Boot Camps in Stafford, Virginia Can Help Troubled Teens, if They Are Like Gateway Boys AcademyAre you looking for boot camps near Stafford, Virginia to try to help a defiant teen? Read on to see how boot camps can help troubled teens and look at how Gateway’s program may prove even more successful for your teen.
If your teen shows unashamed disregard for authority, unceasingly displays rebellious behavior, gets into frequent and growing trouble with the law, and lacks cooperation in school, perhaps a boot camp can help reform your troubled teen.
Boot Camps in Stafford, Virginia Can Help Troubled Teens Learn to Respect Authority
Public opinion gives military schools, especially boot camps, a reputation for making errant teens put their lives in order. In fact, 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 send a powerful message 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 certain people, 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 Adolescents Change their Behavior, But Many Teen Issues Go Beyond the Behavior
Even though boot camps can help troubled teens in some cases, most teenage issues are more complicated than they appear on the surface and are only the symptoms of other problems. Boot camps focus entirely on forcing compliance; they do not provide the therapeutic support to help teens resolve the true underlying issues. For teens exhibiting anxiety, depression, drug use, poor self-esteem, emotional disorders, and in fact most forms 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 Stafford, Virginia on their own will not address family issues but simply return a somewhat more compliant 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 Stafford, 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 aspect of a therapeutic boarding school. Gateway, found 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 country for well over 20 years. Troubled teenage boys from Stafford, Virginia and other cities receive an accredited academic program, 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 features several important components that are typically missing 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 focus, to help teens discover the true source of lasting heart change.
- Counseling, to help teens address problems 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 Stafford, 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!
More about boot camps for boys in or near Stafford, Virginia: Stafford is a census-designated place in and the county seat of Stafford County in the northern part of the U.S. Commonwealth of Virginia. The population as of the 2010 Census was 4,320. It lies 10 miles (16 km) north of Fredericksburg, approximately 40 miles (64 km) south of metropolitan Washington, D.C., and about 60 miles (97 km) north of Richmond, the Commonwealth capital (Connor, 2003). The Marine Corps Base Quantico is located north of the community. U.S. Highway 1, Interstate 95, and Virginia Railway Express commuter trains pass through Stafford. Like the rest of the metropolitan area, including central Maryland, modern Stafford has been shaped by its proximity to the nation’s capital. It is largely populated by professionals working in the federal civil service, the U.S. military, or for one of the many private companies which contract to provide services to the federal government. |