Boot Camps in York, Pennsylvania Can Help Troubled Teens, if They Are Like Gateway Boys Academy

Are you looking into boot camps in or around York, Pennsylvania to straighten out a rebellious teen? Read on to see how boot camps can help troubled teens and discover how Gateway’s program may be even more successful for your teen.

If your teen exhibits unashamed disregard for authority, unceasingly displays oppositional behavior, gets into regular and increasing trouble with the law, and shows no motivation in school, perhaps a boot camp will help bring him back to his senses. 

Boot Camps in York, Pennsylvania Can Help Troubled Teens Learn to Respect Authority

Popular belief gives military schools, especially boot camps, a reputation for making out-of-control teens into respectable young citizens. In truth, in several positive ways, boot camps can help troubled teens. Boot camps provide a crash course in discipline, personal responsibility and respect for authority. Programs like these can send a powerful message to a teen who might otherwise ruin his life with 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 destructive habits, to more manageable behavior. But those bad attitudes often return.

Boot Camps Can Help Troubled Boys 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 teenage issues run much deeper than they seem on the surface and are only the symptoms of other emotional problems. Boot camps rely entirely on modifying behavior; they do not provide the counseling or therapeutic input to help teens heal from the true root issues. For teens exhibiting anxiety, depression, drug use, poor self-esteem, emotional disorders, and in fact most types 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 York, Pennsylvania on their own will not deal with family problems 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 York, Pennsylvania are 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 another option that combines the strengths of the military approach with the therapeutic input of a therapeutic boarding school. Gateway, in the Panhandle of Florida, is a Christian program that has worked with thousands of struggling teenage boys and their families from homes all across the country for well over 20 years. Troubled teenage boys from York, Pennsylvania and other cities benefit from an accredited academic program, counseling and teaching, 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 features a number of 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 focus, to help teens discover the true source of lasting heart change.
• Counseling, to help teens deal with problems 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 York, Pennsylvania, 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!