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

Are you researching boot camps in or around Elkton, Maryland to deal with a defiant teen? Find out how boot camps can help troubled teens and discover how Gateway’s program may prove even more effective for your teen.

If your teen shows unashamed disregard for authority, forever displays oppositional behavior, gets into regular and growing disturbances with the law, and shows no cooperation in school, perhaps a boot camp can help improve your troubled teen. 

Boot Camps in Elkton, Maryland Can Help At-Risk Boys Learn to Respect Authority

Public impression gives military academies, especially boot camps, a reputation for making rebellious teens get back on the straight and narrow path. In truth, in several positive ways, boot camps can help troubled teens. Boot camps provide an intensive focus on discipline, personal integrity 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 the ones who respond well to 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 Teens 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 adolescent issues are more complicated than they appear on the surface and are often only symptoms of other problems. Boot camps rely entirely on behavior modification; they do not provide the therapy to help teens resolve the true underlying issues. For teens exhibiting anxiety, depression, drug or alcohol use, low self-esteem, emotional disorders, and in fact most instances of rebellious behavior, the stressful 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 Elkton, Maryland on their own will not address family issues 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 Elkton, Maryland are 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 benefits of the military style with the therapeutic component of a therapeutic boarding school. Gateway, found in the Panhandle of Florida, is a Christian program that has served – 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 Elkton, Maryland and other places benefit from an accredited academic program, counseling and instruction, an introduction to military drill and history, and the discipline for which boot camps are respected. Gateway offers a  loving staff that cares deeply about each teen. Gateway is a military-style school that features a number of essential 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 focus, to help teens discover the true source of lasting heart change.
• Mentoring, to help teens address issues and replace harmful 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 Elkton, 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!