Examining The Relation between the Six-Year-Old Children?s Social Adjustment Skills in the Kindergarten and Their Parents? Empathy Skills

This study is made to examine the relation between the six-year-old children?s social adjustment skills in the kindergarten and their parents? empathy skills. The subjects of the study are 180 six-year-old children in the kindergarten, who are continuing their education in 2006-2007, and their parents in Yenimahalle, Ankara. ?Social Adjustment and Skills Measurement? to measure the children?s social adjustment, ?Empathy Skills Measure-B Forms ( EBO-B Form) to measure the level of parents? empathy skills, ?General Information Forms? which involves the information about the children and their parents, are used to collect data about the study. The data collected from the research is evaluated with SPSS 15 computer programme. In addition to the frequency and percentage distribution, Manny-Whitney U test in two-group comparison and Kruskall-Wallis test in more than two-group comparison are used. Moreover, the relations between variables are examined with the correlation analysis. The level of meaningfulness is p < 0,05 shows that there is a significant difference, but p> 0,05 indicates there is no meaningful differences.The result of the study indicates that the higher the parents? empathy grades are, the higher the children?s social adjustment grades are. Also, the parents? education level affects the children?s continuing pre-school education positively.Key words: Social adjustment, parents, empathy, the skills of empathy