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

Are you researching boot camps close to Leesburg, Florida to straighten out a rebellious teen? See how boot camps can help troubled teens and consider how Gateway’s program may be even more beneficial for your teen.

If your teen shows unashamed disregard for authority, unceasingly displays oppositional behavior, gets into regular and growing disturbances with the law, and lacks motivation in school, perhaps a boot camp can help reform your troubled teen. 

Boot Camps in Leesburg, Florida Can Help Troubled Teens Learn to Respect Authority

Popular opinion gives military schools, especially boot camps, a reputation for making unruly 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 give an intensive focus on discipline, personal responsibility and respect for authority. Programs like these can be a means of rescuing a teen who is moving toward a life of crime. For those teens 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 unhealthy habits, to more appropriate 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 teenage issues run much deeper than they appear on the surface and may only be symptoms of other emotional problems. Boot camps focus entirely on behavior modification; they do not provide the therapeutic support to help teens address the true root issues. For teens exhibiting anxiety, depression, drug or alcohol use, low self-esteem, emotional disorders, and in fact most instances 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 Leesburg, Florida on their own will not deal with family problems but simply return a somewhat more obedient 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 Leesburg, 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 approach with the therapeutic input of a therapeutic boarding school. Gateway, found in the Panhandle of Florida, is a Christian program that has served – and brought hope to- struggling teenage boys and their families from cities all across the country for more than 20 years. Struggling teenage boys from Leesburg, Florida and other cities benefit from an accredited academic program, counseling and teaching, instruction in 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 includes several important 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 emphasis, to help teens find the true source of lasting heart change.
• Mentoring, to help teens address struggles 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 Leesburg, 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!