Boot Camps in Fort Myers, Florida Can Help Troubled Teens, if They Are Like Gateway Boys AcademyAre you looking into boot camps in or around Fort Myers, Florida to try to help a defiant teen? Learn how boot camps can help troubled teens and consider how Gateway’s program may be even more effective for your teen.
If your teen demonstrates unashamed disregard for authority, unceasingly displays oppositional behavior, gets into regular and escalating trouble with the law, and lacks motivation in school, perhaps a boot camp will help bring him back to his senses.
Boot Camps in Fort Myers, Florida Can Help Boys Learn to Respect Authority
Popular belief gives military schools, especially boot camps, a reputation for making unruly teens put their lives in order. In truth, there are several positive ways in which boot camps can help troubled teens. Boot camps provide an intensive focus on discipline, personal integrity and regard for authority. Programs like these can be a means of rescuing a teen who might otherwise ruin his life with crime. For the ones who are shaped by it, boot camps can give them a new understanding of the consequences of their actions. For certain people, boot camps can initially help them move from destructive habits, to more respectable behavior. But those bad attitudes often return.
Boot Camps Can Help Troubled Boys Change their Behavior, But Many Teen Issues Go Beyond the Behavior
Although boot camps can help troubled teens in some cases, most adolescent issues are more complicated than they appear on the surface and are only the symptoms of other emotional problems. Boot camps rely entirely on forcing compliance; they do not provide the counseling or therapeutic input to help teens resolve the true root issues. For teens exhibiting anxiety, depression, drug use, low self-esteem, emotional disorders, and in fact most forms of rebellious behavior, the strict discipline of the 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 Fort Myers, Florida on their own will not deal with family concerns 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 Fort Myers, 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 benefits of the military approach with the therapeutic aspect of a therapeutic boarding school. Gateway, found in the Panhandle of Florida, is a Christian program that has worked with – and brought hope to- struggling teenage boys and their families from places all across the nation for well over 20 years. Struggling teenage boys from Fort Myers, Florida and other places benefit from 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 focus, to help teens discover the true source of lasting heart change.
- Counseling, to help teens deal with issues and replace destructive patterns with healthy new habits.
- 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 Fort Myers, 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 Fort Myers, Florida: Fort Myers is the county seatGR and commercial center of Lee County, Florida, United States. Its population was 62,298 in the 2010 census, a 29.23 percent increase over the 2000 figure. The city is one of two major cities that make up the Cape Coral-Fort Myers Metropolitan Statistical Area, the other being Cape Coral. The 2010 population for the metropolitan area was 618,754. Established in 1886, Fort Myers is the historical and governmental hub of Lee County. It is the gateway to the Southwest Florida region, which is a major tourist destination in Florida. The winter homes of Thomas Edison and Henry Ford (The Mangoes), which are both primary tourist attractions in the region, are located on McGregor Boulevard in Fort Myers. On August 13, 2004, Fort Myers was hit hard by Hurricane Charley, a Category 4 hurricane that made landfall north of the area. In 2005, Hurricane Wilma struck south of Naples, but caused extensive damage nonetheless in Fort Myers and its southern suburbs. Southwest Florida International Airport (RSW) is located southeast of the city in South Fort Myers, near Gateway and Lehigh Acres. |