The purpose of the present study was to examine intergenerational transmission of adverse childhood experiences (ACEs)from parents to children and examine the buffering influence of forgiveness of oneself and others. Participants were 150parents and children enrolled in Head Start in an upper midwestern, rural state who volunteered to complete question-naires measuring ACEs and levels of forgiveness of oneself and others. Multiple correlation and regression were used toexamine the associations between parent-reported parent and child ACEs and self-forgiveness and forgiveness of others.Analyses revealed that parental ACEs and child ACEs were positively correlated. Parents with low and medium levels ofself-forgiveness and forgiveness of others had a stronger positive correlation between their own experience of ACEs andtheir child’s, whereas, for parents with high levels of self-forgiveness and forgiveness of others, the correlation betweenparent and child ACEs was reduced statistically to zero. The cycle of intergenerational transmission of ACEs may beinterrupted, or at very least notably buffered, by forgiving oneself and others.

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