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

Are you trying to find boot camps close to Punta Gorda, Florida to try to help a out-of-control teen? Read on to see how boot camps can help troubled teens and learn about how Gateway’s program may prove even more effective for your teen.

If your teen demonstrates blatant disregard for authority, forever displays rebellious behavior, gets into regular and escalating trouble with the law, and shows no cooperation in school, perhaps a boot camp can help sort out your troubled teen. 

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

Popular opinion gives military academies, especially boot camps, a reputation for making badly behaved teens get back on the straight and narrow path. In truth, there are several positive ways in which boot camps can help troubled teens. Boot camps give a crash course in discipline, personal responsibility and regard for authority. Programs like these can be a means of rescuing 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 certain people, 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 Adolescents Change their Behavior, But Many Teen Issues Go Beyond the Behavior

Despite the fact that boot camps can help troubled teens in some situations, most teenage issues are much more complex than they seem on the surface and are only the symptoms of other issues. Boot camps rely entirely on forcing compliance; they do not provide the therapy to help teens heal from the true underlying issues. For teens with anxiety, depression, drug use, low self-esteem, emotional disorders, and in fact most types of rebellious behavior, the stressful 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 Punta Gorda, Florida fail to deal with underlying issues and attitudes but simply return a somewhat more compliant 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 Punta Gorda, 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 style with the therapeutic input 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 cities all across the nation for more than 20 years. Struggling teenage boys from Punta Gorda, Florida and other places benefit from an accredited academic program, counseling and instruction, an introduction to military drill and history, and the discipline for which boot camps are known. Gateway offers a  loving staff that cares deeply about each teen. Gateway is a military-style school that includes a number of important 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 find the true source of lasting heart change.
• Mentoring, to help teens work through problems and replace self-destructive patterns with healthy new habits.
• Family restoration 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 Punta Gorda, 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!