Parents and caregivers often express that the children do not stay on task or frequently leave the area or even the home during a schedled activity. This ca be a safety issue if you cannot find the child and it can interfere with learning since he does not participate in learning activities. The following are a list fo ideas to encourage him to stay on task and be safe while learning. 
1.  Evaluate what the reinforcers are for your child and use them to reward him for leisure and educational activities.
2.  When he leaves do not over react which might be giving him attention. Instead quietly guide him back to an activity and remind him of the reinforcers for the activity and importance of the activity.
3.  Try not to have to much physical contact when guiding back to th activity since physical contact may be rewarding in itself to some children.
4.  Always make sure your child has his address and phone number in his pocket or in a wallet or somewhere on him. The home address and phone may be valuable if he forgets this information or does not know the information. Teaching him to tell people where he lives and his phone number should be considered as something important to learn. Some parents even provide the child with a cellphone for emergencies. 
5.  Consequences of course might be useful in discouraging him from leaving. For example, he may not earn a daily reinforcer or weekly reinforcer if he does leave. 
6.  Apologizing is helpful and trying to make up for the stress the parent may have if he leaves.  
7.  Roleplay or discussion can be helpful in stressing the importance of staying together on outings and activities. Discussing the advantages such as saving time so you can do more activities and relax with reinforcing leisure activities afterwards may be useful. In addition pointing out what might happen if it takes a long time to find him he might get upset or hungry for example. 
The   above ideas may stimulate you to develope a plan to discourage this behavior in the future for your child.
Safety and learning will be improved throught the use of some of the ideas above! Your child will have less problems and more fun if he learns to stay with his group or in his schedule activities!!

Parents or caregivers often have problems with children running away. This occurs with normal children, children with disabilities, children with behavior problems, children with autism and teenagers often have this problem.  The consequences of running away can be devastating present inconvenience  of time and money to the parent or caregiver. Prevention of this behavior is simple and will cut back on all these consequences for the caregiver.  The following are some ideas to prevent the problem.
Generally the following are ways of making the environment in the home much more reinforcing to the child so that the incentive to leave is reduced. 
1.  Parents or caregivers might make a list of reinforcers for each of the children and try to include them in the home environment. For example, if the child likes games include in the home fun computer games, board games, basketball hoops or other equipment to provide them with this reinforcer in the home when their behavior is good or during leisure time.
2. Similarly, if a child likes certain foods or social attention these should be provided for good behavior in the home and the absence of the behavior of running away.
3. Weekly conversations about how to improve your child's' life at home is also useful
3.  If the behavior of running away occurs then the reinforcers above should not be available for a specified short period of time. Also, parents or caregivers should try not to give to much attention when the running away occurs since this may be reinforcing to the person. For example, yelling, talking to much about it or touching or holding the child in your lap may be reinforcing. This will decrease the likelihood the running away will  occur again. 
Generally, caregivers and parents should realize that the child will run away when things in the home are not as reinforcing as they are in the places the child is running away towards. The increase in the number of reinforcers in the home and the more pleasant the home is the less likely they are to leave.