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

Are you looking into boot camps in or around Laurens, South Carolina to deal with a defiant teen? Read on to see how boot camps can help troubled teens and discover how Gateway’s program may be even more effective for your teen.

If your teen shows deliberate disregard for authority, forever displays rebellious behavior, gets into frequent and increasing disturbances with the law, and lacks cooperation in school, perhaps a boot camp can help improve your troubled teen. 

Boot Camps in Laurens, South Carolina Can Help At-Risk Boys Learn to Respect Authority

Public opinion gives military academies, especially boot camps, a reputation for making errant 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 regard for authority. Programs like these can be a means of rescuing 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 some individuals, 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 Boys Change their Behavior, But Many Teen Issues Go Beyond the Behavior

Although boot camps can help troubled teens in some cases, most teenage issues are more complicated than they appear on the surface and are only the symptoms of other issues. Boot camps focus entirely on forcing compliance; they do not include the counseling or therapeutic input to help teens deal with the true root issues. For teens exhibiting 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 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 Laurens, South Carolina on their own will not deal with family concerns 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 Laurens, 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 an alternative that combines the strengths of the military approach with the therapeutic component 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 homes all across the nation for well over 20 years. Troubled teenage boys from Laurens, South Carolina 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 known. Gateway offers staff that care deeply about each student. Gateway is a military-style school that features a number of important components that are typically missing from boot camps. Those include: 

• Caring staff and mentors who provide positive role models and constructive  input, 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 work through struggles and replace self-destructive 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 Laurens, 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!