Boot Camps in Athens, GA Can Help Troubled Teens, if They Are Like Gateway Boys Academy

Are you looking for boot camps near Athens, Georgia to straighten out a defiant teen? Find out how boot camps can help troubled teens and discover how Gateway’s program may be even more effective for your teen.

If your teen shows deliberate disregard for authority, constantly displays rebellious behavior, gets into regular and growing trouble with the law, and lacks motivation in school, perhaps a boot camp can help sort out your troubled teen. 

Boot Camps in Athens, Georgia Can Help Troubled Teens Learn to Respect Authority

Public opinion gives military academies, especially boot camps, a reputation for making rebellious teens put their lives in order. As a matter of fact, in several positive ways, boot camps can help troubled teens. Boot camps provide 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 those 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 unhealthy habits, to more appropriate behavior. But those bad attitudes often return.

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

Even though boot camps can help troubled teens in some cases, most adolescent issues are more complicated than they appear on the surface and are only the symptoms of other problems. Boot camps focus entirely on behavior modification; they do not include the counseling or therapeutic input to help teens deal with the true root issues. For teens exhibiting anxiety, depression, drug use, poor self-esteem, emotional disorders, and in fact most forms of rebellious behavior, the strict discipline of the 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 Athens, GA on their own will not deal with family problems but simply return a somewhat more respectful teen to the same home situation in which he was struggling. Then he will return to old habits.  For this reasons, boot camps in Athens, GA are a short-term solution at best, and may be harmful to the teen at worst. Fact is, teens often revert to past behavior after returning home from short-term boot camps, because the length of the program doesn’t make the good attitudes, respect and discipline 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 strengths of the military approach with the therapeutic aspect of a therapeutic boarding school. Gateway, in the Panhandle of Florida, is a Christian program that has served thousands of struggling teenage boys and their families from places all across the country for more than 20 years. Struggling teenage boys from Athens, Georgia and other cities benefit from an accredited education, counseling and instruction, an introduction to military drill and history, and the discipline for which boot camps are known. Gateway offers a  caring staff that cares deeply about each teen. Gateway is a military-style school that includes several important components that are typically absent from boot camps. Those include: 

• Caring staff and mentors who provide positive role models and constructive  input, not simply breaking teens down.
• Biblical instruction and spiritual emphasis, to help teens realize the true source of lasting heart change.
• Mentoring, to help teens address problems and replace harmful 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 an ongoing program like Gateway offers. We invite you to look beyond Athens, Georgia, 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!