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

Are you looking into boot camps near Cortland, New York to try to help a out-of-control teen? See how boot camps can help troubled teens and discover how Gateway’s program may prove even more beneficial for your teen.

If your teen demonstrates blatant disregard for authority, unceasingly displays rebellious behavior, gets into regular and escalating disturbances with the law, and lacks motivation in school, perhaps a boot camp will help bring him back to his senses. 

Boot Camps in Cortland, New York Can Help Troubled Teens Learn to Respect Authority

Popular belief gives military schools, especially boot camps, a reputation for making errant teens into respectable young citizens. In truth, there are several positive ways in which boot camps can help troubled teens. Boot camps provide a crash course in discipline, personal integrity and regard for authority. Programs like these can send a powerful message to 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 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 situations, most adolescent issues are much more complex than they seem on the surface and are often only symptoms of other issues. Boot camps rely entirely on forcing compliance; they do not provide the counseling or therapeutic input to help teens resolve the true root issues. For teens exhibiting anxiety, depression, drug use, low self-esteem, emotional disorders, and in fact most forms of rebellious behavior, the strict discipline of the boot camp environment may prove counterproductive instead, if it isn’t set up in a way that the discipline is coupled with Christian love and support.

Most boot camps in Cortland, New York fail to deal with underlying issues and attitudes 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 Cortland, 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 aspect of a therapeutic boarding school. Gateway, found in the Panhandle of Florida, is a Christian program that has helped – and brought restoration to- struggling teenage boys and their families from places all across the country for more than 20 years. Struggling teenage boys from Cortland, New York and other places receive an accredited academic program, counseling and instruction, instruction in military drill and history, and the discipline for which boot camps are known. Gateway offers staff that care deeply about each student. Gateway is a military-style school that includes a number of important components that are typically absent 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 emphasis, to help teens realize the true source of lasting heart change.
• Counseling, to help teens deal with issues and replace self-destructive 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 Cortland, 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!