Clues for Missing Persons: Did You Want to Run Away as a Teen?

Sometimes it’s helpful to remember we are 99% the same as all other human beings, mentally speaking. We share similar hopes, dreams and aspirations. When something kicks our ambitions under the table, we all feel the same sense of desolation. We want the world to close in over us. When it does not, this is where many of our teenage missing persons cases begin.

Did You Ever Want to Disappear When You Were a Teen?
Teens go through an insecure phase as they mature physically and emotionally. They all feel as you did then, inadequate and so they build circles of illusions around themselves. They imagine themselves as future engineers, architects, computer scientists, musicians and so on and this keeps them going in their secret worlds. When somebody shatters this illusion with a harsh or teasing word in public, they feel mentally naked as if everybody is peering into their inner thoughts. They have a desperate need to escape, to get away to somewhere else. Now if they had a trusting relationship they could fall back on, that would be a different matter. If they do not, they could become missing persons for a while.

Parent Child Relationships and Young Missing Persons
Very few Queensland families come anywhere near the idyllic relationships in some Walt Disney ‘picture postcard’ movies. In reality, few teens turn out the way their parents wanted, and there’s potential for conflict as youngsters develop own values. Inevitably conflict becomes aggression as parents try to force their own way through. If they succeed, they destroy an imaginary world, the place where their youngster found refuge for a while. They have nowhere to turn to for solace now, no warm shoulder they used to weep on a decade ago. They can see no alternative to running away, leaving a devastated family behind.

What to Do if You Are in This Situation as a Parent
However, they often return after a few days when they realise they cannot survive on their own. Their parents then have the task of putting the bits back together again, although they seldom fit the way they did before.

Did you have an experience like this when you were a teen?
Then you know what it is like to feel broken. We wrote this post to share our experience that many young missing persons cases arise from unsatisfactory relationships between parents and teens. Now we are not here to tell you how to raise your kids, moreover we have no ‘secret sauce’ to share.

However, as private detectives we could help you track down your teen if they have been missing for more than night. We sincerely hope they will be part of the 95% who return home by then. If they don’t, call us on 1300 553 788 and we’ll assign a missing teen specialist.