Boot Camps in Altoona, Pennsylvania Can Help Troubled Teens, if They Are Like Gateway Boys Academy

Are you trying to find boot camps near Altoona, Pennsylvania to straighten out a rebellious teen? Read on to see how boot camps can help troubled teens and look at how Gateway’s program may prove even more successful for your teen.

If your teen shows unashamed disregard for authority, constantly displays defiant behavior, gets into frequent and growing disturbances with the law, and shows no motivation in school, perhaps a boot camp will help bring him back to his senses. 

Boot Camps in Altoona, Pennsylvania Can Help Troubled Teens Learn to Respect Authority

Public conception gives military academies, especially boot camps, a reputation for making wayward teens get back on the straight and narrow path. In fact, there are several positive ways in which boot camps can help troubled teens. Boot camps give an intensive focus on discipline, personal integrity and respect for authority. Programs like these can be a means of rescuing a teen who is moving toward a life of crime. For those teens who are shaped by it, boot camps can give them a new understanding of the consequences of their actions. For some teens, boot camps can initially help them move from destructive habits, to more manageable behavior. But those bad attitudes often return.

Boot Camps Can Help Troubled Boys Change their Behavior, But Many Teen Issues Go Beyond the Behavior

Although boot camps can help troubled teens in some situations, most teenage issues run much deeper than they seem on the surface and may only be symptoms of other issues. Boot camps focus entirely on behavior modification; they do not offer the therapeutic support to help teens resolve the true underlying issues. For teens exhibiting anxiety, depression, drug use, poor self-esteem, emotional disorders, and in fact most types of rebellious behavior, the stressful boot camp environment may prove counterproductive instead, if it isn’t set up in a way that the discipline is coupled with Christian love and support.

Most boot camps in Altoona, Pennsylvania fail to deal with underlying issues and attitudes but simply return a somewhat more compliant teen to the same home environment in which he was struggling. Boys who attend boot camps are more likely to return to old habits.  In fact, boot camps in Altoona, Pennsylvania are a short-term solution at best, and may be harmful to the teen at worst. Sadly, teens often revert to past behavior after returning home from short-term boot camps, because the length of the program doesn’t instill the attitude changes as a habit in their life.

Gateway’s Boot Camp-Like Program, Plus It’s Ongoing Behavioral Support are Designed to Turn Around Troubled Boys

If you find that a traditional short-term boot camp is not the best choice for your teen, but you still like the idea of what a boot camp teaches, Gateway an alternative that combines the benefits of the military style with the therapeutic component of a therapeutic boarding school. Gateway, located in the Panhandle of Florida, is a Christian program that has served – and brought restoration to- struggling teenage boys and their families from places all across the nation for more than 20 years. Troubled teenage boys from Altoona, Pennsylvania and other places receive an accredited education, counseling and teaching, instruction in military drill and history, and the discipline for which boot camps are renowned. Gateway offers staff that care deeply about each student. Gateway is a military-style school that includes a number of critical components that are typically missing from boot camps. Those include: 

• Caring staff and mentors who provide positive role models and individual mentorship, not simply breaking teens down.
• Biblical teaching and spiritual emphasis, to help teens discover the true source of lasting heart change.
• Mentoring, to help teens deal with problems and replace destructive patterns with healthy new choices.
• Family healing through Biblical instruction and seminars for parents and families.

Boot camps can help troubled teens if they are coupled with a longer term mentoring program like what Gateway offers. We invite you to look beyond Altoona, Pennsylvania, for what may be the best situation your boy…a program with a boot camp element, but also ongoing instruction and mentoring for a longer period of  time.

Gateway is Located in the Panhandle of Florida. Boys Come to Gateway from Around the Country. Call Us!