Pat Ritter (co-author) of Closing The Gap was a police officer. His concern was when teenagers ran away from home. At first he didn't have any answers however after attending college to learn about a subject 'behaviour', his lecturer Bob O'Sullivan and Pat decided to write a book to help parents overcome issues with their teenagers.This book was bought about by frustration. There had to be an answer to the issue of teenagers running away from home. Pat discovered the answer by attending college to learn skills in communication, conflict resolution and problem solving.He used these newly learned skills to educate parents of teenagers with great success.Finally when he'd discovered the holy grail of parent/teenager communication issues, he with Bob wrote and published 'Closing The Gap'.