What To Do If Your Teen Runs Away

Your teen has not come home from school, it is getting late and now you are seriously worried. You call the police and they investigate, their conclusion is that your teenager has run away from home and you are devastated. Teenagers that go missing, do so without choice and are a different category, and they will be a police matter at the highest level, A runaway teenager makes a deliberate choice to leave their environment, either running away from, or to, something or someone.

Runaways may leave a note, or tell a friend they are going to run away, or even threaten running away to their family. The teenage runaway is usually running away from a perceived or real threat to their well being. They feel that staying where they are will mean having to handle something they cannot deal with, so they run from it.

There are a number of events that can trigger runaways' actions, from the apparently trivial to the significantly serious. Children that are abused at home will often run away from that abuse without telling anyone that it is happening, especially if the abuser is a family member. Teenage girls who find themselves pregnant may run away rather than face their parents with the news. Teenagers who are moving house to a new location, away from their friends and their school, may run away because they see it as the only way to control what is happening.

Sometimes a child runs away from home because they are being bullied at school and they feel that they have no way of being able to ask for help. Short term running away may be from a test at school that fills them with dread and the teenager returns once the time to take the test has passed. Most of the time a child will run away because they feel that they cannot talk to anybody about what is bothering them. Occasionally the running away involves another teenager; usually a boyfriend or girlfriend and the reasons then are parental disapproval of the relationship.

Persistent runaways may be punishing their parents for perceived unfairness in the house discipline or rules about the teenagers conduct. A child that keeps running away is not likely to stop without outside intervention, removed from the home environment, until their perspective changes. They may need teen counseling, or a camp for troubled teenagers, with professionals that can teach them to deal with their problems and re establish a relationship with their parents. Whatever the reason, when the teenager returns, either voluntarily or with police help, the parents need to find out the cause of their child's fear or misery. The first reaction, naturally, is anger, as the teenager has caused stress and fear in the family. This cannot continue as the only feeling expressed, or the teenager will run again. Eventually there needs to be forgiveness, both by the parents and the teenager, and most families will need some sort of therapy to achieve this.