Boot Camps Can Help Turn Around Troubled Boys

Are you researching boot camps for your boy? Learn how one boot camp can help troubled teens and provide the long-term direction he needs to stay on track.

If your boy shows deliberate disregard for authority, rebellious behavior, gets into disturbances with the law, and shows no motivation in school, perhaps a boot camp can help straighten him. 

Boot Camps Help At-Risk Boys Learn to Respect Authority

There are several positive ways in which boot camps can help troubled teens. Boot camps offer an intensive focus on discipline, personal responsibility and regard for authority. Boot camps like these can send a wake-up call to 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 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

Although boot camps can help troubled teens in some cases, most teenage issues are much more complex than they appear on the surface and are only the symptoms of other problems. Boot camps rely 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 use, low self-esteem, emotional disorders, and in fact most forms of rebellious behavior, the strict discipline of the boot camp environment may prove harmful instead, if it isn’t set up in a way that the discipline is coupled with Christian love and support.

Most boot camps on their own will not deal with family communication issues 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 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 is Not a Boot Camp, It is a Military-Like School that Turns 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 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 places all across the country for well over 20 years. Troubled teenage boys receive 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 features several essential components that are typically absent from boot camps, such as: 

• Caring staff who provide positive role models
• Biblical instruction and spiritual focus, to help teens find the true source of lasting heart change
• Family healing through 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 Suwanee, Georgia, 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!