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

Are you researching boot camps near Bellefonte, Pennsylvania to deal with a defiant teen? Read on to see how boot camps can help troubled teens and learn about how Gateway’s program may prove even more beneficial for your teen.

If your teen shows unashamed disregard for authority, unceasingly displays oppositional behavior, gets into frequent and increasing disturbances with the law, and lacks cooperation in school, perhaps a boot camp can help sort out your troubled teen. 

Boot Camps in Bellefonte, Pennsylvania Can Help At-Risk Boys Learn to Respect Authority

Public opinion gives military academies, especially boot camps, a reputation for making badly behaved teens into respectable young citizens. As a matter of fact, in several positive ways, boot camps can help troubled teens. Boot camps give an intensive focus on discipline, personal integrity and respect for authority. Programs like these can send a powerful message 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 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 Teens Change their Behavior, But Many Teen Issues Go Beyond the Behavior

Despite the fact that boot camps can help troubled teens in some situations, most adolescent issues run much deeper than they appear on the surface and are only the symptoms of other problems. Boot camps rely entirely on modifying behavior; they do not offer the therapeutic support to help teens resolve the true root issues. For teens showing anxiety, depression, drug or alcohol use, poor self-esteem, emotional disorders, and in fact most instances 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 Bellefonte, Pennsylvania, on their own, will not speak to family concerns but return a somewhat more compliant teen to the same circumstances in which he struggled. Boys who attend boot camps are more likely to return to old habits.  In fact, boot camps in Bellefonte, Pennsylvania may be 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 approach with the therapeutic aspect of a therapeutic boarding school. Gateway, located in the Panhandle of Florida, is a Christian program that has worked with – and brought hope to- struggling teenage boys and their families from places all across the nation for well over 20 years. Troubled teenage boys from Bellefonte, Pennsylvania and other cities receive an accredited academic program, counseling and teaching, an introduction to military drill and history, and the discipline for which boot camps are known. Gateway offers staff that care deeply about each student. Gateway is a military-style school that features several essential components that are typically absent from boot camps. Those include: 

• Caring staff and mentors who provide positive role models and concerned involvement, not simply breaking teens down.
• Biblical teaching and spiritual focus, to help teens discover the true source of lasting heart change.
• Mentoring, to help teens deal with issues and replace self-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 Bellefonte, 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!