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

Are you looking into boot camps near Sanford, Florida to deal with a out-of-control teen? Find out how boot camps can help troubled teens and look at how Gateway’s program may be even more beneficial for your teen.

If your teen demonstrates blatant disregard for authority, commonly displays rebellious behavior, gets into regular and increasing trouble with the law, and shows no motivation in school, perhaps a boot camp will help bring him back to his senses. 

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

Popular conception gives military schools, especially boot camps, a reputation for making unruly teens put their lives in order. In fact, 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 are shaped by 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 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 adolescent issues are much more complex than they appear on the surface and may only be symptoms of other problems. Boot camps focus entirely on forcing compliance; they do not include the therapy to help teens resolve the true underlying issues. For teens exhibiting 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 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 Sanford, Florida on their own will not address family concerns 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 Sanford, 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 an alternative that combines the benefits of the military approach with the therapeutic input of a therapeutic boarding school. Gateway, found in the Panhandle of Florida, is a Christian program that has served – and brought hope to- struggling teenage boys and their families from places all across the country for well over 20 years. Struggling teenage boys from Sanford, Florida and other places receive an accredited academic program, counseling and teaching, 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 includes a number of critical 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 teaching and spiritual focus, to help teens find the true source of lasting heart change.
• Mentoring, to help teens deal with struggles 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 Sanford, 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!