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

Are you looking into boot camps in or around Schenectady, New York to deal with a rebellious teen? See how boot camps can help troubled teens and learn about how Gateway’s program may be even more beneficial for your teen.

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

Boot Camps in Schenectady, New York Can Help At-Risk Boys Learn to Respect Authority

Public belief gives military schools, especially boot camps, a reputation for making unruly teens into respectable young citizens. As a matter of fact, in several positive ways, boot camps can help troubled teens. Boot camps give an intensive focus on discipline, personal integrity and respect for authority. Programs like these can send a wake-up call to a teen who is moving toward a life of crime. For those who respond well to 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

Despite the fact that boot camps can help troubled teens in some cases, most adolescent issues are more complicated than they seem on the surface and are often only symptoms of other emotional problems. Boot camps focus entirely on modifying behavior; they do not include the counseling or therapeutic input to help teens resolve 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 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 Schenectady, New York on their own will not address family problems 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 Schenectady, New York 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 benefits of the military approach with the therapeutic component of a therapeutic boarding school. Gateway, found in the Panhandle of Florida, is a Christian program that has helped – and brought hope to- struggling teenage boys and their families from homes all across the nation for more than 20 years. Troubled teenage boys from Schenectady, New York and other cities benefit from an accredited education, counseling and teaching, an introduction to military drill and history, and the discipline for which boot camps are known. Gateway offers a  loving staff that cares deeply about each teen. Gateway is a military-style school that includes a number of essential components that are typically missing 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 focus, to help teens discover the true source of lasting heart change.
• Counseling, to help teens address issues and replace harmful 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 Schenectady, 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!