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

Are you looking for boot camps close to Saint Johns, Florida to try to help a defiant teen? Read on to see how boot camps can help troubled teens and consider how Gateway’s program may prove even more successful for your teen.

If your teen shows blatant disregard for authority, unceasingly displays rebellious behavior, gets into frequent and increasing trouble with the law, and shows no motivation in school, perhaps a boot camp can help reform your troubled teen. 

Boot Camps in Saint Johns, Florida Can Help At-Risk Boys Learn to Respect Authority

Popular belief gives military schools, especially boot camps, a reputation for making rebellious teens get back on the straight and narrow path. In fact, in several positive ways, boot camps can help troubled teens. Boot camps give an intensive focus on discipline, personal integrity and respect 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 are shaped by 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 Teens Change their Behavior, But Many Teen Issues Go Beyond the Behavior

Although boot camps can help troubled teens in some cases, most teenage issues are much more complex than they appear on the surface and are often only symptoms of other problems. Boot camps focus entirely on modifying behavior; they do not provide the therapeutic support to help teens address the true root issues. For teens with anxiety, depression, drug or alcohol use, poor self-esteem, emotional disorders, and in fact most types of rebellious behavior, the strict discipline of the 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 Saint Johns, Florida on their own will not address family concerns but simply return a somewhat more respectful 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 Saint Johns, 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 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 cities all across the nation for more than 20 years. Troubled teenage boys from Saint Johns, Florida and other cities receive 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 individual mentorship, not simply breaking teens down.
• Biblical instruction and spiritual emphasis, to help teens realize the true source of lasting heart change.
• Counseling, to help teens work through struggles and replace self-destructive 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 Johns, 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!