The relations between parenting behaviors, emotion socialization, delaying gratification, social competence and creativity in preschool children

In this research, the relations among the parenting behaviors, emotion socialization, child's delaying grafication, social competence and creativity was investigated in preschool children. Emotion socialization is defined as the parent's responses and communication with their children when the children experience negative emotions like anxiety, fear, or sadness. It can be seen that the parental emotion socialization have some influences on child's emotion regulation and social competence. In a similar way,child- parent interaction has also some impacts on creativity. Consequently, this research has investigated the impact of parenting behaviors on creativity. In our country, the effects of emotion socialization on children is relatively a new research area. However, creativity and its relationship with parenting behaviors have not been examined in our country. The sample of study has included a total of 170 pre-school children whose ages are 4-5 years old, their mothers, and teachers. The children's emotion regulation skills were measured via the task of delaying gratification and creativity was measured via the task of finding new dispositions for a spesific object. Emotion socialization and parenting behaviors were assessed by a means of scales that are handled out to mothers and social competence is assessed through the scale that is given to teachers. The findings pointed that there were relations between creativity and some subdimensions of parenting behaviors, emotion socialization and social competence. On the other hand, delaying gratification and creativity was related. It was found that, flexibility had mediation role in the association between creativity and delaying gratification. The plausible results from the findings of this study might contribute to the quality of parent-child relationship as well as training programs for this relationship, and intervention programs for the child development.