Keep your teen from running away

Deterioration of the family and the social environment has contributed to many incidences of adolescents running away from home. A teenager will resort to this to satisfy a need to get away from an environment in which he or she feels uncomfortable.

Physically running away from home is usually quite spontaneous and done without thinking, especially at the age of puberty. In middle adolescence, on the other hand, it is sometimes premeditated. Under pressure from a problematic and difficult environment, adolescents spend days, months or even years harbouring the thought of running away as the only way to freedom. The state of passive rebellion, expressions of indiscipline, refusal to perform one's obligations and sulking are the signs that many parents say they saw before their teen ran away.