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

Are you trying to find boot camps near Olney, Maryland to deal with a defiant 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 exhibits deliberate disregard for authority, forever displays oppositional behavior, gets into frequent and growing trouble with the law, and shows no motivation in school, perhaps a boot camp will help bring him back to his senses. 

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

Public opinion gives military academies, especially boot camps, a reputation for making rebellious teens put their lives in order. As a matter of fact, in several positive ways, boot camps can help troubled teens. Boot camps offer an intensive focus on discipline, personal integrity and regard for authority. Programs like these can be a means of rescuing a teen who might otherwise ruin his life with crime. For the ones 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 destructive 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

Even though boot camps can help troubled teens in some situations, most teenage issues run much deeper than they seem on the surface and are often only symptoms of other issues. Boot camps focus entirely on modifying behavior; they do not provide the therapy to help teens resolve the true underlying issues. For teens showing 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 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 Olney, Maryland on their own will not speak to family concerns but simply return a somewhat more compliant 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 Olney, Maryland 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 style with the therapeutic aspect of a therapeutic boarding school. Gateway, in the Panhandle of Florida, is a Christian program that has worked with – and brought restoration to- struggling teenage boys and their families from locations all across the country for well over 20 years. Struggling teenage boys from Olney, Maryland and other places benefit from an accredited academic program, counseling and teaching, instruction in military drill and history, and the discipline for which boot camps are respected. Gateway offers staff that care deeply about each student. Gateway is a military-style school that includes several essential components that are typically absent 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 emphasis, to help teens realize the true source of lasting heart change.
• Mentoring, to help teens work through issues and replace destructive patterns with healthy new habits.
• 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 Olney, 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!