Boot Camps in Burke, Virginia Can Help Troubled Teens, if They Are Like Gateway Boys Academy

Are you searching for boot camps in or around Burke, Virginia to try to help a rebellious teen? Read on to see 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 exhibits deliberate disregard for authority, unceasingly displays defiant behavior, gets into frequent and increasing disturbances with the law, and lacks motivation in school, perhaps a boot camp can help sort out your troubled teen. 

Boot Camps in Burke, Virginia Can Help Troubled Teens Learn to Respect Authority

Popular conception gives military academies, especially boot camps, a reputation for making wayward teens get back on the straight and narrow path. In truth, there are several positive ways in which boot camps can help troubled teens. Boot camps offer an intensive focus on discipline, personal responsibility and respect for authority. Programs like these can send a wake-up call to a teen who might otherwise ruin his life with crime. For those 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 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

Although boot camps can help troubled teens in some cases, most teenage issues are much more complex than they appear on the surface and are only the symptoms of other problems. Boot camps rely entirely on forcing compliance; they do not include the counseling or therapeutic input to help teens resolve the true root issues. For teens displaying anxiety, depression, drug or alcohol use, low self-esteem, emotional disorders, and in fact most forms 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 Burke, Virginia fail to deal with underlying issues and attitudes but simply return a somewhat more respectful teen to the same home situation in which he was struggling. Boys who attend boot camps are more likely to return to old habits.  In fact, boot camps in Burke, Virginia 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 aspect of a therapeutic boarding school. Gateway, found in the Panhandle of Florida, is a Christian program that has served – and brought restoration to- struggling teenage boys and their families from locations all across the nation for well over 20 years. Troubled teenage boys from Burke, Virginia and other cities benefit from 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  compassionate staff that cares deeply about each teen. Gateway is a military-style school that features a number of critical 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 instruction and spiritual focus, to help teens discover the true source of lasting heart change.
• Counseling, to help teens work through issues and replace 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 Burke, Virginia, 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!