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

Are you looking into boot camps in or around Berlin, Maryland to deal with a out-of-control teen? Learn how boot camps can help troubled teens and look at how Gateway’s program may be even more effective for your teen.

If your teen shows blatant disregard for authority, constantly displays rebellious behavior, gets into regular and escalating trouble with the law, and shows no cooperation in school, perhaps a boot camp will help bring him back to his senses. 

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

Popular opinion gives military academies, especially boot camps, a reputation for making rebellious teens into respectable young citizens. As a matter of fact, there are several positive ways in which 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 certain people, boot camps can initially help them move from destructive 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

Even though boot camps can help troubled teens in some cases, most adolescent issues are much more complex than they appear on the surface and are only the symptoms of other emotional problems. Boot camps focus entirely on modifying behavior; they do not include the therapy to help teens deal with the true underlying issues. For teens showing anxiety, depression, drug use, low self-esteem, emotional disorders, and in fact most instances 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 Berlin, Maryland 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 Berlin, Maryland 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 approach with the therapeutic component of a therapeutic boarding school. Gateway, located in the Panhandle of Florida, is a Christian program that has served thousands of struggling teenage boys and their families from locations all across the country for more than 20 years. Troubled teenage boys from Berlin, Maryland and other cities receive 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 a number of important 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 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 Berlin, 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!