Boot Camps in Washington, NC Can Help Troubled Teens, if They Are Like Gateway Boys Academy

Are you looking into boot camps in or around Washington, North Carolina to try to help a rebellious teen? Learn 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 shows blatant disregard for authority, forever displays defiant behavior, gets into regular and growing disturbances with the law, and lacks cooperation in school, perhaps a boot camp can help sort out your troubled teen. 

Boot Camps in Washington, North Carolina Can Help At-Risk Boys Learn to Respect Authority

Public opinion gives military academies, especially boot camps, a reputation for making badly behaved teens into respectable young citizens. In fact, in several positive ways, boot camps can help troubled teens. Boot camps offer a crash course in discipline, personal integrity and respect for authority. Programs like these can be a means of rescuing 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 unhealthy 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

Despite the fact that boot camps can help troubled teens in some cases, most adolescent issues are much more complex than they appear on the surface and are often only symptoms of other problems. Boot camps rely entirely on forcing compliance; they do not offer the therapeutic support to help teens deal with the true root issues. For teens with anxiety, depression, drug use, poor self-esteem, emotional disorders, and in fact most forms 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 Washington, NC on their own will not deal with family issues but simply return a somewhat more compliant teen to the same home environment in which he was struggling. Then he will return to old habits.  For this reasons, boot camps in Washington, NC may be a short-term solution at best, and may be harmful to the teen at worst. Fact is, teens often revert to past behavior after returning home from short-term boot camps, because the length of the program doesn’t make the good attitudes, respect and discipline 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, found in the Panhandle of Florida, is a Christian program that has served thousands of struggling teenage boys and their families from cities all across the nation for well over 20 years. Troubled teenage boys from Washington, North Carolina 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  caring staff that cares deeply about each teen. Gateway is a military-style school that includes several critical 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 find the true source of lasting heart change.
• Mentoring, to help teens deal with problems and replace harmful 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 an ongoing program like Gateway offers. We invite you to look beyond Washington, North Carolina, 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!