The power of early maladaptive schemas in mothers to predict social emotional adjustment and self-regulation levels of 5-6 year old children

The aim of this study is to examine the predictive power of early maladaptive schemas in mothers on the social-emotional adjustment and self-regulation levels of 5-6 year-old children. The study group consists of children studying in official kindergartens and preschools with different socio-economic characteristics in Manisa province and their mothers (n=344). In this study, the ''Social Competence and Behavior Assessment Scale-30'' (SYDD-30) developed by LaFreniere and Dumas (1996), the ''Young Schema Scale Short Form-3'' developed by Young et al. (1990), and the ''Self-Regulation Scale'' developed by Erol and İvrendi (2018) were used as data collection tools. The data obtained from the study were analyzed using descriptive analyses, correlation analyses and regression techniques. In the study correlation analyses revealed negative correlations between the early maladaptive maternal schemas of emotional deprivation, failure, pessimism, social isolation/insecurity, suppression of emotions, enmeshment/dependency, abandonment, defectiveness, vulnerability to threats and the social competence sub-dimension of social emotional adjustment, positive correlations between all schema dimensions and the anger-aggression sub-dimension, and positive correlations between all schema dimensions except entitlement/insufficient self-control and the anxiety-introversion sub-dimension; negative correlations between mother early maladaptive schemas of emotional deprivation, failure, pessimism, social isolation/mistrust, emotional suppression, enmeshment/dependency, abandonment, defectiveness, vulnerability to threats and the attention subdimension of self-regulation; negative correlations between emotional deprivation, failure, social isolation/mistrust, emotional suppression, enmeshment/dependency, abandonment, defectiveness, vulnerability to threats and the working memory subdimension; negative correlations between emotional deprivation, failure, pessimism, social isolation/mistrust, emotional suppression, enmeshment/dependency, abandonment defectiveness, vulnerability to threats and the inhibitory control-emotion subdimension; negative correlations between emotional deprivation, failure, pessimism, social isolation/mistrust, emotional suppression, approval-seeking, enmeshment/dependency, abandonment, defectiveness, vulnerability to threats and the inhibitory control-behavior subdimension. It was also shown that there was a positive relationship between the attention, working memory, inhibitory control-emotion and inhibitory control-behavior sub-dimensions of self-regulation and the social competence sub-dimension of social emotional adjustment, and a negative relationship between the anger, aggression and anxiety introversion sub-dimensions. The regression analyses conducted found that the role of early maternal maladaptive schemas in the variability of the social emotional adjustment and self-regulation levels of 5-6 year old children and the role of self-regulation in the variability of the social emotional adjustment level in children were significant.