Boot Camps in Bartow, Florida Can Help Troubled Teens, if They Are Like Gateway Boys AcademyAre you researching boot camps near Bartow, Florida to try to help a defiant teen? See how boot camps can help troubled teens and consider how Gateway’s program may prove even more successful for your teen.
If your teen exhibits deliberate disregard for authority, unceasingly displays oppositional behavior, gets into frequent and escalating disturbances with the law, and lacks cooperation in school, perhaps a boot camp can help improve your troubled teen.
Boot Camps in Bartow, Florida Can Help Boys Learn to Respect Authority
Public belief gives military schools, especially boot camps, a reputation for making unruly teens put their lives in order. In fact, in several positive ways, boot camps can help troubled teens. Boot camps give an intensive focus on discipline, personal integrity and respect for authority. Programs like these can send a wake-up call to a teen who might otherwise ruin his life with crime. For those who are shaped by it, boot camps can give them a new understanding of the consequences of their actions. For some individuals, 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 Adolescents 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 adolescent issues run much deeper than they appear on the surface and may only be symptoms of other problems. Boot camps focus entirely on modifying behavior; they do not provide the counseling or therapeutic input to help teens heal from the true underlying issues. For teens exhibiting anxiety, depression, drug or alcohol use, poor self-esteem, emotional disorders, and in fact most instances of rebellious behavior, the stressful 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 Bartow, Florida on their own will not deal with family problems but simply return a somewhat more respectful teen to the same home situation in which he was struggling. Boys who attend boot camps are more likely to return to old habits. In fact, boot camps in Bartow, Florida 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 an alternative that combines the strengths of the military approach with the therapeutic component of a therapeutic boarding school. Gateway, located in the Panhandle of Florida, is a Christian program that has helped – and brought hope to- struggling teenage boys and their families from places all across the nation for well over 20 years. Troubled teenage boys from Bartow, Florida and other places receive an accredited academic program, counseling and instruction, an introduction to military drill and history, and the discipline for which boot camps are respected. Gateway offers staff that care deeply about each student. Gateway is a military-style school that features several important components that are typically missing from boot camps. Those include:
- Caring staff and mentors who provide positive role models and concerned involvement, not simply breaking teens down.
- Biblical instruction and spiritual emphasis, to help teens discover the true source of lasting heart change.
- Mentoring, to help teens address issues and replace self-destructive patterns with healthy new choices.
- 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 Bartow, Florida, 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!
More about boot camps for boys in or near Bartow, Florida: Bartow is the county seat of Polk County, Florida, United States. Founded in 1851 as Fort Blount, the city was renamed in honor of Francis S. Bartow the first brigade commander to die in combat during the American Civil War. According to the U.S. Census Bureau 2000 Census, the city had a population of 15,340 and an estimated population of 16,959 in 2009. It is part of the Lakeland–Winter Haven Metropolitan Statistical Area, which had an estimated population of 584,383 in 2009. As of 2010, the mayor of Bartow is W. Patrick “Pat” Huff. Located near the source of the Peace River, Bartow is approximately Convert east of the Tampa Bay Area and Convert southwest of the Greater Orlando area. The city is near the center of “Lightning Alley” and has frequent afternoon thunderstorms in the summer, but typically has sunny and mild winters. Government, mining, and agriculture are the major sectors of the area’s economy. The primary roads in the Bartow area are U.S. Route 17, U.S. Route 98 and State Road 60 which provide access to locations throughout Central Florida. The official city nickname is the “City of Oaks and Azaleas”, but informally it is often called “the ‘Tow”. Three districts within the city are on the National Register of Historical Places. Other historic landmarks include the Old Polk County Courthouse built in 1909 and Bartow High School, formerly Summerlin Institute, the oldest high school in the county. Although Bartow has been eclipsed in population, importance and name recognition by other cities in the county, particularly Lakeland and Winter Haven, the city has retained its small city heritage and its distinctive Southern culture. With the annexation of Convert of former phosphate mining land owned by the Clear Springs Land Company, Bartow’s population is projected to increase to over 25,000 by 2015 and over 45,000 by 2030. |