Reflection of parents' positive childhood experiences (pce) level on their children's friendship

Childhood is a very sensitive period that leaves permanent traces that affect individuals throughout their lives. In particular, parenting, one of the most important roles and responsibilities undertaken by the individual in adulthood, is also shaped by the reflection of childhood life and experiences. The positive/negative nature of these experiences can guide parenting attitudes and behaviors. This research was designed with a qualitative method in order to deeply investigate the reflection of parents' levels of positive childhood experiences on their children's friendship relationships. The participants of the study consisted of 16 parents who had children in the pre-school period living in the city center of Osmaniye. The outlier sampling method was used to determine the participants. For this purpose, the 22-item Positive Childhood Experiences Scale developed by Doğan and Aydın (2020) was applied to 134 participants. Then, the data were analyzed with the IBM SPSS 25 software, and interviews were conducted with a total of 16 parents, 8 of the participants with the highest 110 values and 8 people with the lowest 34 values were included in the study. The interviews were audio-recorded and the audio recordings were converted into text and subjected to content analysis. The findings obtained are in the form of parents' descriptions of childhood experiences, their own definitions of friendship, and their evaluation of their children's friendship relations. As a result of the analysis, it was seen that the level of childhood experiences of the parents is an effective factor in the friendship relations of their children. It was observed that the strategies of high-level and low-level parents of PCE regarding parent-friendship management differed. While PCE high parents gave more weight to a number of strategies to support their children's friendships, PCE low parents used repressive and intrusive methods in their friendship relations.