Boot Camps in Bradenton, Florida Can Help Troubled Teens, if They Are Like Gateway Boys Academy

Are you searching for boot camps close to Bradenton, Florida to try to help a defiant teen? Learn how boot camps can help troubled teens and discover how Gateway’s program may prove even more beneficial for your teen.

If your teen shows blatant disregard for authority, constantly displays oppositional behavior, gets into regular and increasing trouble with the law, and lacks cooperation in school, perhaps a boot camp can help sort out your troubled teen. 

Boot Camps in Bradenton, Florida Can Help Boys Learn to Respect Authority

Public opinion gives military academies, especially boot camps, a reputation for making errant teens into respectable young citizens. As a matter of fact, there are several positive ways in which boot camps can help troubled teens. Boot camps offer a crash course in discipline, personal integrity and regard for authority. Programs like these can send a powerful message to a teen who is moving toward a life of crime. For the ones 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 Boys Change their Behavior, But Many Teen Issues Go Beyond the Behavior

Even though boot camps can help troubled teens in some cases, most adolescent issues are more complicated than they seem on the surface and are often only symptoms of other issues. Boot camps rely entirely on forcing compliance; they do not provide the therapeutic support to help teens address the true underlying issues. For teens with anxiety, depression, drug or alcohol use, poor 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 in Bradenton, Florida on their own will not deal with family problems but simply return a somewhat more respectful 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 in Bradenton, Florida 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’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 another option that combines the strengths of the military approach with the therapeutic aspect of a therapeutic boarding school. Gateway, in the Panhandle of Florida, is a Christian program that has helped – and brought restoration to- struggling teenage boys and their families from places all across the nation for well over 20 years. Struggling teenage boys from Bradenton, Florida and other cities benefit from an accredited academic program, counseling and teaching, an introduction to military drill and history, and the discipline for which boot camps are known. Gateway offers a  loving staff that cares deeply about each teen. Gateway is a military-style school that includes 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 teaching and spiritual emphasis, to help teens discover the true source of lasting heart change.
• Counseling, to help teens deal with struggles and replace harmful patterns with healthy new habits.
• Family healing 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 Bradenton, 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!