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

Are you looking for boot camps near Saint Augustine, Florida to try to help a rebellious 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 unashamed disregard for authority, unceasingly displays oppositional behavior, gets into regular and growing trouble with the law, and shows no cooperation in school, perhaps a boot camp can help improve your troubled teen. 

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

Popular conception gives military academies, especially boot camps, a reputation for making wayward teens put their lives in order. As a matter of fact, in several positive ways, boot camps can help troubled teens. Boot camps provide a crash course in 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 individuals, boot camps can initially help them move from destructive habits, to more respectable behavior. But those bad attitudes often return.

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

Even though boot camps can help troubled teens in some cases, most teenage issues are more complicated than they seem on the surface and may only be symptoms of other problems. Boot camps focus entirely on forcing compliance; they do not provide the therapy to help teens heal from the true root issues. For teens showing anxiety, depression, drug or alcohol use, poor self-esteem, emotional disorders, and in fact most instances of rebellious behavior, the stressful 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 Saint Augustine, Florida on their own will not address family concerns but simply return a somewhat more obedient 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 Saint Augustine, Florida are typically 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 style with the therapeutic aspect of a therapeutic boarding school. Gateway, located 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 country for more than 20 years. Struggling teenage boys from Saint Augustine, 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 renowned. Gateway offers a  loving staff that cares deeply about each teen. Gateway is a military-style school that features a number of critical components that are typically missing from boot camps. Those include: 

• Caring staff and mentors who provide positive role models and individual mentorship, 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 Saint Augustine, 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!