running out the classroom. I live in Texas. I cannot find anything on TEA website. Is it illegal to obstruct the door with your body to keep a student safe from running outside the classroom? Our teacher’s classroom is ten yards from the road. We are not restraining the student but trying to deter the student from running. There is an unlocked gate that surrounds the campus which is 5 yards from the classroom door. If you have any information that could help about whether it is or is not illegal to obstruct the door to keep a student safe. please educate us on this issue.
Thank you!
I think it’s fire code issue not an educational mandate. I know – it’s so hard. Can you put an alarm on the door? Or something that would slow him down?
Thank you for this information.
Thanks for reading!
I am interested in these flowcharts shown here also.
Here you go! https://shop.theautismhelper.com/products/behavior-plan-flow-charts-and-tools