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

Are you researching boot camps near Merrick, New York to straighten out a defiant teen? Find out how boot camps can help troubled teens and look at how Gateway’s program may be even more beneficial for your teen.

If your teen shows deliberate disregard for authority, forever displays defiant behavior, gets into regular and increasing trouble with the law, and shows no motivation in school, perhaps a boot camp can help sort out your troubled teen. 

Boot Camps in Merrick, New York Can Help Troubled Teens Learn to Respect Authority

Public impression gives military academies, especially boot camps, a reputation for making badly behaved teens get back on the straight and narrow path. In truth, in several positive ways, boot camps can help troubled teens. Boot camps give a crash course in discipline, personal integrity and respect for authority. Programs like these can be a means of rescuing a teen who might otherwise ruin his life with crime. For those 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 unhealthy 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

Despite the fact that boot camps can help troubled teens in some situations, most teenage issues are much more complex than they appear on the surface and may only be symptoms of other issues. Boot camps rely entirely on forcing compliance; they do not include the counseling or therapeutic input to help teens resolve the true root issues. For teens with anxiety, depression, drug or alcohol use, low self-esteem, emotional disorders, and in fact most types 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 Merrick, New York on their own will not deal with 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 Merrick, New York are typically 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 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 cities all across the country for more than 20 years. Troubled teenage boys from Merrick, New York and other cities benefit from an accredited education, 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 critical components that are typically missing from boot camps. Those include: 

• Caring staff and mentors who provide positive role models and concerned involvement, not simply breaking teens down.
• Biblical instruction and spiritual emphasis, to help teens realize the true source of lasting heart change.
• Counseling, to help teens work through struggles and replace self-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 Merrick, 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!