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

Are you looking for boot camps in or around Fort Walton Beach, Florida to try to help a defiant teen? Learn how boot camps can help troubled teens and discover how Gateway’s program may be even more successful for your teen.

If your teen exhibits deliberate disregard for authority, unceasingly displays rebellious behavior, gets into frequent and escalating disturbances with the law, and shows no motivation in school, perhaps a boot camp can help sort out your troubled teen. 

Boot Camps in Fort Walton Beach, Florida Can Help Boys Learn to Respect Authority

Public opinion gives military schools, especially boot camps, a reputation for making rebellious teens get back on the straight and narrow path. In fact, 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 send a powerful message to 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 manageable behavior. But those bad attitudes often return.

Boot Camps Can Help Troubled Teens Change their Behavior, But Many Teen Issues Go Beyond the Behavior

Although boot camps can help troubled teens in some cases, most teenage issues are much more complex than they appear on the surface and are often only symptoms of other emotional problems. Boot camps rely entirely on behavior modification; they do not provide the therapeutic support to help teens deal with the true underlying issues. For teens with anxiety, depression, drug or alcohol use, poor self-esteem, emotional disorders, and in fact most types 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 Fort Walton Beach, Florida, on their own, will not speak to family concerns but return a somewhat more compliant teen to the same circumstances in which he struggled. Boys who attend boot camps are more likely to return to old habits.  In fact, boot camps in Fort Walton Beach, Florida may be 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 style with the therapeutic aspect of a therapeutic boarding school. Gateway, in the Panhandle of Florida, is a Christian program that has served – and brought hope to- struggling teenage boys and their families from locations all across the country for more than 20 years. Troubled teenage boys from Fort Walton Beach, Florida and other cities receive an accredited academic program, counseling and instruction, instruction in military drill and history, and the discipline for which boot camps are known. Gateway offers a  compassionate staff that cares deeply about each teen. Gateway is a military-style school that includes several essential components that are typically absent 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.
• Counseling, to help teens address issues and replace self-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 Walton Beach, 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!