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

Are you looking for boot camps close to Laurel, Maryland to try to help a out-of-control teen? Learn how boot camps can help troubled teens and learn about how Gateway’s program may prove even more beneficial for your teen.

If your teen demonstrates blatant disregard for authority, unceasingly displays oppositional behavior, gets into regular and increasing trouble with the law, and shows no cooperation in school, perhaps a boot camp can help sort out your troubled teen. 

Boot Camps in Laurel, Maryland Can Help At-Risk Boys Learn to Respect Authority

Public opinion gives military academies, especially boot camps, a reputation for making rebellious teens into respectable young citizens. 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 send a wake-up call 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 self-defeating habits, to more appropriate 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 teenage issues are much more complex than they appear on the surface and may only be symptoms of other issues. Boot camps focus entirely on forcing compliance; they do not offer the counseling or therapeutic input to help teens deal with the true underlying issues. For teens displaying anxiety, depression, drug use, low self-esteem, emotional disorders, and in fact most types 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 Laurel, Maryland on their own will not address family concerns 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 Laurel, Maryland 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 another option that combines the benefits of the military style with the therapeutic input 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 locations all across the country for well over 20 years. Troubled teenage boys from Laurel, Maryland 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 critical 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 teaching and spiritual focus, to help teens realize the true source of lasting heart change.
• Counseling, to help teens deal with struggles and replace harmful 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 Laurel, 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!