Healthy, strong family relationships are foundational to young people’s growth, learning, and well-being.
These relationships build strong social and emotional strengths that kids use throughout their lives.
But great family relationships don’t just happen..
Welcome to My Discovery Destination!
Discovery Family Adventures
where your family can find plenty of opportunities to
The Discovery Family Adventures provide ideas, activities, and experiences to help build strong family relationships.
Our goal is to strengthen family relationships to help kids be and become their best selves
and to support parents in raising happy, successful, resilient kids in an exciting,
but sometimes turbulent and dangerous world.
Core Adventures are still available via the website for use by anyone that wants them, but everyone is encouraged to use the Discovery Hunt (Goosechase) App for hundreds of adventures throughout the year.
Get links for downloading the App HERE.
Sponsored by:
Choose from the Adventures listed below
(or design your own family adventure!)
Take a picture of you and your children and post it to your social media sites with the hashtag #ProtectingKids
Family Adventure
Parents- This Adventure is just for you. It is designed to help you understand how the intentional design and content of the Discovery Family Program is to help you provide the protective factors your children need to avoid risky behaviors that can impair their growth and progress.
Of course the Discovery Family program adventures are designed to be FUN and ENGAGING. However, there's a lot more to them than that. The real value of the Discovery Family program goes far beyond 'fun'.
The slide above shows data from the Sharp Survey, a survey that is administered to students state-wide (grades 6, 8, 10 and 12) in Utah every other year. The results of this data helps schools, health departments and many other government and social services agencies to see what is happening in their communities. It drives the focus and activities of these agencies and groups for the next two years. This particular slide is the slide that shows what is happening regarding the protective factors. (The latest Sharp Survey results)
DEFINITIONS
Protective factors: those things that evidence-based research has shown helps in preventing under-age drinking, drug abuse, bullying, gang involvement, teen pregnancy, and suicide.
Prosocial Involvement: participating in events or activities at home or in the community to help benefit everyone; voluntary acts that are intended to benefit others and are intrinsically motivated, that is, acts motivated by internal motives such as concern, sympathy, or by altruistic values; significant and important elements for the healthy development of adolescents.
Family Attachment: an enduring emotional bond between family members; one specific aspect of the relationship between a child and a parent with its purpose being to make a child safe, secure and protected; The most important tenet of attachment theory is that a young child needs to develop a relationship with at least one primary caregiver for social and emotional development to occur normally.
Research has clearly shown that there are certain PROTECTIVE FACTORS our kids need,
and it pretty much boils down to 3 things . . .
Family Attachment
Opportunities for Prosocial Involvement
at home, school, and in the community
Rewards for Prosocial Involvement
at home, school, and in the community
While government agencies and community organizations continue to work tirelessly to find ways to help deliver these protective factors to kids and families, the truth is that the home always has been, and always will be, the beginning point for a person to enjoy these protective factors on a regular, ongoing basis. Therefore, the most effective mode of delivery begins in the home!
Children’s first and most important teacher is their parent(s). It is through our actions and words that children learn family and societal expectations. The Discovery Family program has been designed with these factors in mind, and utilizes scientifically proven methodology to help parents raise resilient kids. It has the added benefit of being available on an ongoing, even daily basis, in the home. The Adventures also provide opportunities to teach children key life skills, build strong family bonds and create connections to the community.
Remember that involving youth in choosing, planning and implementing the family activities help them feel like they have power to choose what happens in their lives, builds self-confidence and helps them develop key skills that will help them throughout their lives . Involving your kids in choosing which of these family Adventures your family will complete lets them know that you value their input. If youth help to choose and carry out the family activities it also increases the likelihood of them participating in positive ways because their feelings, ideas, and thoughts were part of the decision making process. As you focus on strengthening relationships as a family and developing life skills through fun interactions with your kids, they will learn skills that will help them become caring, competent, and contributing members of society.
The Discovery Family program directly addresses each of the Protective Factors in the following ways:
Family Attachment
Everything about the Discovery Family program facilitates families spending time together in quality, meaningful activities to lead to bonding and attachment.
PROSOCIAL INVOLVEMENT AT HOME
Opportunities: Many of the adventures are intentionally designed to provide opportunities for families to work together on projects that will benefit others, including other family members. In the process each family member also gains important knowledge, develops strong character, and learns key life skills.
Rewards: Each Adventure has reward ideas for how you, the parent, can provide reinforcement and internal rewards for your child that don't cost anything. When your youth receive immediate acknowledgement and validation, the activities they participate in will be far more effective.
Prosocial Involvement in the COMMUNITY
Opportunities: Each Adventure has a Super Achiever level that provides an opportunity for youth to reach out into the community to serve others and engage with their peers and other community leaders. The Super Achiever level of the Adventure usually involves youth taking the 'basic' Adventure and either teaching it to someone else or organizing a neighborhood activity around the basic adventure topic to involve their friends and entire neighborhoods. The Super Achiever level also helps youth develop key leadership skills like communication, organization, team building and more.
Rewards: In addition to the intrinsic rewards the program helps parents provide, local businesses provide free outings, prizes, and tangible rewards for youth and their families as they actively participate in the program and achieve certain point levels. Families earn 1 point for the basic Adventure and 3 points for their added efforts in the Super Achiever level. This means that families can achieve reward levels even faster by reaching out into the community, which will increase neighborhood attachment and provide overall benefits of the program to additional families.
Prosocial Involvement at SCHOOL
There are many ways that teachers in the schools can provide both opportunities for students to participate in prosocial involvement and rewards for doing so. We want to reward teachers who are intentional in planning these important opportunities and rewards into the school day, and who take the time and make the effort to do so, as well as provide a vehicle for outstanding teachers to learn about evidence-based methods and also to share their ideas and what they are doing with other teachers who may be willing to put forth the effort, but just aren't sure where to begin.
Working with local schools, we are developing a track specifically for teachers. Just like with families, teachers will be able to report their efforts and the system will automatically track the results. Teachers who reach certain point levels for implementing practices that support the Sharp survey protective factors will receive rewards (example: spa days, movie tickets, free meals, etc.)
Following are evidence-based programs the Discovery Family program is based on. We have reviewed their extensive research and incorporated their evidence-based findings to ensure that every Discovery Family adventure follows best practices and provides families with effective activities to prevent risky behaviors in youth, promote positive youth development, and strengthen families.
Social Development Strategy Search Institute and their Keep Connected programWe also support and promote elements of the following programs:
Prosper Leader in Me Action for Healthy Kids Learning HeroesParents now have access to a tool that can meet these basic needs of your children in a fun and rewarding way right in your own home. This program is home-centered and community supported, with the entire community backing you to help you be successful in your most important role-- PARENT! Keep in mind, however, that no matter how effective the methodology is or how extensive the research this program is based on, it can only be as effective for your family as the reliability of the delivery method.
The good news is . . . YOU, the parent, are the delivery method! Unlike other programs that are limited by time, space, and funding- this program is available to you on your schedule, in your home (no travel required!), and 100% FREE. It is available to anyone and everyone that wants to participate. But it's up to you to utilize the program if you want your children to benefit from it. No one else can replace you as the parent, and no one else can implement this program in your home as effectively as you can.
Consider this . . . if you had a goose that laid a golden egg every day, would you neglect it and risk having it die or be stolen? Or would you invest the time to feed and care for it to keep it alive? If you found $1M dollars lying on the ground would you walk past it saying "I'm just too busy to look into that today-- maybe next time I find that kind of money I'll have more time." The reality is, your children are worth far more than $1M, and they literally are the equivalent of a goose that lays a golden egg every day if taken care of and tended to appropriately. The golden egg is joy and happiness, laughter and love, the intrinsic rewards that only strong family relationships can bring us.
Congratulations! You’re paving the way for your kids to be healthy and successful.
You've also earned your first point toward winning prizes and rewards for your family. Want to learn more details about that and how to earn even more? Complete the 'Intro & How To' Adventure. Just a couple of Adventures to get you going, and then the real fun begins!
Thank you for your participation and please let us know of any questions or ideas you have!
Photo Location
by Just For Parents
NOTE: If the Adventures don't show up find them at DiscoveryFamilyAdventures.com
My Discovery Destination! Adventures
Sponsored by My Discovery Destination! and local businesses and organizations in your community
for the purpose of
STRENGTHENING FAMILIES and BUILDING CHARACTER.
Send an email to Sharilee@MyDiscoveryDestination.com if you would like to learn how we can bring a wide variety of FUN and educational LIVE EVENTS to your community!