Boot Camps in Reading, Pennsylvania Can Help Troubled Teens, if They Are Like Gateway Boys Academy

Are you looking into boot camps near Reading, Pennsylvania to try to help a defiant teen? Read on to see how boot camps can help troubled teens and learn about how Gateway’s program may be even more effective for your teen.

If your teen exhibits unashamed disregard for authority, constantly displays rebellious behavior, gets into frequent and growing disturbances with the law, and lacks cooperation in school, perhaps a boot camp can help reform your troubled teen. 

Boot Camps in Reading, Pennsylvania Can Help Boys Learn to Respect Authority

Popular conception gives military academies, especially boot camps, a reputation for making rebellious teens into respectable young citizens. As a matter of fact, in several positive ways, boot camps can help troubled teens. Boot camps provide a crash course in discipline, personal responsibility and regard for authority. Programs like these can send a wake-up call to 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 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 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 teenage issues are more complicated than they appear on the surface and are often only symptoms of other issues. Boot camps rely entirely on modifying behavior; they do not offer the counseling or therapeutic input to help teens resolve the true underlying issues. For teens displaying anxiety, depression, drug use, low self-esteem, emotional disorders, and in fact most instances of rebellious behavior, the strict discipline of the 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 Reading, Pennsylvania on their own will not deal with family communication 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 Reading, Pennsylvania 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 component of a therapeutic boarding school. Gateway, found in the Panhandle of Florida, is a Christian program that has worked with thousands of struggling teenage boys and their families from homes all across the country for more than 20 years. Troubled teenage boys from Reading, Pennsylvania and other cities receive an accredited education, counseling and teaching, an introduction to military drill and history, and the discipline for which boot camps are respected. Gateway offers a  compassionate staff that cares deeply about each teen. 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 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 Reading, Pennsylvania, 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!