It can be very upsetting, frustrating and frightening if your child runs away or goes missing from home.  The next few pages have some information which you might find helpful.

One of the main reasons for a relationship breakdown between adults and young people is our inability to communicate with each other.  We spend hours with them when they are small teaching them to talk and then it seems as soon as they reach 13 that ability disappears over night and they can now either only manage to grunt or scream at us. 

Suddenly our innocent questions about where they are going and who with are treated as if we are asking for Top Secret information known only to a chosen few, of whom you, are not one.  We are accused of being 'nosy' and that it is 'none of our business' and to leave them alone as it is 'their life'.  When this happens we can be left with feelings of surprise and horror and our response is not always helpful, but as the grown up in all this, it is up to us to manage our own feelings and not get out of control and resort to talking to our child or young person in the same way as they spoke to us.

As a parent it can be quite hard to come to terms with the fact that our offspring, now they have grown, go places and do things about which we know nothing.  Especially as it often only seems a very short while ago that we knew their every movement, we knew all their friends, their interests, sometimes we may have even thought we knew what they were thinking.  Now, suddenly we are living with a stranger, and a secretive one at that.

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