Attachment and parent-child relati̇onship in 5- year old children at preschool education

This study aims to determine the relationship between attachment security and parent child relations in 5-6-year-old children who are attending preschool education and their parents. Relational Screening Model was used as research design in the study. The sample of the study consisted of 51 children (27 girls and 24 boys) who aged 5-6 years and attending state-based preschool institutions and their mothers and fathers. Sample selected through convenient sampling. The research conducted in the 2017-2018 academic year. In this study, Personal Information Form was used to collect descriptive information about participants. In addition to that, discipline, involvement, autonomy support and communication subscales of the Parent Child Relationship Inventory, which was answered by parents (both fathers and mothers), was used to determine the relationships between parents and their children. Finally, in order to measure the attachment styles of children the Cassidy Incomplete Stories with Doll Family scale was used. It was applied to children with proper materials and scale instructions. It was seen that while 27 (52.9 %) of the children were securely attached, 24 (46.1 %) of them were avoidant. Before conducting analyses, normality assumptions were tested with Kolmogorov and Simirnov and Shapiro Wilks tests. Results showed that parent child relation variables were not normally distributed. Hence, non-parametric tests were used to compare groups (Mann Whitney U test for two level variables and Kruskal Wallis test for variables which had more than two levels). The analyses were conducted for mothers and fathers separately. There were no significant differences in maternal discipline, involvement, autonomy support and communication between groups with respect to children's gender, children's age, maternal age, maternal education. Although results of the fathers were similar, there was only one exception. It was found that fathers whose children were 6 years old provide more autonomy support than fathers who had 5 years old children. Additionally, there were significant differences between secure and avoidant attachment styles. Results showed that both fathers and mothers of the securely attached children had significantly higher scores in discipline, involvement, autonomy support and communication subscales than avoidant attachment group. All findings were discussed according to the literature.