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

Are you trying to find boot camps in or around Weirton, West Virginia to try to help a defiant teen? Learn how boot camps can help troubled teens and learn about how Gateway’s program may be even more successful for your teen.

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

Boot Camps in Weirton, West Virginia Can Help At-Risk Boys Learn to Respect Authority

Public opinion gives military schools, especially boot camps, a reputation for making badly behaved teens get back on the straight and narrow path. In truth, there are several positive ways in which boot camps can help troubled teens. Boot camps offer an intensive focus on discipline, personal integrity and regard for authority. Programs like these can be a means of rescuing a teen who might otherwise ruin his life with crime. For those teens who respond well to it, boot camps can give them a new understanding of the consequences of their actions. For some teens, boot camps can initially help them move from self-defeating 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

Despite the fact that boot camps can help troubled teens in some cases, most adolescent issues run much deeper than they appear on the surface and may only be symptoms of other problems. Boot camps rely entirely on forcing compliance; they do not offer the therapeutic support to help teens address the true root issues. For teens with anxiety, depression, drug use, poor self-esteem, emotional disorders, and in fact most instances of rebellious behavior, the strict discipline of the boot camp environment may prove counterproductive instead, if it isn’t set up in a way that the discipline is coupled with Christian love and support.

Most boot camps in Weirton, West 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 Weirton, West Virginia are typically 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 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 locations all across the nation for more than 20 years. Troubled teenage boys from Weirton, West Virginia and other places benefit from an accredited education, counseling and teaching, an introduction to military drill and history, and the discipline for which boot camps are renowned. Gateway offers staff that care deeply about each student. Gateway is a military-style school that features a number of important 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.
• Mentoring, to help teens address issues and replace self-destructive 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 Weirton, West 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!