Strict parenting just one of many factors behind children & adolescents running away

CHENNAI: Tears rolling down his eyes, a 12-year-old boy sat in the dark stairway of an old building 200m from his house. His utter fear of darkness or even felines didn’t matter even when a glossy eyed white cat walked past him, purring in the darkness. He wanted to run away from the place he called home, and he did.

“I was terrified. I lived two days in the fear that my mother would hit me until I could take it no more,” said A Ibrar, now in his twenties. Confessing to running away from home, he was surprised how clearly he remembers the events from that night over a decade ago. It was the tenth of May. “Eggs!” he thought. He decided that he’ll cook eggs on the street. He always knew that he’d run to the Eden Gardens — the iconic cricket ground in Kolkatta, if he ran away from home. “If not Eden Gardens, it was going to be Victoria Memorial,” he recalled. He was ready to face the brutality of the streets, but not  his mother’s anger.

His father never batted an eye when he was being hit; his siblings too young to fight for him; his relatives who lived with him always looked down on him, leaving him feeling like an outsider. The pre-teen boy considered his options and took to his heels.

He’d overestimated his stamina. While grasping for breath on his flight, he ran into neighbours who’d served him chai in the evenings, a friend of his father who chatted him up after Friday morning namaz and friends of his family, who watched him run with no footwear. His lack of trust on these acquaintances led him to the lonely dark stairway, where he was found a few hours later by an old tuition teacher.

New books for the next academic year had arrived and a couple of them were stolen from Ibrar’s school bag. He didn’t expect his mother to understand that it was not his fault. About 60 people who searched for him were relieved when he was found, but his mother continued to be silent for the next two days, leaving him with little scope for communication.

Juvenile instability

“Children between age 10 and 19 are emotionally unstable and at high risk of taking impulsive decisions,” said A Narayanan, the president of Change India, an NGO that advocates policy making in favour of child rights.

“In most cases of runaways, there are push factors and pull factors,” he added. Children with abusive parents, broken families, harmful relatives or acquaintances are often left aloof and vulnerable. While persistent loneliness and anguish result in the urge  to fight or flight, harmful “road-side romeos or over-inspiring friends,” pull them out of their houses, observed Narayanan.

A recent incident of a missing girl from a 90s celebrity household gripped the attention of Chennai city. The girl had gone missing from her school in broad day-light, escaped the surveillance of over four dozen CCTV cameras in the campus and did not return home for ten days, before she was found in a church in Bangalore.

This 16-year-old girl, who pursued science in her high school, moved to the commerce stream “so that she would score better grades” in her Class 12 board exams, according to the principal of her school. Addressing the media, her mother admitted to reprimanding the girl over something she’d posted on social media. Despite approaching her school counsellor  multiple times, or talking to her teachers and friends about her problems, she did not find the help she needed.

Disengagement with school acts as a catalyst in a child’s decision to run away. “Children love being at schools even if they don’t like studying. It gives them scope for social engagements, a space for physically exerting their stress and exploring new avenues,” said Narayanan adding that schools that engage better with specialised needs of children, creating a comfort zone for them, are likely to change children’s hearts. While the girl’s parents requested privacy about her story, they openly admitted to unwarranted chiding on multiple instances. Most children attribute their runaway behaviour to poor relationship dynamics with their parents.

A team from Chennai-based Community Health Education Society (CHES) that interviewed street children in 2016 found that 55 per cent of them had run away from broken or abusive families. About 75 per cent  wanted to return home according to the study, signifying the importance of involving families in the healing process.

Not just reunion

“Most children run away and come back home in a week’s time and do not travel very far unless they get picked up by anti-social elements,” said Dr Renuka Ramakrishnan, a dermatologist  who engages in multiple social work,  including finding missing people. She played an instrumental role in tracing the 16-year-old girl who went missing. “Children are hesitant before taking such dramatic decisions primarily due to fear of uncertainty.

It means that they don’t feel understood by family members,” she said, adding that technology has resulted in children and parents drifting further. “Children may feel important to parents, but they run away only when they don’t feel valuable. This happens when friendly conversations about personal lives are cut off between family members,” she said.

The chances of children leaving home is higher when parents show inconsistent affection, according to Siva Jayakumar, District Child Protection Officer (DCPO), Chennai. “In many homes, children are given everything they ask for when they’re younger and deprived of their wants once they reach adolescence,” he said, commenting that several children return after they feel better temporarily. This reunion however does not mean a change in behaviour until both children and parents engage actively in friendly conversations.

Ibrar for example, resolved to leaving home once and for all. He channelled his anguish into building a career he enjoyed before becoming financially independent. He admitted that once he started living alone and took his own decisions, his relationship with parents too improved. “Governments or NGOs should invest on a local counsellor and recreational space like a free gym where they vent their stress out and develop a peer circle,” Jayakumar  said. He also said Chennai city is drafting a pilot project to implement the same.