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

Are you researching boot camps close to Clifton Park, New York to straighten out a defiant teen? Read on to see how boot camps can help troubled teens and consider how Gateway’s program may prove even more effective for your teen.

If your teen shows unashamed disregard for authority, constantly displays oppositional 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 Clifton Park, New York Can Help At-Risk Boys Learn to Respect Authority

Public conception gives military schools, especially boot camps, a reputation for making wayward teens put their lives in order. In truth, there are several positive ways in which boot camps can help troubled teens. Boot camps provide a crash course in discipline, personal responsibility and regard for authority. Programs like these can send a wake-up call to 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 teens, boot camps can initially help them move from self-defeating 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

Although boot camps can help troubled teens in some situations, most adolescent issues run much deeper than they appear on the surface and are often only symptoms of other problems. Boot camps focus entirely on behavior modification; they do not offer the therapy to help teens resolve the true root issues. For teens exhibiting 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 Clifton Park, New York on their own will not address family issues 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 Clifton Park, 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 approach with the therapeutic component of a therapeutic boarding school. Gateway, located in the Panhandle of Florida, is a Christian program that has served – and brought restoration to- struggling teenage boys and their families from homes all across the nation for more than 20 years. Struggling teenage boys from Clifton Park, New York and other cities receive an accredited education, counseling and instruction, instruction in military drill and history, and the discipline for which boot camps are respected. Gateway offers a  compassionate staff that cares deeply about each teen. Gateway is a military-style school that features 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 instruction and spiritual focus, to help teens realize the true source of lasting heart change.
• Counseling, to help teens work through issues and replace self-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 Clifton Park, 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!