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

Are you trying to find boot camps close to Panama City, Florida to straighten out an out-of-control teen? Read on to see how boot camps can help troubled teens and look at how Gateway’s program may be even more beneficial for your teen.

If your teen exhibits unashamed disregard for authority, commonly displays rebellious behavior, gets into frequent and growing trouble with the law, and lacks cooperation in school, perhaps a boot camp will help bring him back to his senses. 

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

Public opinion gives military schools, especially boot camps, a reputation for making badly behaved 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 offer an intensive focus on discipline, personal integrity and regard for authority. Programs like these can be a means of rescuing a teen who might otherwise ruin his life with crime. For those 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 self-defeating 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 adolescent issues run much deeper than they appear on the surface and may only be symptoms of other issues. Boot camps focus entirely on behavior modification; they do not provide the therapy to help teens address the true underlying 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 Panama City, Florida on their own will not speak to 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 Panama City, 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 benefits 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 cities all across the country for well over 20 years. Struggling teenage boys from Panama City, Florida and other cities receive an accredited academic program, counseling and teaching, 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 features a number of essential components that are typically absent from boot camps. Those include: 

• Caring staff and mentors who provide positive role models and individual mentorship, not simply breaking teens down.
• Biblical teaching and spiritual focus, to help teens find the true source of lasting heart change.
• Counseling, to help teens address 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 Panama City, 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!