Many children feel a need to take extra steps in order to justify they fact that they have left home. As a result, they create post-facto reasons for leaving.

Some children who don't feel this need themselves may nonetheless develop acceptable and palatable needs for leaving in order to satisfy their impatient psychologists and social workers. If one story is not good enough, then he tries others, until he learns what the professionals want to hear. Having done that, he repeats the same story to each subsequent professional, who is happy to hear about an easily-resolved textbook case. The more the child repeats the story, the more he believes it. His survival technique has succeeded, and he has learned to tell The Big Lie.

These children are likely to maintain some truth in each of their stories, but they may expand the circumstances in order to make it sound worthy of leaving home. They, with the assistance of their peers, are likely to feel that the simple truth would not have been sufficient reason for leaving. Thus, a case in which they were deprived of dessert could be expanded into a story about the parents starving them for several days.

This behavior may disappoint or insult you. A comparable feeling may occur in the case of a divorce.

• You did not get married so that your spouse would snub you and leave you.
• You did not get married so that ultimately you would leave.

However, some children (or spouses) do leave - even in the best of families.

Most traditional Jewish people believe that a large family is a blessing. Indeed, those with large families sometimes cope better than others. They may be comforted by the fact that they they still have many other children. They may feel that they have not sacrificed their entire family. Smaller families do not have this "fallback."