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Reconciliation is of course possible, but the question is how successful it will be.

One major issue in the success of the reconciliation is related to the people to whom the runaway child is beholden.

The child is not going to run away without a support group. The number of people in that support group, the degree to which they have attached themselves to your child and the degree to which your child is attached to them are major issues and they will have a strong point in determining your child's reconciliation.

The child now is in a position in which she feels that she has to choose or select between two possible options, her family and those to whom she is beholden because they helped her run away and because they gave her physical, social, mental, and possibly financial support after she has left.

The child is not likely to make a wise choice in these issues and all too often the child will feel that there is no reason to appease her parents but she certainly must appease those who have helped her and she feels beholden to them. She does not look at the long range effects of this decision, but then again this will not be the first confused and mistaken and possibly wrong decision that she is making.

If she is very closely attached to those who have helped her leave then the reconciliation will be difficult indeed. The parents whom she has run away from are going to try to appeal to her by logic, but the logic doesn't work. That's why she has run away. The others, her support group, are going to continue appealing to her in the way that has already been successful.

The parents don't stand too much of a chance.

The people who may be working with her, the psychologists and social workers and others, are not likely to side with the parents. They are going to believe that the child probably had a good reason to run away so the child has good reason to become attached to her support group.

If the child has been placed in a home for runaway children then the law might also support the child without even knowing the facts.

With all of these issues working against reconciliation, it is clearly very difficult to return the child to the home and if the child is returned to the home, the parents are not likely to be judged fairly by the press or by the child and certainly not by the child's support group as well as by other authorities.

These are some of the reasons why the battle to regain custody of the child may be difficult indeed.