Boot Camps in Horseheads, New York Can Help Troubled Teens, if They Are Like Gateway Boys Academy

Are you looking for boot camps close to Horseheads, New York to try to help a defiant 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 demonstrates blatant disregard for authority, commonly displays defiant behavior, gets into frequent and increasing disturbances with the law, and shows no motivation in school, perhaps a boot camp will help bring him back to his senses. 

Boot Camps in Horseheads, New York Can Help Troubled Teens Learn to Respect Authority

Popular opinion gives military academies, especially boot camps, a reputation for making wayward teens put their lives in order. As a matter of fact, 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 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 certain people, boot camps can initially help them move from destructive 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 cases, most teenage issues run much deeper than they appear on the surface and are often only symptoms of other emotional problems. Boot camps focus entirely on modifying behavior; they do not provide the therapeutic support to help teens address the true root issues. For teens with anxiety, depression, drug use, poor 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 Horseheads, New York on their own will not address family concerns but simply return a somewhat more compliant 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 Horseheads, New York may be 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 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 homes all across the country for more than 20 years. Troubled teenage boys from Horseheads, New York and other places receive an accredited education, counseling and instruction, an introduction to military drill and history, and the discipline for which boot camps are renowned. Gateway offers a  compassionate staff that cares deeply about each teen. Gateway is a military-style school that includes a number of essential components that are typically missing from boot camps. Those include: 

• Caring staff and mentors who provide positive role models and individual mentorship, not simply breaking teens down.
• Biblical instruction and spiritual focus, to help teens realize the true source of lasting heart change.
• Counseling, to help teens work through 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 Horseheads, New York, 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!