Severance pay: how public pages about escaping from home work

Possible reasons

Excessive parental control can push a teenager to run away from home.
According to statistics, approximately 50% of families are faced with a child leaving home. Statistics on runaways among teenagers (age category from 10 to 15 years) indicate that children do not feel comfortable in their families.

When a child has the thought “I want to leave home,” this is not a desire to run away from the premises in which he lives, but a need to escape from difficulties that have arisen in the family.

The problem that prompted a teenager to run away may seem insignificant to an adult. The fact is that to many parents, the difficulties of their children seem imaginary, far-fetched and completely solvable. However, the child’s psyche is structured in such a way that it is easier for a child to run away from his problem than to cope with it. It is necessary to understand that such behavior of a teenager is a response to outside stimuli.

Escape can be either motivated or unmotivated. The reasons for motivated escapes include a number of situations.

Psychological or physical violence in the family. The teenager is bullied, punished in subtle ways, scandalized, shouted at, ridiculed, and humiliated.
Overprotective parents who do not allow their child to be independent or communicate with friends.
Hypocustody is a situation where mom and dad don’t pay enough attention to a teenager. He leaves because he feels useless.
Authoritarian parenting. A situation where a teenager is seen as an addition to adults. He is not given the right to choose, is not allowed to have his own opinion, and his wishes are not listened to.
Addictions of parents.
A teenager joins a destructive organization (local gang, religious sect).

Unmotivated escapes include the following situations:

parents refuse to fulfill the child’s demands, for example, to let him go to a concert or buy something;
boredom is a case when a teenager craves adventure.

It is also worth considering separately situations with escapes based on illnesses, when the child does not realize what he is doing. In particular, this is manic psychosis, schizophrenia. Teenagers with deviant behavior often run away from home.

A teenager can be influenced by various factors that push a child to leave home:

one teenage girl left home because her mother scolded her for bad grades;
another escaped when her parents forbade her to see her boyfriend;
one boy left home because his father was too authoritarian.

Many parents are convinced that only they should exist in their child’s life. Adults make sure that their child goes to kindergarten and school, they try to protect their child from possible bad influences, they indicate who to be friends with and who not to. Their concern boils down to telling the child to do his homework, clean his room, and go to bed. Often parents, especially teenagers, raise their voices, punish, and reproach their child for ingratitude. And they don’t notice that with such behavior they only oppress their child, keep him in constant tension, under eternal control, and do not allow him to take a single step to the side. When adolescence begins, the child’s psyche becomes more vulnerable, sensitive, and one fine day parents are faced with the fact that their son or daughter wants to leave home. Moreover, at such a moment the child does not care where exactly he can go, the main thing is to finally get rid of the tyranny of adults.

Understand yourself

Many people wonder how to leave home, guided by the example of their friends or stereotypical thinking. But before you take action, think about whether you really want this. You must realize the following things:

You will live alone (unless, of course, you rent an apartment with friends or a significant other). Traditional conversations, sitting around the TV, family dinners will not be available to you.
You will have to pay not only for housing, but also for food, hygiene items, clothing and much more. Are you wealthy enough for this?
The entire burden of housework will also fall on your shoulders. Before you leave home, you need to understand whether you are able to solve everyday problems. Cleaning, washing, cooking - from now on you will have to do all this yourself.

If there are no problems with finances, and everyday issues do not scare you, you can completely think about living on your own.

Alarm bells

It is necessary to notice in time the signs indicating the approach of a possible escape:

the child stops paying attention to the parents’ requests, does not notice the father and mother;
openly criticizes the actions, views and opinions of his parents;
leaves the apartment under any pretext;
behaves withdrawn, does not react to anything.

How parents should behave to avoid children running away from home - advice from a psychologist

If everything is good in your family, and the child is an excellent student, this does not mean that the child does not have problems. Problems may be hiding in places you would never look for. The teacher who publicly humiliated your child. In the girl who left him for his friend because your son “wasn’t old enough to have a serious relationship yet.” That cute and intelligent new friend of your child, who actually turned out to be... (there are many options). And your child will not always tell you what is in his soul. Because parents either don’t have time, or it’s simply not customary in the family to share “joys and sorrows” with each other. How to behave so that children do not run away?

Be your child's friend. The main advice for all times. Then they will always share their experiences and problems with you. Then you will always know where and with whom your child is. Then you will have the key to even the darkest corners of your child’s soul.
Don't be a tyrant and dictator. Your child is a personality, a matured person. The more prohibitions, the more the child will strive for freedom from your “guardianship”.
Remember yourself when you were young. How mom and dad fought about your flared jeans, incomprehensible music, strange companies, cosmetics, etc. How angry you were that you were not allowed to express yourself the way you wanted. Again, assume that you are a friend, not a tyrant. Does your child want a tattoo? Do not immediately take out the belt (if you want to, you will do it anyway) - sit next to the child, look at the pictures together, study their meaning (so as not to “prick” something for which you will have to pay later), choose a salon where you are sure that no infection will be introduced. If you are completely against it, ask your child to wait a year or two. And then, you see, he himself will change his mind.

Don't like his (her) friends? Do not rush to drive them out of the house with a filthy broom shouting “they will teach you bad things.” These are not your friends, but the child's friends. If you didn’t like them, it doesn’t mean that they are all “drug addicts, maniacs, losers, a lost generation.” But be careful. Draw conclusions silently. It is possible to get involved in a child’s relationship with anyone only if this relationship may threaten the child’s health, psyche or his life.
Runaway child found begging? Yes, you are terribly ashamed. And you want to “flog the little bastard” for disgracing you so much. After all, your house is a full cup, and he... But apparently you didn’t see that the child needed money, didn’t find out what he needed it for, and didn’t help him find an honest, legal and worthy way to earn money.
And at 5 years old, and at 13, and even at 18, a child wants attention (understanding, trust, respect) to himself. He doesn’t want to hear every day “do your homework, turn down your music, why are you in a mess again, who are you such an armless don’t care about, we feed and water you, and you, parasite, only think about yourself, etc.” The child wants to hear - “how are things at school, is everything okay with you, where would you like to go for the weekend, and let’s go to a concert together, honey, let’s go have some tea and gingerbread,” etc. The child needs care, not total control , a whip from morning to evening and the attitude “I wish you’d moved away from us already.” Of course, a child should know the boundaries, and permissiveness does not bring anything good. But even putting a child in his place or scolding him for something can be done in such a way that the child grows wings and wants to do what you ask. Not “You don’t care about your mother at all! You're spending your last money! And I walk around in tights with holes!”, and “Son, let me help you find a job, so you can save up for a new computer faster” (example).
Nurture in your child, as soon as he begins to walk, responsibility and independence. Support your child in all endeavors and allow him to be who he is, and not who you want him to be.
Never threaten, even jokingly, that you will punish your child or kick him out of the house if he does something (smoke, drink, get a bad mark, “bring it in the hem,” etc.). Knowing about possible punishment, the child will never tell you the truth and may even do even more serious stupid things.
Does the child require freedom and respect for his interests? Go meet him halfway. It's time to start trusting your child. And it’s time to “let him go” into adulthood. Let him learn to do things and be responsible for them on his own. Just don’t forget to warn him about the consequences of this or that action (gently and in a friendly way).
Don’t lock your grown-up child at home – “nowhere after 6 pm!” Yes, it’s scary and alarming if it’s already dark and the child is walking somewhere with someone. But the “child” is already as tall as you, he may even have stubble on his face and “protective products” in his pocket - it’s time to speak a different language. Going to see friends for a long time? Take the coordinates of all your friends, including their home addresses/phone numbers, demand that he call you back every 1.5-2 hours and tell you that he is doing well.
Don't scold your daughter for wearing cosmetics - teach her how to use it correctly. Teach her to be stylish and well-groomed without a kilogram of foundation and shadows on her face.
Do not try to impose your friendship on your child - do it carefully, gradually involving the child in a trusting relationship. Take him with you on trips and vacations more often, participate in his life, and be sincerely interested in his affairs.
Be an example for your child. Don't do anything that your child might want to repeat.

Of course, if there is no trust between you, starting from scratch will be extremely difficult. But this is quite doable with your patience and desire.

If the child left home

Try to remember what preceded his departure. You may have already heard that your daughter or son wants to leave. The child could talk about this repeatedly.
Inspect the premises for a note.
Pay attention to whether money or valuables have disappeared. Analyze what exactly the teenager took with him, what clothes, personal items.
Contact all of your offspring's friends. At the same time, it is important to talk to their parents, ask them to treat the situation adequately and inform them if your child shows up.
Call all relatives.
If the loss was noticed in the evening, you need to contact the class teacher and in the morning go to your child’s classmates, talk to the children, find out if someone knows where your child is now.
Organize a child search group consisting of acquaintances, friends and relatives. Visit places he frequented.
If, after walking around the apartment, you do not notice any prerequisites indicating that your son or daughter has decided to escape, call hospitals, call the police, make sure that he is not there.
Make a post on social media about a missing child.
If previous actions have not yielded results, immediately contact the police so that the search for the fugitive begins. Bring your child’s birth certificate or passport and photographs with you. Write a statement to the police and put him on the wanted list.
Continue calling your teenager’s close friends, do not forget to point out how much you love him, care about him and are looking forward to returning home, and also that you are not at all angry with him.

Only a few children manage to escape far. As a rule, the child either has no money at all or little of it. Many people are faced with the fact that they have decided to leave home, but have nowhere to go. Therefore, in most cases, children return home within a short time, although a strong fear of punishment may delay their return.

Tips for parents

Sometimes it becomes a real tragedy for parents if their daughter or son leaves home. Some people silently experience this problem, while others begin to blackmail an adult child and reproach him for his loneliness. Such parents are advised to remember their youth. Surely maximalism was also raging in you, you dreamed of career achievements and creating your own family. Agree that building romantic relationships is much easier without parental supervision. In addition, a person should always have a chance for self-realization. If you tie your children to you, you risk making them unhappy. Sooner or later they will blame you for all their failures.

How to react if he comes back

When you see your baby, thank the Lord that he is alive.
Despite the fact that resentment, anger, disappointment, and aggression will seethe within you, you will still need to hug the child and inform him that you are glad to see him return.
Reassure your son or daughter. Realize that coming home is very stressful for him, because he is afraid of possible punishment for his action, does not know what your reaction will be, he is afraid of showdowns and scandals. Therefore, it is important to save him from hysterics and moralizing.
If your son or daughter wants to talk, listen carefully, do not interrupt, or point out your dissatisfaction.
Tell everyone you know that the child has been found.
Understand the reasons for his behavior.
Try to correct the situation to prevent possible relapses.

It is also important to know how not to behave when the child returns home:

apply punishments for running away - such actions will only convince the child that his leaving was the right decision;
beat a child, insult;
to suggest that he acted like a tyrant and did not think about his parents;
pretend that nothing happened, ignore your child.

"She's missing"

The fact that the pages of teenagers who unsubscribed on the forum 5 years ago are almost all deleted is alarming. What happened to their authors is unknown. However, MIR 24 found

one girl from those same “old-timers” whose page is still active. Katya, whose real name we do not mention for obvious reasons, told why she wanted to run away from home and how it could end.

Katya did not immediately remember that 5 years ago she was planning to escape. “I don’t even know what you’re talking about. This is the first time I’ve seen the group,” she wrote. Then I remembered that I wrote all this in my hearts and never ran away. “I wanted to run away because of quarrels with my mother. I was a very difficult child. Often children simply plan this because of quarrels, but do not dare,” admits the failed runaway.

She doesn’t know what happened to her friends who were planning to escape in 2013, and why almost all of their pages were deleted. However, Katya recalls: “There was one girl, after a while she stopped going online. This girl seems to have informed me. She said they would run and take me along the way. But they didn't succeed or something. Honestly, I don’t remember.”

We managed to find her page. The page has not been updated for a long time. Some commentators claim that the girl is no longer alive. Groups in which she was a member: “Bisexuals”, “Vpiski Moskvy”, “Dating”, “Esoterica Philosophy Psychology Glare of the Soul”, “Inhabitants of ZEMLYANKA”, “DELETE”, as well as several groups that became known through other media investigations.

In the last group listed in 2013, she wrote: «

From my parents there was only condemnation, I would like to forget, but how evil I remember everything. I can’t live like this anymore, I don’t want to live at all, I’m already so fed up with everything that there’s nowhere else to go. I am no exception, it hurts me too. I hope that I will never return here... never... it’s better to burn in hell forever than to see faces every day that on the one hand make your soul so warm, on the other so uncomfortable, and on the other hand bitter. Nothing happens in vain. If you did something, it means that at that specific moment in your life, at that specific stage of your development, there was meaning in this action. And if it seems to you that you could have acted differently, know that you could not. Don't be afraid of losing someone. You will not lose the one you need in life. Those who were sent to you for experience are lost. Those who remain are those sent to you by fate. It seems to me that more than half of the people who forgive are not that strong, they simply cannot live without those who hurt them.”

Agree, the philosophy of despair is quite clearly formulated.

How to prevent escape

Build a trusting, friendly relationship with your child.
Treat your teenager as an individual. Accept that he is individual, he is not like anyone else, he is who he is, there is no need to try to remake him for yourself.
Never raise your hand to your child. Such behavior only indicates your weakness and inability to convey your thoughts in a normal way.
Work on yourself, learn to restrain yourself. Otherwise you will lose your child.
Become dynamic, calmly react to changes in the appearance of your offspring. Understand that in this way he adapts to the world around him, trying to express himself.
Take an interest in the teenager’s life, notice his problems in time, and help solve them.
Find time for your child.
Allow your teenager to become independent, stop controlling him.
Do not limit your child in normal things. Don't point out that he has the wrong way of communicating, don't demand to get rid of youth slang, don't forbid him to listen to the music he likes.

Now you know that in many cases the desire to leave home appears because of the parents. It is important to understand that this action can have serious consequences, both for the person who leaves and for those who remain. You need to realize that escapes are dictated by certain reasons, it is advisable to know them and prevent them in time.

Reasons why children run away from home - what could be the fault of the parents?

There are two types of baby shoots:

Motivated . This type of escape has purely psychological reasons, resulting from a conflict or other specific and understandable situation. Escape, in this case, is a method of avoiding the problem (since there were no others).
Unmotivated . This is a form of response in which any unpleasant situation causes protest and a desire to escape. With all that it implies.

It is worth noting that the basis of children’s runaways is always an internal conflict in the family, even if in essence it is not such a conflict. The lack of opportunity to talk, talk about problems, ask for advice is also an internal conflict in the family.

The main reasons for children running away:

Mental illnesses (schizophrenia, mental retardation, psychosis, etc.).
Conflict with parents, lack of mutual understanding in the family, lack of attention.
Conflicts at school.
Desire for freedom (rebellion against parents).
Stress after experiencing tragedy or abuse.
Boredom.
Spoiled.
Fear of punishment.
The stage of growing up and simple curiosity, the desire to learn something new.
Internal problems based on the beginning of building relationships with the opposite sex.
Disagreements between parents, divorce of parents - flight as a way of expressing protest.
The child wants to earn his own living.
Imposing on the child the parent's point of view in terms of choosing a profession, friends, etc. Denial of the child's own choice.
Dysfunctional family. That is, parental alcoholism, the regular appearance of inappropriate strangers in the house, assault, etc.
Child drug addiction or “recruitment” into one of the sects, which are becoming more and more common today.

If you break your phone, don't come home!

I don’t go to clothing stores that often, but if I do go, it’s usually radical: I collect a ton of clothes in a pile to choose a few things from them, and hang out in the fitting room for a long time.

And now I’m stuck in the fitting room, with a meticulous gaze examining the next rag on me, and willy-nilly listening to how, judging by the voices, two teenage girls are fiddling around behind a thin wall. Naturally, I don’t delve into what’s going on there.

Suddenly, the characteristic sound of the phone falling onto the stone floor face down is heard, and behind the wall there is an eerie pause for several seconds. Finally, one of the girls comes to her senses and says in a voice horrified:

- Oh-oh-oh, what have you done, but if it crashed, my parents will kill me!..

Then she apparently picks up the phone and exhales noisily:

- Oooh, thank God, everything is okay! Oh-oh-oh-oh-oh!

There is relief and sincere gratitude to God in the voice for what happened this time.

And then, having fun:

“If it had crashed, I wouldn’t have returned home, honestly.” My mother will really kill me, that’s what she told me: if you break the phone, you don’t have to come home! You know what she is like!

My mood suddenly deteriorated, the rag excitement went away, the girls soon left, I collected my things and also left.

If only you knew how many children leave home precisely for this reason - “my mother will kill me”! They leave because the street, with its dangers, the need to steal to eat, with the dark dirty corners in which they will have to sleep next to the homeless and drunk, is less scary for them than their home. They are ready to face a variety of street troubles (in reality, of course, they are not ready), just not with mom and dad, who, because of a bad grade, torn pants or a broken phone, will become the most nightmarish horror in their life... Screaming mom. Dad with a belt. Grandma is hysterical...

The topic won’t let me go, and I continue to think about it on the way home from the store. Surely each of us adults underestimates the child’s perception of our screams and the belt. Surely there are children for whom all the screaming, as they say, is like hitting the wall, but for the majority it is horror and the collapse of their entire universe. Mom screams - mom doesn’t like me.

The child does not understand that often the mother, on the contrary, screams because she loves her very much (she is scared for the child, wants to raise him to be the right person, teaches him for the future, and so on). No - mom stopped loving right now, right here. After this, there’s really not much that’s scary anymore.

We're always looking for runners. We never discuss or judge parents, no matter how wrong they may be. But, dear adults, how I want you to understand that because of a rag, a piece of iron or a mark, you may never see your child again. Buy him a cheap phone, buy clothes that you don’t mind, or buy all this expensive stuff, but internally say goodbye to it right away, realizing that this is a child (otherwise you yourself have never dropped the phone or lost it).

I don’t know if it’s possible to teach a person to appreciate things and other people’s work using fear. But I know for sure that thanks to him you can survive the most terrible hours of your life, looking for your child through the streets and acquaintances.

How can you prepare your parents for your move?

Say “I want to leave home!” and slamming your fist on the table is the wrong decision. Put yourself in the shoes of your family to understand how difficult it is for them to accept this situation. To prepare your loved ones for your move, you can do the following:

Become a business person. Wash and iron your clothes yourself. Clean your own room and even cook your own food. Firstly, you will take the burden off your relatives, and secondly, you will prove your independence.
Try to spend less time at home. Try to stay overnight with friends sometimes. If you receive an offer for a short business or entertainment trip, be sure to accept it.
During family conversations, as if by chance, think about your friends who already live on their own.