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

Are you trying to find boot camps in or around Lexington Park, Maryland to try to help a rebellious teen? Read on to see how boot camps can help troubled teens and consider how Gateway’s program may prove even more beneficial for your teen.

If your teen demonstrates unashamed disregard for authority, unceasingly displays oppositional behavior, gets into regular and escalating trouble with the law, and lacks cooperation in school, perhaps a boot camp can help reform your troubled teen. 

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

Public impression gives military academies, especially boot camps, a reputation for making rebellious teens put their lives in order. As a matter of fact, there are several positive ways in which boot camps can help troubled teens. Boot camps give an intensive focus on discipline, personal responsibility and respect for authority. Programs like these can send a powerful message to a teen who is moving toward a life of 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 manageable behavior. But those bad attitudes often return.

Boot Camps Can Help Troubled Adolescents Change their Behavior, But Many Teen Issues Go Beyond the Behavior

Even though boot camps can help troubled teens in some situations, most teenage issues are more complicated than they appear on the surface and may only be symptoms of other emotional problems. Boot camps focus entirely on behavior modification; they do not include the therapeutic support to help teens resolve the true root issues. For teens displaying anxiety, depression, drug or alcohol 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 Lexington Park, 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 Lexington Park, 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 an alternative that combines the benefits of the military style with the therapeutic aspect of a therapeutic boarding school. Gateway, found 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 well over 20 years. Struggling teenage boys from Lexington Park, Maryland and other places receive an accredited education, counseling and teaching, an introduction to military drill and history, and the discipline for which boot camps are known. Gateway offers a  loving staff that cares deeply about each teen. Gateway is a military-style school that includes a number of essential components that are typically absent from boot camps. Those include: 

• Caring staff and mentors who provide positive role models and constructive  input, not simply breaking teens down.
• Biblical teaching and spiritual emphasis, to help teens realize the true source of lasting heart change.
• Mentoring, to help teens work through 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 Lexington Park, 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!