Investigation of the relationship between preschool children's leadership skills and competition styles and mothers' emotion socialization behaviors

This study, which aims to examine the relationship between the child's leadership skills and competition styles and emotional socialization, was planned in a correlational research design. The sample was determined using the maximum variation sampling method among non-random sampling methods. The sample of the study consists of a total of 362 children, 188 girls and 174 boys, aged 48-72 months, who attend independent kindergartens and kindergarten classes affiliated with primary schools in the Nizip district of Gaziantep in the 2023-2024 academic year, and their mothers. During the research process, the "Personal Information Form" was used to collect demographic information about the children, the "Early Childhood Leadership Scale" to measure leadership skills, the "Preschool Competition Scale" to determine competitive styles, and the "Children's Coping with Negative Emotions Scale" for emotional socialization. The data obtained from the measurement tools used in the study were transferred to the package program and analyzed. According to the findings obtained as a result of the analysis, the leadership skills of girls were found to be higher than boys, but leadership skills could not be associated with factors such as the level of education of the families or the school in which the children were educated. In addition, it was concluded that girls were less anxious than boys, that the level of education of the families reduced negative attitudes towards children, and that leadership skills were related to the ability to compete. According to the results, distress and anxiety reactions were not affected by the level of education of the parents, while negative behaviors towards children decreased as the level of education of the parents increased. Leadership skills were directly related to the desire to compete. However, the scores of the Coping with Negative Emotions Scale did not predict the early childhood leadership scale score, the task-oriented competition score, and the maintenance of dominance hierarchy score.