According to Leonard Pitts all girls don’t value themselves enough. They run away if they make a bad choice and don’t stick around to see what happens after. They show low self-esteem and look down upon themselves every time they pass by a mirror. They can’t concentrate on reality and what things really are at the same time. He blames girls for listening to the media that tells them you have to be perfect otherwise nobody will accept you.

In the United States 1.6 to 2.8 million kids and teens run away every year, many are girls and the average age is 16. However that doesn’t mean that its completely the girls fault they decided to run away from their situation. In the article “Teen Girls need self-worth lessons” he mainly talks about teen pregnancy, runaways, and what some people have done when in those situations. He never mentions what has happened before, what type of a person were they before all that drama happened.
Not even the choices some of them had to make.

My question for him would be, why are you writing about this? You’re not a troubled teen, you’re not even a girl! So then why are you so convinced that your daughter is going to go down the wrong path, to not make the right choices?
Maybe it depends on the town you live in, maybe it depends on the crowd you hang out with but I can assure you that there are ways to prevent that from happening. Each person has their own thing that trigger a breakdown and there are ways to treat those problems. Issues like verbal abuse from someone close to you, bullying or death of a loved one. Each person is different. Stress, sexual abuse, substance abuse, physical abuse, depression.

Things like peer pressure, self-esteem, and self-worth can affect your actions and how you think and view yourself as a person. They can cause people to make bad choices and do things they normally would never do, like steal or do drugs.
From a survey taken by an organization (dosomething.org) seven in ten girls believe they are not good enough in some way, whether it be their looks, performance in school, or relationships romantically or with family.
I know a person named Ellen, she is the stepmom of a troubled teen, she tries to get along with the girl but the she is stoic and unresponsive. The girl has lots of arguments with her dad and fights about college, money and her attitude but usually in the end she storm out of the house to go crash at a friends or her boyfriends. A lot of the time she is not seen by her family for days on end, not a very secure lifestyle I would say. But still her parents haven’t given up and they hope in some years she will come to her senses and realise how much time she wasted doing nothing. Quite contradictory to what Mr. Leonard Pitts opinion of “I see her mirrored everywhere, in the girls of my friends, my colleagues, my family, girls of all cultural and economic backgrounds. Girls in trouble. And it’s a picture without sound.”

As you can tell from this editorial I don’t fully agree with Leonard Pitts thoughts and opinions. You can always teach and show people other options before they make their final decision. My advice to the parents who deal with these kids would be to hope and see what you can do to help.
Even though im only 13 I know that if my parents were in my face trying to know everything that goes on in my life, I would want to run away, but what does that solve? Think about what they want now and they will want in their future.