Boot Camps in Suitland, Maryland Can Help Troubled Teens, if They Are Like Gateway Boys Academy

Are you looking into boot camps near Suitland, Maryland to deal with a rebellious teen? Learn how boot camps can help troubled teens and learn about how Gateway’s program may prove even more beneficial for your teen.

If your teen exhibits deliberate disregard for authority, unceasingly displays defiant behavior, gets into regular and growing disturbances with the law, and shows no cooperation in school, perhaps a boot camp can help sort out your troubled teen. 

Boot Camps in Suitland, Maryland Can Help Troubled Teens Learn to Respect Authority

Popular conception gives military academies, especially boot camps, a reputation for making badly behaved teens put their lives in order. As a matter of fact, there are several positive ways in which boot camps can help troubled teens. Boot camps provide an intensive focus on discipline, personal responsibility and regard for authority. Programs like these can send a wake-up call to a teen who might otherwise ruin his life with crime. For the ones 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 Adolescents Change their Behavior, But Many Teen Issues Go Beyond the Behavior

Even though boot camps can help troubled teens in some cases, most adolescent issues are more complicated than they seem on the surface and are only the symptoms of other issues. Boot camps focus entirely on behavior modification; they do not provide the therapy to help teens address the true root issues. For teens with anxiety, depression, drug or alcohol use, low self-esteem, emotional disorders, and in fact most instances of rebellious behavior, the strict discipline of the 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 Suitland, Maryland fail to solve deeper issues but simply return a somewhat more respectful teen to the same home environment in which he was struggling. Boys who attend boot camps are more likely to return to old habits.  In fact, boot camps in Suitland, Maryland 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 benefits 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 worked with – and brought restoration to- struggling teenage boys and their families from homes all across the nation for more than 20 years. Troubled teenage boys from Suitland, Maryland 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 respected. Gateway offers a  compassionate staff that cares deeply about each teen. Gateway is a military-style school that includes several essential 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 emphasis, to help teens discover the true source of lasting heart change.
• Mentoring, to help teens address issues and replace harmful patterns with healthy new habits.
• 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 Suitland, Maryland, 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!