Phone call from school mid day on Wednesday - Lynn checked in to Chorus but then when she found out it was a sub, she left the building. I didn't hear from her again until late morning on Thursday.
This was actually her 5th official runaway episode. I know. Because I 'documented'. That's really all the advice there is out there when you have a chronic runner. Document. Document. Document. What else can we really do? I am seeing a little bit of a pattern though, now that I see it written down and have spent some time to think it through. My generally frozen girl opts for flight when she has to face the consequences of her poor choices. I guess there is some positive to that - that she is actually feeling some remorse. But the results are still completely unsettling; especially when the choices she makes when she is "on the run" are always amped up even more on the poor- decision scale. And, yes, she may have experienced her own logical consequence effect of a sleepless night in the school dugout (yes, that's actually where she ended up, after climbing on to the school roof with a bunch of 8th grade graduates!), but that sleepless night belonged to me as well. .
And yes, it was another positive sign that she got herself back to school the next day and reached out to me to apologize and own her behavior, but now not only do we have to start work on rebuilding that trust foundation yet again, she may have completely destroyed her already very tenuous connection with her dad, because now he is not only fed up, he is angry because he sees how her choices are affecting me.
Fight, Flight, Freeze.........
