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

Are you looking into boot camps near Huntington, West Virginia to deal with a out-of-control teen? Find out how boot camps can help troubled teens and consider how Gateway’s program may be even more successful for your teen.

If your teen demonstrates deliberate disregard for authority, forever displays rebellious behavior, gets into regular and escalating disturbances with the law, and shows no cooperation in school, perhaps a boot camp will help bring him back to his senses. 

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

Public belief gives military academies, especially boot camps, a reputation for making unruly teens put their lives in order. In fact, there are several positive ways in which boot camps can help troubled teens. Boot camps give a crash course in discipline, personal integrity and regard for authority. Programs like these can be a means of rescuing a teen who is moving toward a life of crime. For the ones 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 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 teenage issues are much more complex than they appear on the surface and are only the symptoms of other emotional problems. Boot camps rely entirely on modifying behavior; they do not provide the counseling or therapeutic input to help teens heal from the true underlying issues. For teens exhibiting anxiety, depression, drug or alcohol use, poor self-esteem, emotional disorders, and in fact most forms 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 Huntington, West Virginia fail to solve deeper issues 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 Huntington, West Virginia 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 strengths of the military style with the therapeutic input 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 places all across the country for well over 20 years. Troubled teenage boys from Huntington, West Virginia and other places receive an accredited academic program, counseling and instruction, instruction in military drill and history, and the discipline for which boot camps are known. Gateway offers staff that care deeply about each student. Gateway is a military-style school that includes several important 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.
• Mentoring, to help teens deal with problems and replace destructive patterns with healthy new choices.
• 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 Huntington, West 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!