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

Are you looking into boot camps in or around Port Saint Lucie, Florida to try to help a defiant teen? Read on to see how boot camps can help troubled teens and learn about how Gateway’s program may be even more successful for your teen.

If your teen demonstrates deliberate disregard for authority, forever displays defiant behavior, gets into regular and escalating trouble with the law, and lacks motivation in school, perhaps a boot camp can help improve your troubled teen. 

Boot Camps in Port Saint Lucie, Florida Can Help Troubled Teens Learn to Respect Authority

Popular conception gives military academies, especially boot camps, a reputation for making unruly teens get back on the straight and narrow path. In truth, in several positive ways, boot camps can help troubled teens. Boot camps provide an intensive focus on discipline, personal integrity 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 the ones 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 manageable behavior. But those bad attitudes often return.

Boot Camps Can Help Troubled Adolescents Change their Behavior, But Many Teen Issues Go Beyond the Behavior

Although boot camps can help troubled teens in some situations, most adolescent issues are much more complex than they seem on the surface and are often only symptoms of other emotional problems. Boot camps rely entirely on behavior modification; they do not provide the therapy to help teens resolve 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 Port Saint Lucie, 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 Port Saint Lucie, 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 an alternative that combines the benefits of the military style with the therapeutic component of a therapeutic boarding school. Gateway, located in the Panhandle of Florida, is a Christian program that has served – and brought hope to- struggling teenage boys and their families from homes all across the nation for well over 20 years. Struggling teenage boys from Port Saint Lucie, Florida and other cities benefit from an accredited education, counseling and instruction, an introduction to 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 a number of essential components that are typically absent 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.
• Mentoring, to help teens address problems and replace harmful 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 Port Saint Lucie, 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!