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

Are you looking into boot camps near Frederick, Maryland to try to help a defiant teen? Learn how boot camps can help troubled teens and learn about how Gateway’s program may be even more successful for your teen.

If your teen exhibits blatant disregard for authority, forever displays oppositional behavior, gets into regular and increasing disturbances with the law, and lacks cooperation in school, perhaps a boot camp can help improve your troubled teen. 

Boot Camps in Frederick, Maryland Can Help Boys Learn to Respect Authority

Popular belief gives military schools, especially boot camps, a reputation for making wayward teens put their lives in order. In truth, there are several positive ways in which boot camps can help troubled teens. Boot camps offer an intensive focus on 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 teens, 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 situations, most teenage issues are more complicated than they appear on the surface and are only the symptoms of other emotional problems. Boot camps focus entirely on behavior modification; they do not include the counseling or therapeutic input to help teens deal with the true underlying issues. For teens exhibiting anxiety, depression, drug or alcohol use, low self-esteem, emotional disorders, and in fact most forms 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 Frederick, Maryland on their own will not deal with family communication issues but simply return a somewhat more compliant teen to the same home situation in which he was struggling. Boys who attend boot camps are more likely to return to old habits.  In fact, boot camps in Frederick, 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 another option that combines the benefits of the military approach with the therapeutic aspect of a therapeutic boarding school. Gateway, located in the Panhandle of Florida, is a Christian program that has served thousands of struggling teenage boys and their families from cities all across the country for well over 20 years. Troubled teenage boys from Frederick, Maryland and other cities benefit from an accredited education, counseling and teaching, instruction in 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 individual mentorship, not simply breaking teens down.
• Biblical teaching and spiritual focus, to help teens realize the true source of lasting heart change.
• Counseling, to help teens address issues 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 Frederick, 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!