Boot Camps in Lithonia, Georgia Can Help Troubled Teens, if They Are Like Gateway Boys Academy

Are you looking for boot camps close to Lithonia, Georgia to straighten out an out-of-control teen? Learn how boot camps can help troubled teens and look at how Gateway’s program may be even more effective for your teen.

If your teen demonstrates unashamed disregard for authority, unceasingly displays defiant behavior, gets into frequent and growing trouble with the law, and shows no cooperation in school, perhaps a boot camp can help improve your troubled teen. 

Boot Camps in Lithonia, Georgia Can Help Boys Learn to Respect Authority

Public opinion gives military academies, especially boot camps, a reputation for making errant teens get back on the straight and narrow path. In fact, there are several positive ways in which boot camps can help troubled teens. Boot camps give a crash course in 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 those teens who respond well to 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 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 seem on the surface and may only be symptoms of other emotional problems. Boot camps rely entirely on forcing compliance; they do not include the therapy to help teens address the true root issues. For teens showing 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 detrimental instead, if it isn’t set up in a way that the discipline is coupled with Christian love and support.

Most boot camps in Lithonia, Georgia on their own will not address family problems but simply return a somewhat more obedient 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 Lithonia, Georgia 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 approach with the therapeutic component of a therapeutic boarding school. Gateway, found in the Panhandle of Florida, is a Christian program that has helped – and brought hope to- struggling teenage boys and their families from places all across the country for more than 20 years. Struggling teenage boys from Lithonia, Georgia and other cities receive an accredited education, counseling and teaching, an introduction to military drill and history, and the discipline for which boot camps are renowned. Gateway offers a  compassionate staff that cares deeply about each teen. Gateway is a military-style school that includes a number of essential components that are typically missing from boot camps. Those include: 

• Caring staff and mentors who provide positive role models and individual mentorship, 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 work through problems 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 Lithonia, Georgia, 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!