Willingness is the single most important factor that separates ‘commercialized’ boot camps from current and established military schools of the same namesake. Raw armed forces recruits are fully aware that the course is a bridge to where they’re intent on going- to become soldiers. At the extreme opposite end of the spectrum, the involuntary conscripts of teen boot camps couldn’t be more eager to be anywhere but in a corrective program; most are there as a result of court order or desperate parents.
So much of what drives a parent to seek out a correctional program is based in perceived helplessness; they believe they’ve run out of options, and nothing else they’ve tried has worked. What they don’t understand is while harsh and heavily monitored environments of that nature do affect some positive change in some teens, when it comes to tending to the long term needs of the individual, these programs can be sadly lacking.
Most of these correctional programs are designed to utilize techniques such as intense physical exercises, extreme discipline and rigid time constraints to emulate military conditions to attack and shift destructive behaviors in their charges ranging from drug abuse, law breaking, and aggression, to anti-social problems and others.
When working with recruits, the armed forces are dealing with young people who are driven to become the kinds of soldiers they’ve always envisioned themselves to be; even still, the job of drill instructors and other personnel is not an easy one.
Working with troubled youth, the difficulty is automatically, exponentially increased because they’re dealing with individuals who not only do not wish to be where they are, but are also all too aware that there is but a certain allotted period of time they must survive before they’ll be released again. Six to eight weeks is an average example of the time advertised for most corrective programs and within that time they expect to completely shift your child’s behavior and/or ’scare them straight’.
In order to enact positive change with those enrolled in these programs, the individuals must possess a desire to change in the first place. Otherwise, what ends up happening is that teens will find whatever survival skills are necessary to get through the course, without ever actually addressing the underlying, primary issues motivating them to lash out in the first place.
Systems of support like therapy, and counseling geared toward finding root causes, seminars, etc., are necessary so that the subject can actually identify and relate to the reasoning behind the harmful behaviors. Additionally, when the teen in question is sent away to one of these programs, it may also give the parents a way out of acknowledging the parts they play in the existing dynamics of their relationships to the teens in question.
So while teen boot camps can look like an immediate solution to parents searching for a quick remedy, searching for other ways of dealing, like specialty military schools, or treatment centers, or even youth counseling, where lasting impact is the focus instead of instant gratification, could make a serious difference in their overall situations, and the transformation of their teenager. Finding out about the options could put additional, effective tools into your hands.
Discover why teen boot camps may not work for many teenagers now in our comprehensive overview of everything you need to know about how and where to find the best Teen boot camp in the United States.
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