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

Are you looking into boot camps near Forest, Virginia to straighten out a rebellious teen? Learn how boot camps can help troubled teens and consider how Gateway’s program may prove even more effective for your teen.

If your teen exhibits blatant disregard for authority, constantly displays defiant behavior, gets into frequent and increasing trouble with the law, and shows no motivation in school, perhaps a boot camp can help sort out your troubled teen. 

Boot Camps in Forest, Virginia Can Help Boys Learn to Respect Authority

Popular belief gives military academies, especially boot camps, a reputation for making errant teens put their lives in order. As a matter of fact, there are several positive ways in which boot camps can help troubled teens. Boot camps give an intensive focus on discipline, personal integrity and respect for authority. Programs like these can send a wake-up call to a teen who is moving toward a life of crime. For those teens 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 Boys Change their Behavior, But Many Teen Issues Go Beyond the Behavior

Despite the fact that boot camps can help troubled teens in some cases, most adolescent issues are more complicated than they seem on the surface and may only be symptoms of other issues. Boot camps focus entirely on modifying behavior; they do not offer the therapy to help teens resolve the true underlying issues. For teens displaying anxiety, depression, drug or alcohol use, poor self-esteem, emotional disorders, and in fact most types 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 Forest, Virginia on their own will not address 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 Forest, Virginia 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 another option that combines the benefits of the military approach with the therapeutic component of a therapeutic boarding school. Gateway, in the Panhandle of Florida, is a Christian program that has worked with thousands of struggling teenage boys and their families from places all across the country for more than 20 years. Struggling teenage boys from Forest, Virginia and other places benefit from an accredited academic program, counseling and instruction, instruction in 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 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 emphasis, to help teens find the true source of lasting heart change.
• Mentoring, to help teens work through problems and replace 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 Forest, 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!