Boot Camps in Lancaster, South Carolina Can Help Troubled Teens, if They Are Like Gateway Boys Academy

Are you looking into boot camps close to Lancaster, South Carolina to deal with a defiant teen? Find out 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 shows blatant disregard for authority, constantly displays defiant behavior, gets into regular and escalating trouble with the law, and shows no cooperation in school, perhaps a boot camp will help bring him back to his senses. 

Boot Camps in Lancaster, South Carolina Can Help Boys Learn to Respect Authority

Public opinion gives military schools, especially boot camps, a reputation for making rebellious teens into respectable young citizens. In truth, in several positive ways, boot camps can help troubled teens. Boot camps provide an intensive focus on discipline, personal responsibility and respect 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 situations, most adolescent issues are more complicated than they appear on the surface and are often only symptoms of other emotional problems. Boot camps rely entirely on behavior modification; they do not offer the therapy to help teens deal with the true underlying issues. For teens showing anxiety, depression, drug or alcohol use, low self-esteem, emotional disorders, and in fact most instances of rebellious behavior, the strict discipline of the 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 Lancaster, South Carolina on their own will not address family issues but simply return a somewhat more respectful 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 Lancaster, South Carolina 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 strengths 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 – and brought restoration to- struggling teenage boys and their families from homes all across the nation for more than 20 years. Troubled teenage boys from Lancaster, South Carolina and other places receive an accredited education, counseling and teaching, instruction in military drill and history, and the discipline for which boot camps are respected. Gateway offers a  compassionate staff that cares deeply about each teen. Gateway is a military-style school that features a number of important components that are typically absent from boot camps. Those include: 

• Caring staff and mentors who provide positive role models and concerned involvement, not simply breaking teens down.
• Biblical teaching and spiritual focus, to help teens find the true source of lasting heart change.
• Counseling, to help teens deal with problems 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 Lancaster, South Carolina, 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!