I Never Thought My Son Would Run Away, Until the Night He Did

Editor’s note: Due to the personal nature of this essay, the writer asked to remain anonymous to protect everyone’s privacy

I didn’t know where my son was for four days at the end of January. He was 15, got mad and took off. He turned off his phone and he was just … gone. 

His behavior and friend group had been heading in the wrong direction for a while, but I never expected him to run away. 

They were the scariest four days of my entire life.

It was awful and completely exhausting. We spent our days sending about a million frantic text messages, making phone calls, posting things online and talking with the police. 

And while he did come back home, he never went back to his high school. 

We spent a month trying to regroup and enrolled him in an alternative school in March. The staff is amazing, the atmosphere incredibly supportive and “chill,” as he would say. But he rarely goes, he skipped weeks at a time.

And all I can think is: What is happening?

This thought runs through my head every day (and, of course, especially the nights he doesn’t come home). How did we get here? How can I help him? What am I doing wrong?

I’m not saying these are all useful or logical thoughts, but they are there, all the time. And I have no answers to any of them, no advice to give other parents. Except to say you are not alone. Here are a few methods I have learned and used to cope with the roller coaster I have been strapped into this year.

Get professional help. Like, right now.

My husband and I found a therapist a few weeks after our son ran away. Talking to someone was vital. Neither of us had any idea what to do, and we soon learned that there are no easy answers or quick fixes. Every kid and family and situation is different, but talking to someone outside of the crisis really helped. Our therapist didn’t have any preconceived ideas about our family or our son, he was just there to listen to what was happening and offer ideas and strategies. Some of them helped, some didn’t. 

Lean on your community, you are gonna need it

My son ran away on a Thursday, and we reached out to our community on Friday afternoon, once it became clear that he really was gone and it was, indeed, a crisis. I will never be able to repay the kindness and support they gave us, from the moment we sent the group text. They brought us food every night (which I couldn’t really eat, but still appreciated). Some of them rode around the city on bikes looking in the places my son likes to hang out. A friend who is a doctor reached out to the security staff and nurses at major hospitals to make sure they knew he was missing and what he looked like. And she did that multiple times, when shifts changed. Another friend apparently has near-professional detective skills and she scoured Instagram looking for any info we could find about who he might be with. It was amazing, and I am not sure how we would have gotten through that time without them. 

People I hadn’t heard from for years also reached out once we made his disappearance more public. Messages of support came in all day long, and I knew there were eyes all over the city looking for him, which made me feel so much better. 

If you find yourself in uncharted, terrifying waters like this, let people help you. 

Accept that the future might look different that you planned

It felt like everything changed when my son ran away. And when he came home, all of a sudden we had no idea how best to parent him, and no clue what things would be like moving forward. I can say that things feel much better today than they did seven months ago. But he is currently aiming toward a future that is uncertain at best. 

Graduation season caught me off guard this year. I wanted to be happy for our friend’s kids who were graduating and moving on to bigger and better things. I wanted to have fun at the parties. But it all just broke my heart. Will I get to do any of this for my son? Until this year, that was not a thought I had ever entertained. Sure, school was hard but we’d all get through. Now, I’m not sure anymore. 

But what I am sure of is that success can look like a lot of things. It can look like graduation, college, a GED, trade school or a job. My hopes for my son have expanded well beyond my narrow belief and experience that life has to be a linear path from high school to college to a career. Maybe his path has a few more curves in it.     

Love the kid you have, all the time

I spend a lot of time worrying about my son. He is still engaged in behaviors that are hurting him, now and in the future. But, he is also still just a kid, and he needs love and support (now more than ever). 

That does not mean pretending things are not hard, or giving him everything he wants when he is breaking rules. It does mean welcoming him home when he comes, offering him food and watching a lot of videos of him skateboarding (which are so good!). It means loving him where he is, making sure he knows that his home accepts and supports him, especially when the world is hard. It means looking at him and seeing the little boy I have always loved, and giving the teenager standing before me grace as he is navigating this incredibly hard time in his young life.

I cannot control the things he does, but I can control the way I respond. 

I have no idea what the future holds; I have no idea what tomorrow holds. Being a parent is a wild ride and this year has been really, really hard. All I can do right now is ask for help when I need it, hold onto the moments of joy I have with my son (and there are many) and let my community hold me up. We are not alone, and we will make it through.