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

Are you trying to find boot camps near Ocala, Florida to deal with a out-of-control teen? Find out how boot camps can help troubled teens and discover how Gateway’s program may prove even more effective for your teen.

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

Boot Camps in Ocala, Florida Can Help Boys 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, in several positive ways, boot camps can help troubled teens. Boot camps give an intensive focus on discipline, personal responsibility and regard for authority. Programs like these can send a wake-up call to a teen who is moving toward a life of crime. For those who respond well to 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 unhealthy habits, to more respectable 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 situations, most adolescent issues are more complicated than they seem on the surface and are often only symptoms of other emotional problems. Boot camps rely entirely on modifying behavior; they do not offer the therapeutic support to help teens resolve the true root issues. For teens with anxiety, depression, drug or alcohol use, low self-esteem, emotional disorders, and in fact most types 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 Ocala, Florida on their own will not address family concerns but simply return a somewhat more obedient 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 Ocala, 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 approach with the therapeutic input of a therapeutic boarding school. Gateway, found in the Panhandle of Florida, is a Christian program that has helped – and brought hope to- struggling teenage boys and their families from homes all across the nation for well over 20 years. Troubled teenage boys from Ocala, Florida and other places benefit from an accredited education, counseling and instruction, instruction in military drill and history, and the discipline for which boot camps are respected. Gateway offers a  loving 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 constructive  input, not simply breaking teens down.
• Biblical instruction and spiritual emphasis, to help teens realize the true source of lasting heart change.
• Mentoring, to help teens work through problems and replace destructive 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 Ocala, 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!