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Parental involvement and children’s peer interactions

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Abstract

Children require parental support to successfully develop social and academic skills during early years. We examined the link between parental involvement and preschool children’s peer interactions. We recruited 442 children (52.8% girls), their parents and teachers for the current study. The children’s age ranged between 40 and 86 months (M = 60.28, SD = 9.72). Parents and teachers reported on children’s positive and negative peer interactions using the Penn Interactive Peer Play Scale. Parents reported on their involvement using the Family Involvement Questionnaire. Results from the structural equation models revealed that parental involvement was positively related to positive peer interactions but not with negative peer interactions. Future work and limitations are discussed.

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Acknowledgments

An earlier version of this paper was presented at the V. International Balkan and Near Eastern Social Sciences Congress. April 21-22, 2018, Plovdiv, Bulgaria.

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Correspondence to Ibrahim H. Acar.

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The authors, Emine Ahmetoglu, Ibrahim H. Acar, and Manolya ASIK OZTURK personally have not received any funding for this project. Therefore, the authors declare that they have no conflict of interest to disclose.

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Ahmetoglu, E., Acar, I.H. & Ozturk, M.A. Parental involvement and children’s peer interactions. Curr Psychol 41, 4447–4456 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-020-00965-0

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Keywords

  • Parent involvement
  • Early childhood
  • Peer interactions
  • Turkish children