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

Are you searching for boot camps close to Springfield, Virginia to deal with a rebellious teen? Learn how boot camps can help troubled teens and discover how Gateway’s program may be even more beneficial for your teen.

If your teen shows unashamed disregard for authority, unceasingly displays defiant behavior, gets into regular and escalating disturbances with the law, and lacks cooperation in school, perhaps a boot camp will help bring him back to his senses. 

Boot Camps in Springfield, Virginia Can Help Troubled Teens Learn to Respect Authority

Popular opinion gives military schools, especially boot camps, a reputation for making out-of-control teens put their lives in order. In truth, in several positive ways, boot camps can help troubled teens. Boot camps provide a crash course in discipline, personal integrity and regard for authority. Programs like these can be a means of rescuing a teen who is moving toward a life of 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 self-defeating habits, to more manageable behavior. But those bad attitudes often return.

Boot Camps Can Help Troubled Adolescents Change their Behavior, But Many Teen Issues Go Beyond the Behavior

Even though boot camps can help troubled teens in some situations, most teenage issues are more complicated than they appear on the surface and may only be symptoms of other emotional problems. Boot camps rely entirely on behavior modification; they do not offer the counseling or therapeutic input to help teens address the true underlying issues. For teens exhibiting anxiety, depression, drug or alcohol use, poor 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 Springfield, Virginia on their own will not address family concerns 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 Springfield, Virginia 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 approach 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 cities all across the nation for well over 20 years. Troubled teenage boys from Springfield, Virginia and other cities receive an accredited academic program, counseling and teaching, instruction in military drill and history, and the discipline for which boot camps are renowned. 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 absent from boot camps. Those include: 

• Caring staff and mentors who provide positive role models and concerned involvement, not simply breaking teens down.
• Biblical teaching and spiritual emphasis, to help teens discover the true source of lasting heart change.
• Counseling, to help teens work through struggles and replace 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 Springfield, 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!