Return of a Run Away Teen

I am so grateful that your son returned home willingly with your husband. Where there is hope, there is opportunity. Showing your emotions to your son was not a bad thing–it is important for our kids to see the emotional impact anxiety, fear, anger, gratitude have in our lives. As long as you own your emotion– “It is my anxiety. It is my fear. It is my anger. It is my gratitude”–and are not placing the responsibility for that emotion on them, or anyone else for that matter, invites them to be in the place you are–a place they’ve also been. It builds connection by allowing them to see life through your eyes–it underscores your commonality with your son, not the differences. He may try to hide from or avoid it, but it is there. No need to discuss, apologize or explain it.

It seems you have your work cut out for you–we begin to let go of our kids from the time they are born, but I found this phase the most difficult and it certainly felt the most threatening. I couldn’t trust my daughter to keep her self safe, but I couldn’t continue to protect her either–she wasn’t going to let me, and it wouldn’t have helped her to grow in accountability or responsibility had she. Ideally, as we raise our kids we are doing a combination of preparing and protecting–I majored in the later and minored in the former, which increased my anxiety the closer she got to 18. Possibly the biggest gift you can now give your son is to really give over the protection piece to Heritage, and ask them to work with you on the preparation piece—prepare him for independence. I promise you it will stretch you to the max, and you will have as many sleepless nights as you did when he was a baby; he’ll very likely change his mind when all of the realities of what independence look like. I can also promise you that if you do this, and can find the strength and courage to hold the line and be consistent, you will gradually be aware that you are no longer on the roller coaster with your son, that your days are good or bad, eventful or uneventful, because they are YOUR days, not because those were his days. I can still remember very vividly the dull, gray Seattle morning 2 1/2 years ago when I woke up and thought–it is beautiful today! Until that momenet I hadn’t realized how opressed and depressed I had become–I determined then and there I was NEVER going to go back to the way it had been, and if that meant truly releasing my daughter into her own hands, than that was what I had to do, even if I had to do it every single morning. I have never looked back and regretted that decision—and she and I now have a relationship I never thought we’d have

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