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

Are you researching boot camps near Okeechobee, Florida to try to help a out-of-control teen? Learn how boot camps can help troubled teens and consider how Gateway’s program may prove even more beneficial for your teen.

If your teen demonstrates deliberate disregard for authority, constantly displays oppositional behavior, gets into regular and growing disturbances with the law, and lacks cooperation in school, perhaps a boot camp can help improve your troubled teen. 

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

Popular belief gives military schools, especially boot camps, a reputation for making errant teens put their lives in order. In fact, there are several positive ways in which boot camps can help troubled teens. Boot camps offer a crash course in discipline, personal responsibility 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 some teens, 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

Even though boot camps can help troubled teens in some situations, most teenage issues are more complicated than they appear on the surface and are only the symptoms of other issues. Boot camps focus entirely on behavior modification; they do not include the counseling or therapeutic input 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 instances 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 Okeechobee, Florida on their own will not deal with family problems 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 Okeechobee, 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 another option 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 worked with thousands of struggling teenage boys and their families from homes all across the nation for well over 20 years. Troubled teenage boys from Okeechobee, 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 respected. Gateway offers staff that care deeply about each student. Gateway is a military-style school that includes 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 emphasis, to help teens discover the true source of lasting heart change.
• Counseling, to help teens work through struggles and replace harmful patterns with healthy new choices.
• 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 Okeechobee, 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!