In the Fall of 2020, the Youth Services Center (YSC) Coordinator at Robert D. Campbell (RDC) Junior High reached out the Clark County Family and Consumer Sciences Agent with a desire to help parents find ways to connect with their children during the COVID-19 pandemic. Parent-child connection is often a struggle as children move into their teen years, but these struggles are being heightened during the COVID-19 pandemic as many typical ways of connecting are being limited. With the constraints on in-person programming, it was decided to offer grab and go style family connections bags to at least 100 families wishing to find ways to connect with their children.

The first of the bags in this Connections series was a family pizza night bag. A registration link was sent to all RDC families via email and social media by the YSC. Registration was open to the first 100 families to sign up and they came to pick up the bag the school from the FCS agent and the YSC Coordinator on November 19, 2020. The registration form had pre-activity questions about family connections and nearly 45% of the registrants marked “yes” or “at times” when asked if they have trouble connecting with their child(ren).

The Connections kit included everything needed to make two large pizzas from pizza crust mixes, conversation starter cards to give parents a starting point to connect with their children, and publications on the benefits of family mealtime as well as adolescent brain development to help parents better understand where a teen may be coming from. After families picked up their bags, they were encouraged to post pictures on social media or via email of them doing the activity as well as fill out a post activity survey.

One hundred families signed up to receive the Connections bags and registration data shows that 104 adults and 184 youth received this educational activity. Several parents posted pictures on Facebook of them completing the kit and commenting on how they connected with their children. A few of those posts read: “We had a great time making pizza and enjoyed our conversation cards too” and “[child’s name] made a pizza start to finish. He was hesitant at first, but at the end, he took his phone out and took a picture of what he’d done. What a great way to connect with a teenager.” Post survey data indicated that 100% of respondents reported that they learned new ways to connect with their children from this outreach effort. Due to the success of this activity, the YSC and Family and Consumer Sciences Agent plan to continue to collaborate on Connections bags with RDC students and other Clark County Schools have shown interest in implementing similar programs.