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

Are you searching for boot camps in or around Bowie, Maryland to deal with a out-of-control teen? Find out how boot camps can help troubled teens and learn about how Gateway’s program may be even more successful for your teen.

If your teen exhibits deliberate disregard for authority, unceasingly displays rebellious behavior, gets into regular and escalating trouble with the law, and lacks motivation in school, perhaps a boot camp can help reform your troubled teen. 

Boot Camps in Bowie, Maryland Can Help Boys Learn to Respect Authority

Popular impression gives military academies, especially boot camps, a reputation for making unruly teens put their lives in order. 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 be a means of rescuing a teen who is moving toward a life of crime. For those who are shaped by 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 destructive 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

Despite the fact that boot camps can help troubled teens in some situations, most teenage issues run much deeper than they appear on the surface and may only be symptoms of other problems. Boot camps rely entirely on modifying behavior; they do not include the therapy to help teens heal from the true underlying issues. For teens displaying anxiety, depression, drug or alcohol use, poor self-esteem, emotional disorders, and in fact most types of rebellious behavior, the stressful boot camp environment may prove harmful instead, if it isn’t set up in a way that the discipline is coupled with Christian love and support.

Most boot camps in Bowie, Maryland on their own will not deal with family concerns 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 Bowie, 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 an alternative that combines the strengths 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 served – and brought hope to- struggling teenage boys and their families from places all across the nation for more than 20 years. Troubled teenage boys from Bowie, Maryland and other places benefit from an accredited academic program, counseling and teaching, instruction in 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 missing 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.
• Counseling, to help teens deal with struggles and replace 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 Bowie, 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!