Alternative boarding school offering troubled teens programs and boot camps providing teenage help and parenting advice and tips.

Handling teenagers can be quite a handful, especially for parents who have careers and a lot of other things to worry about. Handling troubled teens can be even more stressful and emotionally draining. Teenagers are at a very precarious stage in their life where their mistakes and decisions can truly make a lasting impact.

What is a bootcamp for teenagers?
In the process of trying to find ways to help their troubled teenagers straighten their life out and make better decisions, one of the options for interventions that parents come across with would be bootcamps. Bootcamps have enjoyed their share of positive publicity in its early years.

The idea is to adapt the rigorous kind of training that servicemen go through in real military bootcamps in order to affect behavior modification on rebellious teens. Many boot camps are structured in such a way that students rise early and keep a tight schedule. Like military bootcamps, bootcamps for teenagers also involve putting teens through military exercises and drills. Most of the time, drill sergeants and taskmasters take a tough stance towards the teens in order to impose order and discipline on camp.

On the surface, this could be something that parents may be interested in because they hope to inspire obedience and responsibility in their children. However, many teenagers develop negative feelings towards authority figures after they stay in bootcamps. While the "in your face" attitude, intimidation, and negative discipline may temporarily "cure" the symptoms of a rebellious or troubled teens on the surface, none of the issues that cause these symptoms are actually addressed.

Furthermore, bootcamps use a standardized method to address the students as a unit or a group rather than find out each person's individual needs and address them appropriately. While it's true that some bootcamps for teenagers offer some form of counseling, the kind and frequency of counseling offered is hardly enough for young people to understand why they are struggling and to come up with a true and lasting solution that will really change their lives.

Bootcamps also do not provide aftercare, which is a major factor why many troubled teens who go through bootcamps often become repeat offenders. It's often a vicious cycle of breaking a young person's spirit to look like something's changed in them, repeating the offense, then going back to bootcamp. Eventually, these teens will be old enough to learn that they can't be intimidated into obeying authority figures anymore.

What's a better solution?
This actually depends on what your child really needs. There are other alternatives to bootcamp for teenagers that you may want to explore. One of them is residential treatment centers where therapy and counseling are core components of the program. Aftercare and family counseling is also provided in most therapeutic centers. The focus is not on eliminating the symptoms but on providing a safe environment where the underlying factors of why teenagers are troubled and challenged are faced.