Research of Social Skills of Children Who Attend to Kindergarten According to the Attitudes of Their Mothers

Abstract

In this study, 5-6-year-old children who attend to kindergarten were researched if there is a difference in their level of social skills according to their mothers’ attitudes, their gender, mother’s employment status, the number of the children in the family, and to the caretaker. The study group was formed of 354 children who attend to kindergarten in the city centre of Mersin, Turkey and their mothers. “Social skills evaluation scale on children” developed by Ataş, Efe- Cinar and Tatar (2016) was used to evaluate social skills of the children and “parents’ attitude scale” developed by Karabulut, Demir and Sendil (2008) was used to evaluate mothers’ child bringing-up attitudes. Dual variance analyse was used to understand if children’s social skill level becomes different or not according to their mothers’ attitudes, their gender, employment status, the number of the children in the family, and to the caretaker. The source of the meaningful difference among groups as a result of the variance analyse was examined via Tukey HSD test. Level of significance in the research was accepted as 0,05. According to research result, general social skills become different according to mothers’ attitudes. The children whose mothers are democratic and permissive seem to have higher social skills than the children whose mothers are authoritative and protective.