Towards the end of the novel Eleanor and Park by Rainbow Rowell, Eleanor decides to run away from her family and go back to her uncle’s house. There has been so many things that have led up to make her want to do this and I’m so happy that she finally did. So many kids in America face struggles of having a poor life at home and usually there’s not many choices the child has to better themselves in the situation. In Eleanor’s case she really had no options and she has a lot of siblings so it made it harder as well. I think that Eleanor leaving was the right choice but I also feel bad because of her other siblings left behind. I did some research and according to the National Runaway Safeline between 1.6-2.8 million children runaway each year in the United States. That is a crazy amount and way more common than I thought. There are so many different reasons children run away from home. I think that young children usually have no plan on where they’re going or what they are going to do when they run away but that they just think anything and anywhere is better than being in a poor situation at home. Eleanor seemed to have a good plan of going to her uncle’s house and then if her uncle said to go home she knew she could go to Parks. I find it sad that children don’t realize that there are other ways to get help and that there are other people they can talk to if their parents aren’t really there to help them or if their parents are the cause of them wanting to run away. There are school counselors and teachers or other family members that are willing to help in most situations. If you know someone is struggling with something at home you should always try to help them and talk to them to.

http://www.pollyklaas.org/enews-archive/2013-enews/article-web-pages/the-truth-about-runaways.html?referrer=https://www.google.com/#.WIEJVKIrKu4

https://www.empoweringparents.com/article/running-away-part-i-why-kids-do-it-and-how-to-stop-them/