Boot Camps in Astoria, New York Can Help Troubled Teens, if They Are Like Gateway Boys Academy

Are you searching for boot camps close to Astoria, New York to try to help a defiant teen? Read on to see how boot camps can help troubled teens and discover how Gateway’s program may be even more successful for your teen.

If your teen exhibits unashamed disregard for authority, commonly displays oppositional behavior, gets into frequent and escalating trouble with the law, and lacks motivation in school, perhaps a boot camp can help reform your troubled teen. 

Boot Camps in Astoria, New York Can Help Troubled Teens Learn to Respect Authority

Popular belief gives military academies, especially boot camps, a reputation for making badly behaved teens into respectable young citizens. In fact, in several positive ways, boot camps can help troubled teens. Boot camps give an intensive focus on discipline, personal responsibility and respect for authority. Programs like these can send a wake-up call to a teen who might otherwise ruin his life with crime. For the ones who respond well to it, boot camps can give them a new understanding of the consequences of their actions. For some individuals, boot camps can initially help them move from destructive habits, to more respectable 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 cases, most adolescent issues run much deeper than they seem on the surface and may only be symptoms of other issues. Boot camps rely entirely on modifying behavior; they do not include the counseling or therapeutic input to help teens deal with 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 detrimental instead, if it isn’t set up in a way that the discipline is coupled with Christian love and support.

Most boot camps in Astoria, New York on their own will not address family concerns but simply return a somewhat more obedient 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 Astoria, New York are typically 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 another option that combines the strengths of the military style with the therapeutic aspect of a therapeutic boarding school. Gateway, in the Panhandle of Florida, is a Christian program that has helped – and brought hope to- struggling teenage boys and their families from cities all across the country for well over 20 years. Struggling teenage boys from Astoria, New York and other cities benefit from an accredited education, counseling and teaching, instruction in military drill and history, and the discipline for which boot camps are known. Gateway offers a  compassionate staff that cares deeply about each teen. Gateway is a military-style school that features several essential components that are typically missing from boot camps. Those include: 

• Caring staff and mentors who provide positive role models and constructive  input, not simply breaking teens down.
• Biblical teaching and spiritual focus, to help teens find the true source of lasting heart change.
• Mentoring, to help teens deal with issues and replace harmful patterns with healthy new habits.
• 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 Astoria, New York, 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!