Extension Military Parent–Teen Camp Experiences: Family Resilience Building in Action

Abstract

The purpose of the study addressed in this article was to gather information from military service members and their teenage children attending Extension camping programs together. We used a pretest and a posttest to examine resilience of both groups and compared other postprogram youth outcome measures to a normative sample. We found statistically significant increases in resilience scores for both service member participants and teenage participants as well as elevated youth outcomes in the areas of problem solving and connecting with others. Our results constitute useful information on the value of Extension outdoor and recreational programming for family systems.