First time posting My Adopted BPD Teen Daughter has run away

[FindingNormal]

I apologize in advance for this being so long. I have spent the past few months devouring books on BPD and reading these boards in order to acquaint myself with BPD. In that time, I have not found any stories similar to ours so I thought I would post and hopefully get some feedback on our specific situation.

Family Background: We live in Washington State. In 2007, my husband and I became foster parents because we wanted to help children and be a part of family reconciliation. We had 2 biological children aged 8 and 5 so we were not necessarily looking to adopt. Our first placement was the day we got licensed. Our BPD daughter and her younger biological brother were placed with us at the ages when she was 7 and he was 4. A month later we welcomed a supposedly short term placement of a 3 year old girl and then over a year later, the state gave us another short term placement of a 4 year old boy. None of our foster children were able to return home so we gradually adopted all 4 of them bringing our grand total to 6 children over a period of 6 years.

BPD Daughter's History: We adopted our daughter when she was 7 and after both her biological parents had voluntarily terminated their parental rights with an agreed upon annual visit. She came to us with a DV trauma history, multiple foster care placements, diagnoses of ADHD and ODD and on 2 psychotropics medications. When we realized that we would be adopting her, we worked with our family doctor to remove all of the medications so we could focus on behavior modification interventions including PCIT (Parent Child Intervention Therapy). Initially, we attributed her mood and behavior issues to her early trauma/history.

Though I struggled with parenting our daughter from the beginning and made a lot of rookie mistakes, I was committed to getting educated and creating a therapeutic environment for her and believed that with enough love, structure and stability, we could help her heal. I read every book I could find on parenting traumatized children and attended multiple foster parent support groups to educate myself. While the other 3 adopted children gradually accepted their adoptions and have successfully integrated into our family, our BPD daughter never allowed herself to bond. The only relationship she allowed herself was with myself and though it was a highly dysfunctional one, I knew my husband did not have the skills to work with her and so I encouraged it thinking that I was creating a bond with her that would keep her and everyone else safe. Unfortunately, this also meant that I took the full brunt of her behavior and emotional storms.

BPD Daughter's Treatment History: Somehow we manged to create a new "normal" over the first 4 years, but pre-adolescence and middle school was a difficult transition for her so we started the ADOPTS Program which is a trauma focused therapy designed specifically for adoptive children with PTSD. This included both 1:1 and family based therapy. Despite this program, our daughter's behavior continued to worsen and at the age of 12 she ran away for the first time. The police were involved and she wound up being admitted to the ER when she ran from them and led them on a foot chase at 11:30 at night. She was discharged to our care and we were referred to community based mental health services where she was given a diagnosis of PTSD and Anxiety Disorder. So began 3 years of therapy which included TFCBT (Trauma Focused Cognitive Behavioral Therapy) and a DBT group. In 2014 she met with a psychiatrist which was the first time that we were introduced to BPD when he mentioned that she had many of the BPD traits. I did some research and agreed that she had many of the traits, but no official diagnosis was pursued due to her age. We continued therapy though she was only half-heartedly engaged with it and her therapist ascribed most of her behavior to her simply being a teenager. Her advice was to have me read Brainstorm by Daniel Siegel, MD because apparently I just needed to understand adolescent brain development if I wanted to understand my daughter.

After 6th grade we moved our daughter to a K-8 middle school where she had a small group of peers and core teachers which we felt would be more therapeutic for her. Unfortunately, though she had wonderful teachers, she had a very troubled peer group and it was here that she was introduced to the emo culture,  cutting, her first lesbian relationship and simultaneous multiple male relationships. As a result, her behavior continued to worsen and the transition to High School this past fall was extremely difficult as she now had access to even more dysfunctional peers, older boys and more freedoms. It did not help that her school did not fully support her 504 plan and ignored my pleading for structure, accountability and consequences none of which she was given.

I watched her behavior continue to gradually worsen, but it was not until this past March that she took a nose dive and started to self-destruct in earnest. She found a naive 18 year old boyfriend she could groom/control and started hanging out with him and his group of friends. She also started running away from home more frequently and started to detach herself more fully from our family including her biological brother. Her disobedience/defiance increased dramatically and she started arguing more with everyone in the home. To get her own room, she even bullied her younger sister to the point that she no longer wanted to sleep in their shared bedroom and instead started sleeping on our bedroom floor. I spoke to both of our daughter's therapists about this, but both didn't see a problem with her behavior and instead advocated that we work on getting her her own room. To accommodate this we started looking at rearranging rooms to include putting all 4 boys in the larger bonus room so the girls could have their own rooms.

However, before we could implement this plan, our daughter had a major emotional outburst and wound up running from home. She was gone 2 days/nights from our home before being found and brought home by a school official.

I had a session with her therapy case manager already schedule so we both attended this session. I was asked to leave the session and the case manager then connected my daughter with a youth advocate who educated her about her "rights" and how to contact a youth shelter. At her insistence we took her to a youth shelter in a neighboring city. We agreed at this point because her behavior was so unstable, our other children were frightened of her and we hoped that the youth shelter would keep their promise and get therapeutic services in place for our daughter. Instead, however, she immediately was taught by her peers how to reset her iPod to remove all of the parental controls I had placed on it. She also used the shelter computer to set up a Facebook account where she reached out to both of her biological parents, unhealthy "friends" and lots of strangers. In the shelter, her room mate was a girl who was a chronic runaway and within a week they had run away from the shelter after being caught smoking tea bags in their bedroom. I later found out that she ran to a 20 year old man she had met online. He introduced her to alcohol, drugs and in the process took her virginity. 6 days later he kicked her out and she showed up back at the youth shelter. They took her back in, but the next day she posted a suicidal/homicidal statement on Facebook and wound up in the ER when the police got involved.

I asked the ER doctor and the Social Worker for a referral to an adolescent mental health hospital, but they said she did not meet the criteria. So after a night in the hospital with her, we were again told that she was safe for discharge and released into our care with no follow-up plan. She wanted to go back to the youth shelter, but at this point they finally saw her mental health issues and refused to take her back so she reluctantly returned home with us. She stayed with us that day, but the next day was Monday and she resumed her couch hopping ways. When she found out that we were pursuing an At Risk Youth petition with the juvenile court, she amped up her efforts and by Saturday she had reached out to her birth father and disappeared to go live with him. This is a "sperm donor" who has lost a total of 7 children to foster care. He was given an annual visit with his children, but only scheduled visits the first 2 years and then disappeared, but unfortunately this just made my daughter yearn for him even more.

In order to try to keep tabs on her during this time, I created a fake profile on Facebook and have access to her email account so I have been able to catch little bits of information. She has dropped out of school and she is back dating the 18 year old senior who is desperately in love with her. Most recently, I found out that her birth mother who has had annual visits with the children just recently moved to Oklahoma to follow her latest boyfriend. I don't have proof yet, but I believe that might be working on getting my daughter to come live with her in Oklahoma. This is a 15 year old child who is a reported runaway/missing child, has no ID and no medical card so she and her birth parents are not functioning in any form of reality.

Since she disappeared to her birth father, she has not tried to contact anyone healthy from her life and is going by her birth last name. I believe that in her mind, now that she has reunified with her birth parent, she is denying our adoption of her and trying to live like we never happened. Given that she has biological parents and an older boyfriend who are fine risking getting in trouble with the law for harboring a run away and our state is one that empowers run away teens, we have had to stand by and watch this all play out knowing that we could not force her back to our home even if we thought that would be the right thing to do (which we don't think it is). I now see that my daughter never allowed herself to bond with the family and purposely sabotaged all of her relationships within the home. When she realized that her birth brother had accepted the adoption and was bonding with his brothers, she saw this as a rejection of her and turned on him as well.

While I miss my daughter and just want her to get the help that she so desperately needs, I can't even begin to tell you how much more peace is in our home now that she is gone. The children are so much happier and more relaxed. We do not all live like we are walking on eggshells anymore and there is so much more laughter in the home. I finally now have time and energy to focus on repairing my marriage which suffered from her triangulation efforts and my emotional/physical exhaustion and I am finally able to more fully connect with my other children.

There is so much more I could write, but hopefully I have captured the highlights of our story. I guess I am just wondering if there is anyone out there who has experienced anything similar to us in that they were also rejected by their adopted BPD teen-aged child who reunified with their birth parents and have any insight into our situation. I am blessed with strong friends who know our situation and fully support us, but I would love to hear from other parents who understand what it is like to parent a BPD child and may be able to personally relate to our situation. Thank you for taking the time to read all of this.

Our objective is to better understand the struggles our child faces and to learn the skills to improve our relationship and provide a supportive environment and also improve on our own emotional responses, attitudes and effectiveness as a family leaders

[DKW]

Wow!  You have been through it!  My adopted daughter also ran away, moved out of the home, connected with her biological family, spent time in shelters, jail, juvenile detention... .  Right now, we are the only stable people in her life, so she calls about once a week.  She moved out at 17, and initiated the move herself.  She contacted a transitional living program and applied while I was out of town one weekend.  She called to notify me while I was driving home.  The waiting list was longer than she wanted to deal with, so 3 weeks later, she contrived some sort of issue with me and my husband while we were on the first leg of our vacation.  She demanded that we place her in a shelter and contacted the shelter herself to secure a placement.

She eventually entered a transitional living program and stayed there until 2.5 weeks before her 18th birthday.  She moved in with a guy who didn't even know her name, but whom she met on an online dating site.

Right now, she is working and living with a much older guy.  She moved her biological mother and grandmother in with them thinking they could return to what she remembers as a child.  She also invited her biological father to her high school graduation and was upset when we had to meet him with the entrance tickets because her new friends skipped the ceremony.

Today, our home is much more calm.  We have had to make peace with her choices.  We have also had to agree as a family how and to what extent we are involved in her life.  She hasn't completely cut us out of her life, but goes through periods with minimal contact.

[lbjnltx]

Hello FindingNormal,

I'm glad you found this site to get some support for all that you are going through.  God bless you for taking in these kids and giving them a chance at having a loving family that cares about them and will protect them from even themselves.  That's a hard job to volunteer for.   

My daughter was not adopted and I dealt with many of the same behaviors when she was younger.  Learning the communication skills, educating myself about the disorder, getting a healthy perspective on the past/present/future all led our family towards recovery. 

Since your d15 currently has no stability, resources, or prospects for a healthy future she will most likely come back to you and your family when she is in need or something or in a crisis situation.  Have you made any decisions on what you and your family are willing to do should she contact you?  What options are you willing to facilitate?

lbj

[FindingNormal]

Hi DKW,

Thank you for sharing your own story. I read through the entire board and most of the stories about BPDs running away were adult BPDs so I was left feeling that maybe our story was unique. Given that she is only 15 years old makes this so much more challenging to accept. It has been 6 weeks and we have heard nothing from her so I am still processing all of this. Some days it feels so surreal.

If I was honest, I would admit that I have known for while that she was going to eventually leave us for her biological family, but I am an optimist and a fighter and I had hoped and prayed that she would have waited until she was older to leave. I think knowing this made me fight harder for her, but now that she is gone and I have been able to get some much needed perspective on this situation, I am seeing that there is nothing I could have done to stop her and that trying to help someone who did not want help would have eventually destroyed me and my relationship with my husband and other children.

I have a strong faith and I trust that this is all for a greater purpose. I also have peace knowing that in the 8 years we had her she was loved and offered hope and healing. She now knows what a healthy family looks like and she knows that if she ever wants to get help to heal, we are here for her. She also knows however, that I will not enable or support her bad choices. God knows she can find enough losers who will do that. I don't know what happens next, but I know that we as a family are choosing to move forward and learning to live on our own terms. I may not be able to help her, but I have 5 other children (3 of whom have their own stories of loss and trauma) who really want to be parented and are choosing to embrace life so I will focus on them and make sure they get the support they need.

[FindingNormal]

Hi lbjnltx,

Thank you for taking the time to read our story and respond with encouragement. I always said that I would write a book called "When Crazy Becomes Normal" because that is how I felt living with my daughter. Her leaving has finally allowed me to redefine what is normal for my family and though no family is without some problems, I am finding that parenting my 5 other children is nothing compared to the parenting of 1 BPD

During the last session with her therapist she told us that she knew she was at risk of human trafficking and told us she did not care. Since the first time she ran, I have spent a lot of time discussing "life" with her and so she knows the risks she is taking.  However, she is 15, has BPD and thinks she has all the power and that she can some how get her biological family back. The reality is that by pursuing her birth parents, she has ensured that the adoptive parents of her other younger biological brother and sister will NEVER let her have access to them. We had just recently got the other adoptive family to reinstate sibling visits and the past 2 summers they have been all able to attend a sibling reunification camp, but now that will never happen again since this family will not take the chance that their children will find out about her choices and be influenced by them. It tore my heart out when I had to tell our son that he would not be seeing his bio-siblings this summer or going to camp. 

In regards to your question, I have thought about the possibility of her returning, but at this point, I am skeptical that she will. She is very good at convincing people that she is sympathetic and a victim and I am finding that there is no shortage of people and community resources who will believe the lies of a mentally ill child and support that child in making bad life choices. Our state is VERY supportive of run-away youth and there are a plethora of support services in place for run-away youth. She also knows that coming back home means that we will file an At Risk Youth Petition and that she will be held accountable for her choices, something she despises.

I also forgot to mention that before she left she maliciously called CPS on us and told them that we had abused her. This resulted in a surprise visit from a Social Worker and it meant that my children had to be subjected to the stress of an interview. Her version of abuse was ridiculous and it was of course completely unfounded, but it shows us what she would be willing to do if she ever returned and it leaves us concerned.

At this point, I am just monitoring her social media and emails so I can try to keep track of where she is. She has been filed as a missing child and I am on a first name basis with the Supervisor of the Missing Persons Unit for our county. She and I are in agreement to wait this out and see what happens. We both understand that trying to force her back would be unsuccessful and would be the worst possible step and would just force her further underground. As dysfunctional as her biological parents are, I would rather she be with them than with strangers she has met online. She also needs to see the truth of these people for herself. I have read the CPS files that came with the kids and have followed her birth mother online and I would be surprised if her birth mother did not have BPD as well. If she ever joins her bio-mom in Oklahoma, I don' think it would last long before things would explode. Her birth mom might write about how much she loves her kids and thinks about them every day, but the truth is she married a registered sex offender after divorcing their birth father and now she just moved to Oklahoma to be with her new boyfriend and did not even try to do her annual visit. Clearly she does not care about her children as much as she says she does on social media.

For the sake of the other children, I would prefer she does not return at this time unless she was sincerely repentant and wanting to get help, but short of a miracle I do not see that happening. I guess we will just cross that bridge if and when it happens. In the meantime I will continue to pray for her, but my focus will be on parenting my other children and making sure they have the support and resources they need to be successful on their own life journeys.

[lbjnltx]

Hi again FindingNormal,

Thanks for the info.  Dealing with a teen w/BPD is tough and trying, trying to parent and protect other children in the home at the same time adds more burdens.  I can see why you would not want her to return home as she is now.

Are there resources available for inpatient care for this adopted child?  What are your parental rights in relation to these resources and power to enforce?

At 15 and disordered she doesn't have the ability to make good choices, protect herself, or make treatment decisions.

lbj

[FindingNormal]

Thank you lbjnltx for understanding and validating our decisions. Granted it was not our choice for her to leave and not contact us, but it was a process to accept that there was nothing we could do that would "convince" her to return home and that we had to accept the situation as it was... .not from a place of weakness, but rather from a place of strength. This has been the most healing aspect of this process, taking back the power that she tried to suck from us over the years.

In terms of resources, there are not a lot of options in our state. I wanted to pursue an adolescent hospital placement, but they would have to be referred through an ER and up until recently she has not been "troubled" enough for this to happen. Part of the challenge is that her downward spiral was so quick. This literally all happened within a month. In that time, she went from our home to running away, to a youth shelter, to a stranger's house, to couch surfing with "friends" from school and finally to disappearing to her birth father.

Another part of the challenge is that up until March, we had been compensating for her issues so well that on the outside we presented pretty "normal" to those who did not know our family well. It was a double-edged sword in that the more I did to compensate for her mental health issues to try to "normalize" things and support her/protect her from herself, the harder it was to convince people (therapists and schools) that she had serious needs. Of course now they see the reality of what I was trying to tell them, but it is kind of late since she is no longer in therapy and had dropped out of school.

Once she left our home and I was able to accept my daughter's BPD diagnosis, I immersed myself in weeks of research and called every available resource to see what kind of options we had, but the more research I did, the more I realized that my daughter was just one of many and that our state does everything possible to disempower parents and empower youth, even when those youth have mental health issues. Aside from an At Risk Youth (ARY) petition, we really had no way to stop her behavior and from talking to many people, the ARY does not always work and that the parent has to commit countless hours to get anything out of it.

Despite this, we knew it was our only option to holding her in our home so we immediately contacted FPS (family preservation services) for an assessment which was the first step to getting an ARY filed with the courts. Unfortunately, by the time it had been completed, she had disappeared. We could have filed with the juvenile court, but we would have had to serve her the paperwork and we do not know where she is living. Even if we did find a way to serve her, she would not show up to court so nothing would have come from it in the end and we would have been out the $1,000 filing fee and would have further angered our daughter.

Our state does have the BECCA bill for children who are truant to school, but the school waited to file and now they are saying it is too late to file and not only that, they have also unenrolled her from school since she has missed more than 20 days so there will be no more support coming from the school, not that there was ever much to begin with which was part of the bigger problem. I think they are just relieved to have this situation off their hands.

Also in our state, children at the age of 13 control their own mental health treatment and can choose to participate or not and can choose to involve the parent or not. There are no involuntary treatment centers in our state and even if we could get her into an adolescent treatment center they are short term only and she can refuse mental health treatment once she is released. I know there are out of state treatment centers in a neighboring state, but we do not have the financial resources for something like this and given that she is determined to not come back home, there is no way we could make this happen right now even if we had the finances for it.

Bottom line we do not really have any parental rights though we are legally responsible for her until she turns 18. It is amazing to me that we can be held responsible for her choices, but have no real power to control or guide them. At this point, we still have a lot of legal questions that we need to get answers to since we need to protect ourselves and our other children. Since she has been reported as a missing child, if anything happens to her at least she is in the system. Thank you for your support. Being able to talk about this with someone who understands is such a blessing!

[FindingNormal]

Update on our situation. So yesterday evening a woman brought our daughter back home. She was a friend of my daughter's birth mother. It seems that the birth mother had arranged for my daughter to travel to Oklahoma with someone, but that person had stood my daughter up so she was stranded and called her birth mother because it was late at night. The birth mother's solution was to call this woman and ask her to go pick up my daughter which she did.

This woman kept my daughter for 2 days before finally convincing my daughter to let her take her back home. My daughter refused to give her our phone number so we had no advance warning. I met them on the front porch so I could speak with our daughter and find out her mental state and what her plans were. Unfortunately, she only came back because she felt like she did not have any other option. The woman said that she went from sweet to angry when they pulled up to our house.

She was very hostile when I met her and she told me she did not come back to join the family, but that she wanted us to let her live in our backyard playhouse or garage and do chores around the house to pay "rent". She reasoned then that she could do whatever she wanted and not be accountable to our house rules. I let her know that this was not an option and that we wanted her to come back as our daughter.

She then told me that she was not my daughter and that she would never call me mom again because she already had a mom. She told me that she hated me and that she would not come back to stay in the house and that if I did not let her stay in the play house or garage she would leave again. She admitted that she had been staying with friends and also her birth father and that she would go back to staying with them. She admitted that she was back to dating the 18 year old boy and that he wanted to take care of her. She also admitted that she had called CPS on us so that they would take her away from us. All of this was witnessed by the woman who was horrified to see this side of my daughter and she said if she knew that she would treat us that way she would not have brought her back home. I remained calm through all of this and just kept reminding her that I loved her and wanted her to come back home to get help.

She eventually calmed down enough that I felt safe enough to let her come in the house so she could use the bathroom and get something to eat. After she did this, she asked for some of her clothes and then she hopped the back fence and left again.  I called the run-away supervisor for our county and let her know what had happened, but again there is nothing we can do to stop her from doing this unless we get an At Risk Youth petition and try to bring her before the juvenile court. If we pursued this the likely result is that she would be found in contempt of court and a warrant would be issued for her arrest and she would wind up in detention where she would be likely groomed for prostitution. Not a really good option from my point of view and not sure how it would help her BPD at all or improve our relationship.

My question in all of this is that as I read the boards, there is a lot of conversation around setting boundaries for the BPD in your life, but what do you do when your 15 year dependent child refuses to accept normal parental boundaries and finds other people including biological parents and an older boyfriend who will not place any boundaries on her? I cannot help my daughter if she refuses to be under our roof and can find other people to live with and the state we live in does everything possible to empower children to destroy their lives.

[.cup.car]

FindingNormal, I read through this whole thread at work. I was shocked.

You are correct in your assumption that your adopted daughter has her own agenda and very well may reconnect with her birth family, no matter how bad of an idea it is. My adopted cousin (17) suffers from Fetal Alcohol Syndrome. Sometimes she'll straight up disappear for weeks, only to call my uncle from another province asking for a bus ticket home. The endless stream of stories about her only reinforce the fact that there are some people on this planet who simply can't be helped.

These two quotes from your story (and replies) are what I find the most shocking though:

1. In our state, children at the age of 13 control their own mental health treatment.

2. Our state does everything possible to disempower parents and empower youth, even when those youth have mental health issues.

Personally, I think this story goes beyond bpdfamily.com and might be worth taking to your local news station. A thirteen year old can control their mental health treatment? At thirteen, my mom still packed my lunches and helped me with school projects. Mental disorders don't even start to manifest in adolescents until the 15-24 age range. I mean, in extreme cases, kids who aren't allowed to cross the street by themselves are allowed to refuse therapy if they're hearing voices in the walls.

On what planet is this a good idea? I mean I'm only 22 years old but you gotta be kidding me, something ain't right about this.

And then you have this ridiculous contradiction:

Within a week they had run away from the shelter after being caught smoking tea bags in their bedroom. I later found out that she ran to a 20 year old man she had met online. He introduced her to alcohol, drugs and in the process took her virginity. 6 days later he kicked her out.

Followed by:

I asked the ER doctor and the Social Worker for a referral to an adolescent mental health hospital, but they said she did not meet the criteria.

My brain hurts. Run away from home, smoke tea bags (wait, you can do that?) with a girl you barely know, run away from a youth shelter and sleep with a guy you just met while experimenting with drugs and alcohol... .And that's NOT meeting the criteria? What DOES meet the criteria?

Maybe it's just the narcissist in me, but you should really bring this to the attention of a local news outlet. Basically what I got from your post is that if I lived in the Pacific Northwest and my daughter was suffering from a mental disorder, there's basically no point in even trying to help her.

And that's not right. Maybe with public exposure, it would all change?

[meantcorn34]

We lived in PA when my son turned 13. He had the right to decide whether to take meds, have treatment and whether to allow his therapist to share information with me. Even though I was legally responsible and accountable for him.

[FindingNormal]

Hi .cup.car,

Thank you for taking the time to read through everything. It is challenging to summarize all that has happened and trust me this all makes my brain hurt too. In many ways I am still processing the fact that 2 months ago my daughter was living with us and now she is gone and refuses to acknowledge us as her parents. I know it all sounds far-fetched, but everything I have written is true. Washington State is just one big enabler of homeless youth. It is why we have a whole underground culture of run-away youth in Seattle.

The sad aspect to my story is that as horrific as it sounds, my story is only one of thousands and as bad as her story is, there are families with far worse stories. The irony is that these laws were put in place to give rights to children, but all it has done is made our area flourish with pimps and human traffickers and the end result is that our children are victimized by the laws intended to empower them.

Unfortunately your assessment of the situation is sadly accurate. Until/unless my daughter stops running and returns home with a desire to get help, there is not much we can do for her. I guess I am just glad that we had 8 years to love her and lay a foundation for her. It is too bad though that for the past 3 years her therapist minimized my parental concerns and attributed her behavior to normal teen development. I have other teenager and I wish my daughter had normal teen development issues instead of BPD.

ER visits have been useless for us too. The challenge is that our daughter presents quite normal since we have never supported her desire to physically manifest the emo culture (piercing, gauges, hairstyles) and her cuts have all been superficial so she does not have the scarring associated with most cutters. As parents we are also very involved so I think the staff look at our situation and just assume that we just need to work through our issues. In terms of our most recent ER visit, we did not know at the time about what happened with the 20 year old man and even if we had, she would have simply denied it and it would have been our word against hers. Also, by the time the Social Worker saw my daughter, it was 2 am in the morning and she spoke to her for less than 5 minutes. We had been in the hospital for over 7 hours and though my daughter was tired, she was presenting "normally" and was no longer suicidal so the Social Worker had no reason at that moment to authorize sending her to the facility I requested.

Maybe, someday I will have an opportunity to be a part of the voice of change, but right now I know that I need to continue to work on healing, helping my other children heal and coming up with a contingency plan in case she does come back home at some point in this process. Having her show up on Tuesday showed me that my other kids have been greatly traumatized by this situation and that having her back in our home right now would be a challenge unlike one we have yet faced. Pandora's Box has been opened. Until my daughter stops running, I have to let her go because you can't force someone to get help if they are determined and enabled to self-destruct; especially when that child has biological parents and an adult boyfriend who will harbor and encourage her to do so.

Thank you for taking the time to listen to my story and comment. I am sorry about your cousin's story. I hope your uncle is getting the support that he needs to deal with the stress caused by her illness and her running behavior.

Our objective is to better understand the struggles our child faces and to learn the skills to improve our relationship and provide a supportive environment and also improve on our own emotional responses, attitudes and effectiveness as a family leaders