Boot Camps in Beltsville, Maryland Can Help Troubled Teens, if They Are Like Gateway Boys Academy

Are you looking for boot camps in or around Beltsville, Maryland 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 effective for your teen.

If your teen exhibits unashamed disregard for authority, unceasingly displays rebellious behavior, gets into frequent and growing trouble with the law, and shows no cooperation in school, perhaps a boot camp can help reform your troubled teen. 

Boot Camps in Beltsville, Maryland Can Help Troubled Teens Learn to Respect Authority

Popular impression gives military schools, especially boot camps, a reputation for making out-of-control teens put their lives in order. As a matter of fact, in several positive ways, boot camps can help troubled teens. Boot camps provide a crash course in discipline, personal responsibility and respect for authority. Programs like these can be a means of rescuing a teen who is moving toward a life of crime. For the ones 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 self-defeating habits, to more appropriate 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 adolescent issues are much more complex than they seem on the surface and may only be symptoms of other problems. Boot camps rely entirely on behavior modification; they do not offer the therapy to help teens address the true underlying issues. For teens with anxiety, depression, drug use, low self-esteem, emotional disorders, and in fact most instances 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 Beltsville, Maryland on their own will not address family issues 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 Beltsville, Maryland 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 another option that combines the strengths of the military style with the therapeutic aspect of a therapeutic boarding school. Gateway, found in the Panhandle of Florida, is a Christian program that has helped – and brought hope to- struggling teenage boys and their families from locations all across the country for well over 20 years. Troubled teenage boys from Beltsville, Maryland and other places receive 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  loving staff that cares deeply about each teen. Gateway is a military-style school that features several important 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 instruction and spiritual focus, to help teens find the true source of lasting heart change.
• Counseling, to help teens deal with problems and replace harmful patterns with healthy new choices.
• 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 Beltsville, Maryland, 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!