Losing a Student

Today I learned a valuable lesson for both my present self and my future self. Half of  the students at my internship are new and the other half have been in the program for at least a month. There are now a total of 8 middle schoolers which are the group of kids that I work with most often. I'm pretty good buddies with what used to be 4 of the 8. Until today. 

My favorite hate to love/love to hate student ran away from his home for five days, lost his placement at my internship and now he has to go to Pensacola to be apart of a real juvenile detention center. Mikael (not his real name) is not the first student to be labeled on the run nor will he be the last. He was however, a really good kid. I don't know what he did to end up involved with the law but he's  not that troubled of a kid. Mikael hadn't missed a single day of school and he was rocking a 4.0 GPA before he ran. He had completed all of his sanctions and was about to be taken off of probation. He was almost done! 

"Losing" Mikael really upsets me and I've only known him for a month. He was one of the main reasons I was so excite to go every Tuesday and Thursday. I felt that I could possibly make a difference in his life. I still want to. I'm legitimately worried about this 15 year old kid.

The lesson I learned was that I can't let myself get attached so easily. I'm not in control of anyone else's actions so I cannot count on anyone else to keep doing a behavior or to not to a behavior. The same thing applies later on.  I won't be able to count on a client to listen to my opinion or not to relapse or to keep up with a program. As much as I want to, it's not an option.