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

Are you looking for boot camps in or around Saint Albans, West Virginia to straighten out a rebellious teen? 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 demonstrates blatant disregard for authority, constantly displays defiant behavior, gets into regular and growing disturbances with the law, and shows no motivation in school, perhaps a boot camp can help improve your troubled teen. 

Boot Camps in Saint Albans, West Virginia Can Help At-Risk Boys Learn to Respect Authority

Popular impression gives military schools, especially boot camps, a reputation for making badly behaved teens put their lives in order. As a matter of fact, 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 send a wake-up call to 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 some individuals, 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

Although boot camps can help troubled teens in some cases, most adolescent issues run much deeper than they seem on the surface and may only be symptoms of other issues. Boot camps rely entirely on behavior modification; they do not offer the therapeutic support to help teens heal from the true root issues. For teens exhibiting anxiety, depression, drug use, low self-esteem, emotional disorders, and in fact most forms of rebellious behavior, the stressful boot camp environment may prove counterproductive instead, if it isn’t set up in a way that the discipline is coupled with Christian love and support.

Most boot camps in Saint Albans, West Virginia fail to solve deeper 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 Saint Albans, West Virginia 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, located in the Panhandle of Florida, is a Christian program that has helped thousands of struggling teenage boys and their families from places all across the nation for more than 20 years. Troubled teenage boys from Saint Albans, West Virginia and other cities receive an accredited education, 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 a number of 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 teaching and spiritual focus, to help teens find the true source of lasting heart change.
• Mentoring, to help teens deal with issues 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 Saint Albans, 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!