Boot Camps in Massapequa, New York Can Help Troubled Teens, if They Are Like Gateway Boys Academy

Are you looking for boot camps close to Massapequa, New York to try to help a defiant teen? Learn how boot camps can help troubled teens and consider how Gateway’s program may be even more successful for your teen.

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

Boot Camps in Massapequa, New York Can Help At-Risk Boys Learn to Respect Authority

Public opinion gives military schools, especially boot camps, a reputation for making unruly teens put their lives in order. In fact, in several positive ways, boot camps can help troubled teens. Boot camps provide an intensive focus on discipline, personal integrity and regard for authority. Programs like these can send a powerful message to a teen who is moving toward a life of crime. For those 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 unhealthy habits, to more respectable behavior. But those bad attitudes often return.

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

Even though boot camps can help troubled teens in some cases, most adolescent issues are much more complex than they appear on the surface and may only be symptoms of other emotional problems. Boot camps rely entirely on forcing compliance; they do not include the therapeutic support to help teens deal with the true root issues. For teens with anxiety, depression, drug use, low self-esteem, emotional disorders, and in fact most instances of rebellious behavior, the stressful 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 Massapequa, New York fail to solve deeper issues 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 Massapequa, New York 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 another option that combines the strengths of the military approach with the therapeutic aspect 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 homes all across the nation for well over 20 years. Struggling teenage boys from Massapequa, New York and other cities receive an accredited education, counseling and teaching, instruction in 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 a number of critical 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 find the true source of lasting heart change.
• Mentoring, to help teens deal with problems 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 Massapequa, New York, 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!