I want to thank everybody for all the support and prayers we received during the two weeks that my daughter ran away. I plan on leaving this section here to use as a journal of what a parent of a runaway goes through and update it periodically to show how things progress in these trying times of raising a teenager.

Click on the angel above to read the journal that I wrote while Trinie was gone.

The last few weeks have been a rocky road of a lot of ups and downs. As I mentioned in my last entry, we told Trinie that if she didn't want to live with us she could find another place to live and we would let her go if we approved of the place. Since then I have wondered if this would be in her best interest. I have been praying on it daily with no clear direction. Then one of my friends told me to check my motives of way I want her to live somewhere else. Once I did, I knew then that the reason that I would allow this is because I just don't want to deal with all this anymore. When I told her that she probably won't be moving anywhere for awhile she told me "I don't want to live here anymore, I won't go to therapy, and I won't work things out". Needless to say I felt like slapping the dodo out of her, instead, I calmly told her "Well, if you don't go to therapy and try to work things out there will never be a chance that we will let you move in somewhere else". I'm hoping that if she gets involved with therapy and we try to work things out she will not want to move, if so after trying this for a few months then I have done all I could and will probably let her go with a clear conscious.

I am happy to report that it seems that we may be making progress. We have been able to go from complete uncooperativeness to days where we have anywhere from some cooperation to complete cooperation and understanding, Teenagers!!!!

We are really looking forward to a decision that I make a few days ago after thinking and praying about it. Next week I am going to start home schooling Trinie. This year (8th grade) will be through the districts ISP (Independent Study Program) which has a teacher that monitors our progress and supplies us with the material, Trinie also gets to participate in all the school activities like 8th grade graduation, field trips and such. Then next year when she starts high school I am going to get the process going to completely home school her on my own. I am hoping that this will help us reclaim our family, I feel that as a parent that I have an influence on what my child may choose to do. Right now she is on the line of what she will choose to do with her life, either it be constructive or destructive, the ultimate choose is hers, but I can do all that I can to influence that choice. I'll keep everybody posted on the progress we make with this home schooling, I might have a different opinion about it in three months or so. Do you ever get those feels that you know when you are doing the right thing, even though it may be difficult? That's the way I feel.

I can't believe that so much time has pasted by. So those of you that have been here before you can see that we have been going through a major remodeling project, this has kept me really busy. Anyway I'm sorry I haven't done an update sooner, and I will try to stay with an update at least every other week.

Things have been moving along slow, but at least they have been moving along. Trinie is doing very well with the home schooling. I have to spend a lot of time going over things with her which can be frustrating at times, but she has gone from a D and F grades to about a B or C grade on everything. If I can remember this, then it isn't so frustrating.

Right now she is trying to earn back a privilege that was given to her. She has been on restitution for some time now for running away for the second time and we had everything all ready for the family to go to the Grape Festival next weekend, but she was caught in a lie last weekend. We even told her that we knew that she had lied earlier and would she tell us the truth now, or do we need to tell her. She stuck to her guns and it costed her the opportunity to go to the Grape Festival that she has been looking forward to going all year. Well, we (actually my husband) decided to try something new. We told her that she had the opportunity to earn the chance to go but we weren't going to tell her what she had to do. She had two weeks to earn this chance and we are not going to tell her until the last minute if she gets to go or not and we aren't. I thought that this was pretty clever, because it gives her the opportunity to figure out what she needs to do to correct her behavior.

We finally found a new therapist. He is really good. Trinie and I met with him together last week and he had us interact with each other a few minutes and he vary calmly looked over to me and said "She's got you wrapped around her finger". I just chuckled and said that is no surprise. Now, what I have been thinking about is "yea, I know she has me wrapped around her finger, but how do you stop it from happening when you know this is true, but don't realize when it is happening.?" When I find more of an answer to that delimia I will be sure to share it will you.

This is the fourth time this year that she has run away. I don't know how many more times I can through it. When the police officer came to take the report I was in tears and I told him that after four times you'd think that I would be used to it, but I'M NOT!!!!! I don't feel like doing anything, not even this, but with this I know that I want my viewers to read and feel what I'm going through and the only way I can do that is write about things as I'm going through them, not afterward and trying to write what I remember.

I went through her room again, and each time this happens I find things that give me a glimpse into the person that my daughter hides from me and it tares at my heart because I know that what she wants nobody can ever give her. I get really upset when I think about the times she is home and how I want to believe that everything will be different this time and to believe that she can be different and then it gets shattered each time she leaves. I don't know how many more times I can believe in her. I'm getting to where the person she wants me to believe she is has never existed.

Well, as you can tell, I'm in a lot of pain right now and I'm going to stop for tonight with one last note. The only thing that has kept me strong (even when I feel weak) is a belief and trust in God. Without that I would have followed through with some of the irrational thoughts that I had today.

Day twos and no word from or about Trinie. I was really upset at the last writing and forgot to mention a few things. When I was going thru her room I found an envolope that she had made out like she was going to mail a letter. It was addressed to this guy that was writing her and we told her that she is to write him and tell him how old she really is and that he needs to stop writing her. I told the police that she may have went there, this guy lives in a neighboring town called Stockton, and the officer said that with Stockton's schedule he could walk backwards and get there faster. Stockton has more police calls then they have officers and have to pritoritize every call, I remember ready a newspaper article one day about an officer who saw someone break into a car and steal the radio and all he did was give this thief a citation to appear in court. What I feel this means that this case is not a priority so Stockton won't check it out, and since it is in Stockton, Lodi won't go check it out. You may be wondering, if I'm so worried about my daughter why don't I go check it out myself. Well, the main reason why I won't is because she is known to lie in these situations and God only knows what she told these people and we don't know what we could be walking into if they believe what she is telling them. So, for our own safety, we have decided not to got check it out ourselves.

I've decided that I'm going to start looking into group homes for Trinie when and if she ever comes home. I really feel that she need more help that I can give her and more help than what she is getting from her therapist. I also need a break from this contant feeling of stress or else I'm not going to be any good to her or anyone else.

I found a letter in her room today that never got mailed out, I'm starting to understand some of the lies she has and will tell. This letter explained that she just got out of the hospital because I beat the &*%^ out of her and that if I say such and such I'm just nothing but a lying (*&^%$. I still have her whole room to clean out, how fun it is going to be to read all these kinds of things. I wouldn't of ever read them, but I am saving each one that gives professionals a gleamse into the real person she is and not the person she has made everyone believe she is.

To fill you all in on whats been going on, Trinie came home on Sept. 26th., she has been acting like nothing ever happened. The only reason that she got away with this is because I had decided to go ahead and send her up to my parents in Oregon. The night before Trinie came home my step-mother called and insisted that we send her up there, I told them that I had already decided not to because I didn't want them to have to go through all that I have, she kept insisting and I told her that I would think about it. I starting thinking that I'm not God and don't really know that this won't be good for her. The only reason I really even considered it is because my 16 year old daughter has been raised by them since she was a baby and she has her head screwed on straight. I'm hoping that her sister will be a positive influence on her and maybe things will start getting better.

We went up this last weekend and took Trinie up there and today has been really nice. It is the first 24 hour period that has been stress free since January, and I'm really enjoying it.

I really hope Trinie the best and really miss her, but I don't miss all the turmoil. I at first felt like I was going to lose her if she went up there, but looking back I realized that I never had her in the first place, she is just on loan from God and if this is what has to happen in order for her to be a winner in all this then I would be more then glad to have gone through this.

I will continue to keep everyone posted on her progress, but the updates will be less frequent. Thanks agian for all the support, I couldn't have done it without God and all of you.

Things didn't work out in Oregon for Trinie, so my dad brought her home a couple of weeks ago. It seemed that my dad couldn't handle the contant arguing between Trinie and her sister. The first day she was home she told me a lot of really nice things like, I know that it's not better anywhere else and that nobody loves me like you and dad do, ect.. I told her that I have a real hard time believing her at this time, but if she really means it then she should be able to show me.

Things starting going downhill agian in a very short period of time. Trinie had been home for about a week when she went to go check the mail and didn't come back. This time I was furious!!! I had had it, as far as I was concerned she could go to a group home. We ended up running accross her a few hours later, she said she had intended to come home, she just wanted to spend some time with her friends.

I have been thinking and praying about what we should do, I really don't want to send her to a group home and my husband and I are the one's in prison right now since she can't even go to the bathroom without me escorting her.

What I think am going to try to do is first of all check into getting involved with toughlove, just maybe someone can give us some other ideas that we haven't thought of. One of the other things is that we are going to let Trinie off restriction and give her a week at a time to not do certian things like lie or disapear and if she could follow the rules for that week she will get rewarded some how, if not then she loses certain previlges. Hopefully things will start getting better, I keep saying and hoping that each time, because I know they can.

For almost two weeks now things have been going really well. We let Trinie off restriction and started trying to focus on the two main troubles, lying and running away and started a penalty/reward type system. Last week she got 1 1/2 penalty points for not coming home on time a couple of times, this week she only has 1/2 penalty point for not coming home on time and if she can get through the rest of today and tommorrow she will be able to pick one of the rewards.

I tried to get Trinie back into the Independent Study Program at school, but since her file was closed out there when she went to Oregon I would have to go through a bunch of red tape and jump through hoops to get her back on. This is mainly due to the fact that she recieves, through the school district, special education services in a couple of subject areas. The teacher at ISP wouldn't reinroll her without going through a meeting with her special education services and to get a meeting I would have to wait 2 months because they are on break now. The last time I talked to the people handling her special education services the said that they didn't really think that it would benifit her being being taught through ISP because they have never dealt with a special education student in ISP. When we first started, the idea was to try it for a couple of months with the schools special education teacher assigning the work for the couple of subjects, this seemed to be working out great. I even asked about the idea of taking her out of special education, then could we just go on with the ISP, her teacher said she would not take her at all then since she doesn't know how to deal with and help special education students. My thinking was that we could just go back a couple of grades in the subjects she is behind in. I got tired of dealing with the school and went ahead and filed a R4. This declares my house a private school and then I don't have to answer to the school district, just make should we are following the required ciriculum. We have now been doing that for a week and things are going really well.

Things were going wonderfully for two whole weeks. Trinie was checking in and coming home on time and as far as I could tell, she wasn't lying. Then one night last week she wanted to do what she wanted to do and went to the movies with a friend while her dad and I were out for a few hours one evening. She left me a note telling me that she would be back at 9:00 - 9:30 p.m., she didn't end up coming home till 8:30 the next evening!

I am getting real tired of this in and out trip of hers and told her that the next time she leaves to not even worry about coming back home, becuase she is won't be welcomed here. I don't know if that was to hard or not, but I've had it and nothing else has seemed to work.

So far Trinie has been off restriction for two days and has done really good again, but I can't start thinking that things are better because each time I do my heart gets crushed one more time.

When I reported her missing, an officer that has gotten to know us quite well came and took the report and told me a couple of interesting things that I thought you'd be interesting in hearing. One it that Trinie is not fit the typical runaway pattern. Usually a child runsaway because of neglect or abuse in the house, and he doesn't notice any of that here, or they are trouble makers, and Trinie is not one of them, in fact, she is really good when she is home. The other thing is that when he got the call the dispatcher warned him that I had e-mailed the cheif of police in the past. That was months ago and the department still remembers it, or has it flagged on my name or something, that goes to show you the power of the internet!

When I wrote yesterdays update it was earlier in the afternoon. So to finish off the day, my husband and I took off for a few hours last night and when we got back there was a note from Trinie saying that she went to spend the night at a friends house and she would be back around 10:00-11:00 a.m the following day. Needless to say she didn't come home.

My husband and I went to our first Toughlove meeting tonight. It was quite interesting, we got some suggestions on different things to try. The one I am going to check on tommorrow or the next day is to see if I can get her through some type of Scared Striaght Program. They also told us to keep a diary of the times she runsaway and all, I've already done that with this web site.

After we got back from the meeting I went ahead and called the police to report her missing since we were encouraged to do that, I have been feeling like a bother to the police dept. and have tried to put it off, but it is my best interest not Trinie's for us to keep reporting her. While we were making the report with the police dept. Trinie called to let us know that she was on her way home.

When she got home we had another heart to heart and told her that if she continues to leave there will be consequences (the ones we learned tonight), but we are not going to tell her what they are that she will just have to find out for herself. I will post these ideas as we use them or some time has gone by, because I don't know if Trinie will ever have access to this page or not and don't want to give away our secrets to her.

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Last updated Nov 21, 1997
copyright 1997 - Michele Olson