Danger

One of the girls at the house decided to leave last night. She didn't make it a week. The other girls took it much better than I did, they said she wasn't ready for it yet. This happens all the time, by the way, girls deciding to leave.
It's difficult because you know that they are making a bad decision. She was leaving in response to a social worker who told her that she could not see her daughter until she had finished her program with us. That's three months of no visitation. She decided to go to another program that wouldn't require as much time to go through. I guess she thought she could pull a fast one on the social worker, 'I'll show you, I'll just go to a shorter program and get to see my daughter sooner.' What she doesn't understand if her workers frustration, and the authority that he has over her child's life. That he could very well decide to take her daughter away from her for leaving our program. He will recognize the toxicity of her impulsive behavior and he will protect her daughter from it.
It's difficult standing on the outside of her situation knowing that her consequence for her actions will be more than she can imagine. There was nothing that I could do to persuade her otherwise, nothing that I could do to make her see what was very plain to me.
It is a situation that I find myself in all too frequently; being able to see the consequence that others will have for their actions, and unable to convey to them how much the cost will be.

Don't imagine for a moment that I like being knowing the outcome, being perceived as being 'right', there is no comfort in it.