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

Are you searching for boot camps near Rensselaer, 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 prove even more beneficial for your teen.

If your teen shows deliberate disregard for authority, unceasingly displays defiant behavior, gets into frequent and increasing trouble with the law, and shows no cooperation in school, perhaps a boot camp can help reform your troubled teen. 

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

Public impression gives military academies, especially boot camps, a reputation for making rebellious teens put their lives in order. In fact, in several positive ways, boot camps can help troubled teens. Boot camps give an intensive focus on discipline, personal responsibility and regard for authority. Programs like these can send a powerful message to a teen who might otherwise ruin his life with crime. For those who respond well to it, boot camps can give them a new understanding of the consequences of their actions. For some teens, boot camps can initially help them move from unhealthy 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

Despite the fact that boot camps can help troubled teens in some cases, most teenage issues run much deeper than they seem on the surface and are only the symptoms of other emotional problems. Boot camps focus entirely on modifying behavior; they do not offer the therapeutic support to help teens deal with the true underlying issues. For teens displaying anxiety, depression, drug use, low self-esteem, emotional disorders, and in fact most types of rebellious behavior, the stressful 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 Rensselaer, New York on their own will not address family issues but simply return a somewhat more respectful 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 Rensselaer, New York may be 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 style with the therapeutic component 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 homes all across the nation for well over 20 years. Struggling teenage boys from Rensselaer, New York and other cities receive an accredited education, counseling and instruction, an introduction to military drill and history, and the discipline for which boot camps are known. Gateway offers a  compassionate staff that cares deeply about each teen. Gateway is a military-style school that includes several important 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 instruction and spiritual focus, to help teens discover the true source of lasting heart change.
• Counseling, to help teens address 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 Rensselaer, 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!