Boot Camps in Bethpage, New York Can Help Troubled Teens, if They Are Like Gateway Boys Academy

Are you researching boot camps in or around Bethpage, New York to deal with a defiant teen? See how boot camps can help troubled teens and look at how Gateway’s program may prove even more successful for your teen.

If your teen shows blatant disregard for authority, forever displays defiant behavior, gets into frequent and escalating disturbances with the law, and shows no motivation in school, perhaps a boot camp will help bring him back to his senses. 

Boot Camps in Bethpage, New York Can Help At-Risk Boys Learn to Respect Authority

Popular opinion gives military academies, especially boot camps, a reputation for making out-of-control teens into respectable young citizens. In 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 send a powerful message to a teen who might otherwise ruin his life with crime. For those who respond well to it, boot camps can give them a new understanding of the consequences of their actions. For some individuals, boot camps can initially help them move from self-defeating habits, to more manageable behavior. But those bad attitudes often return.

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

Despite the fact that boot camps can help troubled teens in some cases, most adolescent issues are much more complex than they appear on the surface and are often only symptoms of other emotional problems. Boot camps focus entirely on behavior modification; they do not provide the therapeutic support to help teens resolve the true underlying issues. For teens with anxiety, depression, drug or alcohol use, low self-esteem, emotional disorders, and in fact most types 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 Bethpage, New York fail to deal with underlying issues and attitudes but simply return a somewhat more respectful 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 Bethpage, New York 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 an alternative that combines the strengths of the military style with the therapeutic component 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 locations all across the country for more than 20 years. Troubled teenage boys from Bethpage, New York and other cities benefit from an accredited education, counseling and teaching, instruction in military drill and history, and the discipline for which boot camps are known. Gateway offers a  loving staff that cares deeply about each teen. Gateway is a military-style school that includes several essential components that are typically missing from boot camps. Those include: 

• Caring staff and mentors who provide positive role models and constructive  input, 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 work through 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 a longer term mentoring program like what Gateway offers. We invite you to look beyond Bethpage, New York, 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!