Boot Camps in Lorton, Virginia Can Help Troubled Teens, if They Are Like Gateway Boys Academy

Are you looking for boot camps close to Lorton, Virginia to deal with a out-of-control teen? Learn how boot camps can help troubled teens and consider how Gateway’s program may be even more effective for your teen.

If your teen demonstrates blatant disregard for authority, commonly displays defiant behavior, gets into regular and increasing disturbances with the law, and shows no cooperation in school, perhaps a boot camp can help reform your troubled teen. 

Boot Camps in Lorton, Virginia Can Help Troubled Teens Learn to Respect Authority

Popular opinion gives military academies, especially boot camps, a reputation for making errant teens put their lives in order. In fact, in several positive ways, boot camps can help troubled teens. Boot camps give a crash course in discipline, personal integrity and regard for authority. Programs like these can send a wake-up call to a teen who is moving toward a life of crime. For those 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 unhealthy habits, to more appropriate 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 cases, most adolescent issues are more complicated than they seem on the surface and may only be symptoms of other issues. Boot camps rely entirely on behavior modification; they do not offer the counseling or therapeutic input to help teens resolve the true underlying issues. For teens displaying anxiety, depression, drug or alcohol use, poor 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 Lorton, Virginia on their own will not address family problems but simply return a somewhat more compliant 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 Lorton, Virginia 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 benefits 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 served – and brought restoration to- struggling teenage boys and their families from places all across the country for more than 20 years. Struggling teenage boys from Lorton, Virginia and other places benefit from an accredited academic program, counseling and instruction, an introduction to military drill and history, and the discipline for which boot camps are renowned. Gateway offers staff that care deeply about each student. Gateway is a military-style school that features several 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 instruction and spiritual focus, to help teens realize the true source of lasting heart change.
• Counseling, to help teens work through issues and replace harmful 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 Lorton, Virginia, 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!