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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Offer to make her a sandwich and help pack a suitcase. She wants to run away from her problems, from her fear. [/quote]

This sounds like a very bad idea to me.  She's not 13, she's 6![/quote]

Actually, it's worse when it's 13.  The worst thing to do is offer to pack her bag and make her food for the trip (teen).

I was a nanny for a 12-13 girl that threatened to run away from her dad.  She had already run away from her mom and the police brought her back that evening.  She and I sat down for a long talk about the realities of teen girls on the street (rape, prostitution, no school, no food, no shelter, no way to get home, etc.).  I've been raped twice, so we talked explicitly about what it was like, how she would deal with it.  She hadn't thought it through and she hadn't had anyone willing to sit her down and give her the cold, hard facts.  Once she realized, she dropped it.  Of course she still had other issues, but anything else can be dealt with, you have no chance to deal with anything if the kid runs away.[/quote]

You were in no place to tell a 12 year old about your rape encounter.[/quote]

Given that she had run away from her mother's house and I was the nanny at her father's house when she was planning on running away again, why would I not give her the hard facts?!  She went and talked to her dad later, to find out if I was exaggerating the possibilities; she wouldn't have talked to him without the information from me.  Without hearing the things that could (and do) happen to teen girls on the street, she would have run again; because I shared something that was horrifying for me to experience, maybe she won't have to experience it.  After she talked to her dad, she came back to me and asked for more information about rape, what she could do to protect herself if she finds herself in that situation and what she can do to decrease the chances of her being raped.  Her father didn't know that I had that experience, didn't know that she had been planning on running away and was so relieved that I talked to her and presented the information the way I did.  Why would you have an issue with how I handled it, if the girl's father didn't?![/quote]

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