My 10 year old Son

[Unregistered]

my 10 year old son ran away today! He has never done anything like this though he has talked about it before. He got off the school bus and took off. I looked for almost 2 hours on foot and driving before deciding to call the police because it was snowing hard and getting dark. My entire family paired off and went looking and the police started walking ditches. I have never been so scared it is so cold and the winter storm was gettin bad!!! Finally after about 5 hours I got a call from a local store where my son had went to get warm for a few minutes before taking off again. The guy was able to convince him to stay there and eventually give up my number. At 10 yrs old, in a snow storm he was able to make it about 8 miles on foot! I am terrified it will happen again and that next time he will make it even farther. Are there any resources to help "scare" him or to help him realize the seriousness of his actions

[ccsmod0]

re: My ten year old son

Hi,
Thank you for contacting us here at the National Runaway Switchboard, we are so sorry to hear what your family is going through. We know this cannot be easy for you and it sounds like you are extremely concerned. We are glad that you have your son safe and back at home.

Have you ever talked to your son about why he is running away? Is it possible that he may be able to sit down with a school counselor or someone that may be able to help him work through whatever he is feeling? Do you have any other family members that he may feel comfortable going to if he feels that he needs to get away until he can feel better?

Unfortunately we cannot, and do not have any resources that would be able to talk your son out of running away as we are a non-directive hotline. If you would like to give your son our number and/or our website we could talk to him about what is going on and then you will know that if he does decide to leave again he can call us and we will try our best to keep him safe. We also offer conference calling so if he wants to call us, we can conference a parent in to try and help mediate any issues your son may be having. If he can explore our website he can look at some good questions to think about before (if) he leaves again. Also on our website there is some help for parents that you may find helpful;

http://1800runaway.org/pub_mat/parents_art.html

If we could talk to you or your son more thoroughly we may be able to give more help. Please don't hesitate to call us at 1-800-RUNAWAY as we are 24/7 and anonymous and confidential. We are also free from any payphone. Again, you can give your son our number and we can talk to him about how he is feeling and/or what is going on. We cannot tell him what to do but we will do our best to help him in any way we can.
Hope to hear from you soon, take care and good luck.
NRS