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

Are you researching boot camps close to Woodbridge, Virginia to try to help a defiant 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, commonly displays rebellious behavior, gets into frequent and increasing trouble with the law, and lacks cooperation in school, perhaps a boot camp can help reform your troubled teen. 

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

Popular belief 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 a crash course in discipline, personal responsibility 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 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 unhealthy habits, to more respectable behavior. But those bad attitudes often return.

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

Although boot camps can help troubled teens in some situations, most adolescent issues are more complicated than they seem on the surface and are only the symptoms of other emotional problems. Boot camps focus entirely on forcing compliance; they do not include the therapeutic support to help teens deal with the true underlying issues. For teens with anxiety, depression, drug or alcohol use, low self-esteem, emotional disorders, and in fact most types 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 Woodbridge, Virginia on their own will not address family concerns but simply return a somewhat more obedient 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 Woodbridge, 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 benefits 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 – and brought hope to- struggling teenage boys and their families from places all across the country for well over 20 years. Troubled teenage boys from Woodbridge, Virginia and other cities benefit from an accredited education, counseling and instruction, an introduction to military drill and history, and the discipline for which boot camps are renowned. 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 missing from boot camps. Those include: 

• Caring staff and mentors who provide positive role models and constructive  input, not simply breaking teens down.
• Biblical instruction and spiritual focus, to help teens find the true source of lasting heart change.
• Mentoring, to help teens deal with 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 Woodbridge, 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!