Graduation date: 2007Recent research has examined complex relationships between parent and child characteristics and the development of children’s social-emotional competencies. The over-arching objective of the current study was to compare differential patterns of predictability between the individual social-emotional competencies of cooperation, responsibility, and independence, and a social-emotional competency composite, to parental warmth and child temperament. Thus, this study examined direct and interactive effects of parental warmth, and children’s effortful control as they predict children’s general social-emotional competency as well three specific social-emotional competencies -- cooperation, responsibility, and independence -- in a diverse sample of four year-old children. Results found that parent and child characteristics most strongly predicted the social-emotional competency composite variable, supporting this construct in future research.