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

Are you trying to find boot camps in or around Lake Placid, Florida to straighten out a rebellious teen? Find out how boot camps can help troubled teens and discover how Gateway’s program may be even more effective for your teen.

If your teen demonstrates unashamed disregard for authority, commonly displays defiant behavior, gets into regular and escalating trouble with the law, and shows no cooperation in school, perhaps a boot camp can help reform your troubled teen. 

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

Popular conception gives military schools, especially boot camps, a reputation for making unruly teens get back on the straight and narrow path. As a matter of fact, in several positive ways, boot camps can help troubled teens. Boot camps give a crash course in discipline, personal responsibility and respect for authority. Programs like these can send a powerful message to a teen who is moving toward a life of crime. For those teens who respond well to it, boot camps can give them a new understanding of the consequences of their actions. For some teens, boot camps can initially help them move from unhealthy 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

Even though boot camps can help troubled teens in some cases, most teenage issues are much more complex than they seem on the surface and are only the symptoms of other emotional problems. Boot camps focus entirely on forcing compliance; they do not include the counseling or therapeutic input to help teens address the true root issues. For teens showing anxiety, depression, drug or alcohol use, low self-esteem, emotional disorders, and in fact most forms of rebellious behavior, the strict discipline of the boot camp environment may prove counterproductive instead, if it isn’t set up in a way that the discipline is coupled with Christian love and support.

Most boot camps in Lake Placid, Florida on their own will not deal with family communication issues but simply return a somewhat more compliant 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 Lake Placid, 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 an alternative that combines the strengths of the military style with the therapeutic aspect of a therapeutic boarding school. Gateway, found in the Panhandle of Florida, is a Christian program that has served – and brought restoration to- struggling teenage boys and their families from cities all across the country for well over 20 years. Troubled teenage boys from Lake Placid, Florida and other cities receive an accredited education, counseling and teaching, instruction in 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 features a number of critical components that are typically absent from boot camps. Those include: 

• Caring staff and mentors who provide positive role models and constructive  input, not simply breaking teens down.
• Biblical teaching and spiritual focus, to help teens discover the true source of lasting heart change.
• Counseling, to help teens address issues and replace harmful 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 Lake Placid, 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!