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

Are you researching boot camps in or around Fairfax, 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 successful for your teen.

If your teen exhibits deliberate disregard for authority, unceasingly displays defiant behavior, gets into frequent and growing trouble with the law, and lacks cooperation in school, perhaps a boot camp can help reform your troubled teen. 

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

Public belief gives military schools, especially boot camps, a reputation for making badly behaved teens put their lives in order. 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 send a powerful message to a teen who might otherwise ruin his life with crime. For those teens who are shaped by 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 destructive 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 run much deeper than they appear on the surface and are often only symptoms of other emotional problems. Boot camps rely entirely on forcing compliance; they do not offer the therapy to help teens heal from the true root issues. For teens displaying anxiety, depression, drug use, poor self-esteem, emotional disorders, and in fact most types 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 Fairfax, Virginia on their own will not deal with family concerns 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 Fairfax, Virginia 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, in the Panhandle of Florida, is a Christian program that has helped – and brought hope to- struggling teenage boys and their families from cities all across the country for more than 20 years. Struggling teenage boys from Fairfax, Virginia and other places benefit from an accredited education, counseling and instruction, an introduction to military drill and history, and the discipline for which boot camps are known. Gateway offers a  compassionate staff that cares deeply about each teen. Gateway is a military-style school that features 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 discover the true source of lasting heart change.
• Mentoring, to help teens work through issues and replace destructive patterns with healthy new habits.
• 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 Fairfax, 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!