Yetişkin-çocuk ilişkileri bağlamında okul öncesi dönemdeki çocukların sosyal becerileri

Children's relationship with adults (e.g., teachers and parents) and within-family relationships (e.g., Parent-Parent) are important drivers for development of children's social competence (Acar et al., 2018; Diener & Kim, 2004). The aim of the current study was to investigate the contributions of adult-child relationships (parent-child and teacher-child) and parent-parent relationships to children's social competence in early childhood. The current study also investigated the moderating roles of teacher-child relationship on the association between parent-child relationships and children's social competence and parent-parent relationships and children's social competence. Participants were parents and teachers of 127 Turkish children (M: 54.65, SD: 9.22 months). Parents reported on parent-child (closeness and conflict) and parent-parent relationships (cooperation, conflict, and triangulation) and teachers reported on their relationships (closeness and conflict) with children and social competence of children. Hierarchical regression models accounting for nesting structure of the data were run to test the hypotheses. Results showed that there were no associations between parent-child relationship and children's social competence. In addition, it was found that there was no association between parent-parent relationship and children's social competence. However, there was a significant association between teacher-child relationship and children's social competence. Teacher-child closeness was positively and teacher-child conflict was negatively associated with children's social competence. Results also showed that teacher-child closeness moderated the association between parent-parent conflict and children's social competence. Simple slopes analyses showed that combinations of high levels of parent-conflict and low levels of teacher-child closeness undermined the children's social competence. The findings highlight the importance of both parent-parent and teacher-child relationships for children's social competence. In the light of the findings, it was discussed through previous studies, considering the limitation, future directions, and implications. Keywords: social competence, parent-child relationship, parent-parent relationship, teacher-child relationship, preschool children