Deciding if Boot Camps for Teens are a Good Idea

Deciding if Boot Camps for Teens are a Good Idea

If you've spent any time on the Internet looking for resources to help a troubled teen in your family with, you've undoubtedly come across something they call boot camps for teens. While the idea sounds harmless enough, it's tended to be a rather controversial kind of choice. Young teens sent here have died from the extreme kinds of punishment used at these places sometimes.

In America, the first boot camps for teens came up about 25 years ago in Oklahoma. These places that are intended to exercise very harsh strictness and discipline with a child. They often compare these places to prison, if slightly more civilized. Sometimes, when a juvenile criminal is brought before court, the judge will sentence him to a couple of months in one of these places.

Today, there are boot camps for teens in perhaps 35 states; the federal government has its own boot camp program for troubled teens, as well. When a parent is at his wits end for something to do with an impossible child and decides to send the child to a boot camp for teens, he needs to take responsibility for his actions and really research the options available very well.

No one should forget what happened in Florida eight years ago when a 14-year-old teenager was punished to death by cruel camp managers. That was when boot camps for teens were completely banned in Florida. While that may be an extreme case, the ones that are open in all the other states do come very dangerously close to this level of treatment. There have been many deaths at boot camps Florida wasn't the only one.

Thankfully, not every boot camp is this way. The West Ridge Academy in Utah for instance, chooses rehabilitation as its way to help a troubled teen rather than resorting to extreme violence and physical abuse.

So can any good really come from boot camp? Well, if you send a child there, and if it's a good place, you do succeed in giving your child a new and healthy environment that is free of bad influences your teen may have been involved. Your child is removed from all harmful influences and is placed in an environment where good behavior is valued and hard work is enforced.

Basically, before you actually decide to send your child to such a place, do visit the place and take a very close look at what goes on there. Try to speak to parents who have some kind of experience sending their children there. You have to remember through that these places do not claim to be therapeutic in any way. With very few exceptions, they are about brute force.

You only need to think about boot camps if you've already taken your child to a psychiatrist and have had them take a look at what the underlying causes of the trouble might be.

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