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

Are you trying to find boot camps near Ponte Vedra Beach, Florida to straighten out an 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 blatant disregard for authority, commonly displays oppositional behavior, gets into frequent and escalating disturbances with the law, and lacks motivation in school, perhaps a boot camp will help bring him back to his senses. 

Boot Camps in Ponte Vedra Beach, Florida Can Help At-Risk Boys Learn to Respect Authority

Public opinion gives military academies, especially boot camps, a reputation for making out-of-control teens into respectable young citizens. In truth, in several positive ways, boot camps can help troubled teens. Boot camps provide an intensive focus on discipline, personal integrity and respect for authority. Programs like these can be a means of rescuing a teen who might otherwise ruin his life with 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 self-defeating habits, to more appropriate 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 situations, most teenage issues run much deeper than they seem on the surface and are often only symptoms of other issues. Boot camps focus entirely on modifying behavior; they do not offer the therapy to help teens address the true underlying issues. For teens with anxiety, depression, drug use, low self-esteem, emotional disorders, and in fact most forms 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 Ponte Vedra Beach, Florida on their own will not address family problems but simply return a somewhat more compliant 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 Ponte Vedra Beach, 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 benefits of the military approach with the therapeutic component of a therapeutic boarding school. Gateway, in the Panhandle of Florida, is a Christian program that has served – and brought restoration to- struggling teenage boys and their families from locations all across the nation for well over 20 years. Troubled teenage boys from Ponte Vedra Beach, Florida and other cities benefit from an accredited academic program, counseling and instruction, instruction in military drill and history, and the discipline for which boot camps are renowned. Gateway offers a  compassionate staff that cares deeply about each teen. Gateway is a military-style school that features 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 find the true source of lasting heart change.
• Counseling, to help teens address problems and replace self-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 Ponte Vedra Beach, 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!