The Effect of Preparatory Education on Parental Stress and Attitudes in Parents of Children Entering Early Adolescence

Adolescence is defined as a period in which the individual experiences many physiological and psychological changes. Especially in the early adolescence period, the intense emotional ups and downs created by the transition from childhood to adolescence can also lead to difficulties in managing control mechanisms. This period, which has a very important place in vital transition periods, emerges as a period in which the child must receive comprehensive information from his/her parents about the transition to adolescence. However, this process, which challenges the child, also negatively affects the establishment of healthy communication with parents. Therefore, parents cannot talk to their children about these issues, which are "not considered appropriate by society", especially in traditional societies, due to the difficulties brought by the lack of individual information during this process. It is thought that all this chaos of the period will cause intense stress in parents and negatively affect parental attitudes. In this context, it is predicted that the transition to adolescence education program (ERGEP) prepared for parents will positively affect parental stress and parental attitudes. This research, which is closely related to Articles 3 and 5 of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), was planned to directly support parents as primary sources in this regard, considering the harms of early adolescent children getting their questions about the issues they need to know and may be curious about during adolescence from the media, websites or unsafe sources. Although it is thought that ERGEP may have many beneficial outputs, this study aims to understand its effects on parental stress and parental attitudes. The study will be conducted as a quasi-experimental research in a state primary school in the Narman district of Erzurum. In the calculation of the sample size, it was planned to conduct the study with 60 parents, 30 intervention and 30 control, considering the class sizes. The Parent Information Form, the Parental Stress Scale (PSS) and the Parental Attitude Scales (4-12 Years) will be used in the collection of data. The data obtained in the study will be analyzed using the SPSS program. Descriptive statistics such as "number, percentage, arithmetic mean, standard deviation" will be used in the evaluation. In order to verify the differences in demographic characteristics between the groups, the chi-square test will be used for categorical variables and the independent sample t-test for continuous variables. The independent sample t-test will be used for the comparison of scale scores between groups, and the paired sample t-test will be used for the comparison within groups. The results of the study will provide an understanding of the effect of ERGEP applied to parents with children in early adolescence on parental stress and parental attitudes. In the event of positive results of the program, the ground will be prepared for the dissemination of ERGEP and the effect of this program on different phenomena can be tested. This study was planned to determine the effect of the transition to puberty preparation education given to parents with children in early adolescence on parental stress and parental attitudes.