Boot Camps in Beckley, West Virginia Can Help Troubled Teens, if They Are Like Gateway Boys Academy

Are you looking into boot camps in or around Beckley, West Virginia to deal with a rebellious teen? Find out how boot camps can help troubled teens and look at how Gateway’s program may be even more successful for your teen.

If your teen shows blatant disregard for authority, commonly displays rebellious behavior, gets into frequent and escalating trouble with the law, and shows no motivation in school, perhaps a boot camp can help reform your troubled teen. 

Boot Camps in Beckley, West Virginia Can Help Boys Learn to Respect Authority

Popular conception gives military academies, especially boot camps, a reputation for making errant teens get back on the straight and narrow path. In fact, in several positive ways, boot camps can help troubled teens. Boot camps provide an intensive focus on discipline, personal integrity and regard 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 certain people, boot camps can initially help them move from unhealthy 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

Even though boot camps can help troubled teens in some situations, most adolescent issues are much more complex than they seem on the surface and may only be symptoms of other emotional problems. Boot camps focus entirely on forcing compliance; they do not offer the counseling or therapeutic input to help teens address the true underlying issues. For teens displaying anxiety, depression, drug or alcohol use, poor self-esteem, emotional disorders, and in fact most forms 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 Beckley, West Virginia on their own will not address family problems 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 Beckley, West Virginia 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 benefits of the military approach with the therapeutic input of a therapeutic boarding school. Gateway, in the Panhandle of Florida, is a Christian program that has worked with thousands of struggling teenage boys and their families from places all across the nation for more than 20 years. Struggling teenage boys from Beckley, West Virginia and other places benefit from an accredited academic program, counseling and instruction, an introduction to military drill and history, and the discipline for which boot camps are renowned. Gateway offers a  compassionate 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 focus, to help teens realize the true source of lasting heart change.
• Mentoring, to help teens deal with problems and replace self-destructive patterns with healthy new habits.
• Family restoration 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 Beckley, West Virginia, 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!