The relationship between educators and children in the kindergarten is an extremely important determinant of the quality of work in an institution for early and pre-school education. Therefore, it is important to study the significant determinants of this relationship, such as the positive emotions of the educator, his personality traits, and attitudes toward childhood and upbringing. A great deal of research has shown so far that the quality of learning is significantly higher if the learning process is colored by positive emotions. The assumption is that more positive emotions in educators, greater extroversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness and openness, and modern attitudes towards upbringing and childhood will contribute to the development of closeness and less conflict with children. The study was conducted on a sample of 182 kindergarten teachers in Rijeka. Four measuring instruments were used for the purposes of this research. A short form of the STRS scale was used to assess educators' attitudes toward relationships with preschool children and their perceptions of their children's behavior and feelings toward them; the PANAS questionnaire for measuring positive and negative emotions; the BFI Questionnaire (Big Five Inventory) to measure personality traits and the Subjective Educator Theory Questionnaire on childhood and upbringing. The results showed: higher levels of closeness and lower levels of conflict with children; moderate to slightly elevated levels of positive emotions and lower levels of negative emotions in educators; elevated values in all personality traits of the neuroticism axis; more liberal attitudes towards childhood and upbringing. A statistically significant association of closeness with positive emotions and all personality traits except neuroticism was obtained. A statistically significant negative association was found between conflict with openness, conscientiousness, extraversion and agreeableness, and a positive association with negative emotions and neuroticism. These results indicate the importance of research in the field of quality of work in early childhood and early childhood education institutions, and the readiness of educators to reconsider their views, implicit pedagogy, but also control emotions.