with Jes, Founder, Empowered ABA

Stay With Me

A parent guide to elopement, running away, and dropping.

When your child bolts toward the parking lot or drops to the ground at the playground gate, it's scary, exhausting, and hard to know what to do next. Safety comes first. And so does understanding what the behavior is telling you.

This guide uses the science of ABA, in plain language, to help you keep your child safe, find out what running or dropping is doing for your child, and teach safer ways to ask, wait, transition, and stay close.

Get the Guide — $19

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Not ready? Start with the free Safety Starter Kit.

“Safety matters. And so does understanding what the behavior is telling us.”

Not only “How do we make the running stop?” but “What safer skill can do the same job?”

What's inside

Safety first: why every elopement matters, and how prevention protects your child while they learn
Clear definitions for running, bolting, moving away, and dropping, and why it helps to tell them apart
The four reasons children run or drop (access, attention or chase, escape, sensory), with questions to find yours
Setting events and the “yellow light”: the clues that come hours before a hard moment
The six-step Empowered ABA plan: prevent, teach, prompt, reinforce, fade, generalize
Replacement skills matched to each reason, plus what to do when your child drops
Seven safety skills to teach on purpose: stop, come back, wait, walk with me, check in, ask to go, break
How to respond every time (calm doesn't mean ignore), a 2-week teaching plan, and what to track

An honest approach

  • Safety always comes first. In an emergency, you protect your child. Teaching happens later, in calm moments.
  • Running and dropping make sense to the child doing them. We look for what the behavior is doing, then teach a safer way to get the same need met, without blame.
  • This guide is educational. It doesn't replace an individualized functional behavior assessment, a medical evaluation, or an emergency safety plan. If your child has reached traffic or water or gone missing, please talk with your child's team.

From families

You're not doing this alone.

Shared anonymously, with permission.

These resources feel like they were written for my actual family — not a textbook family. I keep coming back to them.
Mom of a 3-year-old
For the first time, someone explained the why behind my child's hardest moments instead of just handing me a chart. We are both less overwhelmed.
Parent of a 5-year-old
Small steps, real strategies, zero judgment. That combination is rare.
Foster dad of a 4-year-old

Understand the behavior. Protect safety. Teach what works better.

One clear plan, matched to your child, so every caregiver knows what to do and your child learns that staying close works.

Get the Guide — $19

Instant access · $19

This guide is educational and is not a substitute for individualized assessment, medical care, or an emergency safety plan.