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

Are you searching for boot camps in or around Parkersburg, West Virginia to straighten out a defiant teen? Read on to see how boot camps can help troubled teens and discover how Gateway’s program may prove even more successful for your teen.

If your teen shows blatant disregard for authority, constantly displays rebellious behavior, gets into regular 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 Parkersburg, West Virginia Can Help At-Risk Boys Learn to Respect Authority

Public belief gives military schools, especially boot camps, a reputation for making wayward teens into respectable young citizens. As a matter of fact, there are several positive ways in which boot camps can help troubled teens. Boot camps provide a crash course in discipline, personal responsibility and regard for authority. Programs like these can be a means of rescuing a teen who might otherwise ruin his life with crime. For those teens 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 Adolescents Change their Behavior, But Many Teen Issues Go Beyond the Behavior

Although boot camps can help troubled teens in some cases, most teenage issues run much deeper than they appear on the surface and are only the symptoms of other issues. Boot camps rely entirely on modifying behavior; they do not provide the counseling or therapeutic input to help teens deal with 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 Parkersburg, West Virginia on their own will not deal with family concerns but simply return a somewhat more obedient 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 Parkersburg, West Virginia 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 another option that combines the strengths of the military approach with the therapeutic input 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 locations all across the nation for more than 20 years. Troubled teenage boys from Parkersburg, West Virginia and other cities benefit from an accredited education, counseling and teaching, instruction in military drill and history, and the discipline for which boot camps are respected. Gateway offers a  loving staff that cares deeply about each teen. Gateway is a military-style school that features several 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 emphasis, to help teens realize the true source of lasting heart change.
• Mentoring, 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 Parkersburg, West 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!