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

Are you looking into boot camps close to Hopewell, Virginia to deal with a defiant teen? Learn how boot camps can help troubled teens and look at how Gateway’s program may be even more effective for your teen.

If your teen shows deliberate disregard for authority, unceasingly displays defiant behavior, gets into regular and escalating trouble with the law, and lacks cooperation in school, perhaps a boot camp will help bring him back to his senses. 

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

Popular belief gives military academies, especially boot camps, a reputation for making rebellious teens put their lives in order. In truth, in several positive ways, boot camps can help troubled teens. Boot camps provide 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 teens who are shaped by 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 destructive habits, to more manageable behavior. But those bad attitudes often return.

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

Although boot camps can help troubled teens in some situations, most adolescent issues are much more complex 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 include the counseling or therapeutic input to help teens resolve the true root issues. For teens with anxiety, depression, drug or alcohol use, poor 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 Hopewell, Virginia fail to solve deeper issues but simply return a somewhat more obedient 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 Hopewell, 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 an alternative that combines the strengths 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 worked with thousands of struggling teenage boys and their families from cities all across the country for more than 20 years. Troubled teenage boys from Hopewell, Virginia and other cities receive an accredited education, counseling and instruction, 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 includes several essential components that are typically missing 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 emphasis, to help teens realize the true source of lasting heart change.
• Counseling, to help teens address issues and replace self-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 Hopewell, 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!