Boot Camps in Elizabethtown, Pennsylvania Can Help Troubled Teens, if They Are Like Gateway Boys Academy

Are you researching boot camps in or around Elizabethtown, Pennsylvania to try to help a out-of-control teen? Learn 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 demonstrates unashamed disregard for authority, constantly displays rebellious behavior, gets into regular and increasing disturbances with the law, and lacks cooperation in school, perhaps a boot camp can help sort out your troubled teen. 

Boot Camps in Elizabethtown, Pennsylvania Can Help At-Risk Boys Learn to Respect Authority

Popular impression gives military academies, especially boot camps, a reputation for making out-of-control teens get back on the straight and narrow path. In truth, in several positive ways, boot camps can help troubled teens. Boot camps provide a crash course in discipline, personal integrity 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 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 unhealthy habits, to more appropriate behavior. But those bad attitudes often return.

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

Although 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 problems. Boot camps rely entirely on modifying behavior; they do not offer the therapeutic support to help teens address the true underlying issues. For teens displaying 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 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 Elizabethtown, Pennsylvania on their own will not address family issues but simply return a somewhat more compliant 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 Elizabethtown, Pennsylvania may be 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 another option that combines the strengths of the military style with the therapeutic component of a therapeutic boarding school. Gateway, 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 well over 20 years. Troubled teenage boys from Elizabethtown, Pennsylvania and other places receive 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  loving staff that cares deeply about each teen. Gateway is a military-style school that includes several 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 realize the true source of lasting heart change.
• Mentoring, to help teens work through issues and replace harmful patterns with healthy new choices.
• 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 Elizabethtown, Pennsylvania, 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!