01/07/2025
Imagine this scenario: An Autistic kindergartener elopes (runs away) from her classroom, out the side door, and out onto the playground.
The school puts a safety plan in place (as they should!) The side door will be locked until the class is ready to go out, and an aide will move with the child during transition times.
Then, a week later, the child elopes from lunch. Now the school is working on scheduling the aide for lunchtime too, against staffing issues.
The only bathroom is located outside the classroom. It's right across the hall, with teacher's easy line of sight to observe a child who needs to go, but it still requires a moment of hallway access. Predictably, the child runs during a bathroom trip, so now there has to be 1:1 adult supervision every time she goes. Maybe there's a time when nobody's available to take her, so she has an accident in class. This has spiralled and snowballed into something so much larger than it needed to be if somebody asked the question...why?
What makes her run in the first place?
Solutions will be very different if the answer is "a peer said/did something that hurt her", "the clouds had parted and the sun was shining just at that moment", or "the playground is her favorite transition, and she's mistaken other transitions (from reading centers, to lunch, to bathroom) as good times to make her favorite transition instead".
There is ALWAYS a reason. And the reason is ALMOST NEVER "because she wants to assert dominance to the adults around her" -- even though that's a wildly popular theory for a disgruntled adult to suggest. (Usually because said adult is feeling a lack of dominance in this situation, despite perceiving themselves as deserving it.)
It would take so much less time and effort and resources to figure out how to turn off a water tap, as opposed to mopping up bucketfuls of spilled water all over the floor.
[Image description: A cartoon picture of a faucet, with text coming out of it that reads, "When we focus on eliminating unwanted behaviors, it's like mopping up the sink instead of turning off the water. Behavior have causes unique to each child, and we find answers when we compassionately address the causes." The quote is by Dr. Mona Delahooke, Ph.D. and the image was made by Synergy: gentle parenting resources. End description.]
