Ali Hammuda – Our Ways in Raising Children Part 2 #8 Our Ways
AI: Summary ©
The speakers discuss three types of parenting, including non-keyed, fire Searching, and fire bothering. They emphasize the importance of positive parenting and offer advice on addressing mistakes and mistakes in children. They also discuss the negative impact of shouting at children and the importance of love and resentment in parenting. The speakers emphasize the need for parents to address their mistakes and mistakes in their own children and offer advice on avoiding confusion between two people and avoiding giving too many incorrect advice.
AI: Summary ©
Last week was essentially an introduction to the
topic that we titled Our Ways in Raising
Righteous and Effective Children.
It was essentially an introduction to show you
the many mechanisms and safeguarding procedures and safety
nets that the religion has put in place
well before a child even comes into this
world.
That starts from as early as the criteria
you set for yourself when choosing a husband
or wife, then your behavior during the marital
evening, things that you say during that moment,
things that you say and do when conception
begins, a behavior and a frame of mind
when you've delivered the child, an Adhan that
you give in the ear of the child,
how you name the child, and this was
all to give you a sample of just
how late some of us have left it.
If we come to the shaykh or the
Muslim counsellor complaining when the child is 18,
19 years old, saying they're disobedient, they are
largely disinterested in Islam.
Sometimes, no doubt, this is outside of the
control of a person.
Tawfiq, hidayah, guidance is the possession of Allah
Almighty, but sometimes this is due to our
neglect and not understanding the proper mechanisms in
place required for the reception of a Muslim
child.
And so it would turn out in the
case of some that we had shown undutifulness
to our children before they showed it towards
us as parents.
So now let us get into the thick
of things.
I am going to suggest that there are
three types of parenting, and I would claim
that most of us as parents will fall
within one of these three categories.
The first and the second are non-ideal,
and the third is where we want to
be.
The following information I share with you I
don't claim is my own research.
This is largely the works of a Moroccan
murabbi specialist by the name of Dr Mustafa
Abu Sa'd.
If you have access to the Arabic language,
I suggest you consume as much of his
content as you can.
Most of it insha'Allah is highly useful.
The first type of parent, and as you
hear this, ask yourself the question where you
fit into this, or if you are not
a parent already, which one will you fit
in?
And believe me it will happen a lot
sooner than you think.
The first type of parent is al-itfa
'i.
Al-itfa'i, how do we translate this
brothers?
Firefighter.
The firefighting parent.
A firefighter has a responsibility of spending most
of his time in the station.
Most of his working hours will be in
a room, eating biscuits, drinking coffee, watching TV,
just waiting for the alarm to go off
to make his way to a fire, put
it out.
When he puts out the fire, his job
is done, he comes back to the station
and he kicks back and relaxes and he
waits for the next call.
Some parents are like this, firefighting parents, meaning
he or she is or are waiting for
a problem to occur with the children to
then involve themselves, sort it out and then
withdraw.
And I would claim that it is very
easy to discover a firefighting parent just by
way of his or her questions that they
ask the Sheikh or the mentor or the
counselor.
The questions of a firefighting parent are very
obvious.
Their questions are like this, my son is
rude, how do I stop him from being
rude?
My daughter is abusive to her siblings, how
do I stop her from being abusive?
My child breaks things, how do I stop
him from doing that?
Most of these questions, as you have heard,
are focused on the idea of there being
a problem and we need to solve it.
There is a break, we're trying to fix
it.
There is a fire, we're trying to extinguish
it.
This is the firefighting parent.
And what is quite sad is that some
parents, and admittedly perhaps more often than not
fathers as opposed to mothers, will actually take
pride in being a firefighting parent.
And he will say, yeah I am.
I have handed over the nurturing of our
children to the wife, it is her responsibility.
I'm bringing the bread, I'm bringing the milk,
I'm paying the rent, I'm not going to
get involved with those little kids until they
become teenagers.
And if she needs help because one of
them is going a little bit AWOL, I
will get involved, sort out the issue, then
I hand over back to her.
For him, this is somehow a token of
honour, this is somehow something to take pride
in.
I don't get involved in the nitty gritties
of the family, no.
Only when there is an issue, that's when
they call me in.
The issue is that a lot of people
who think like this, they are actually transposing
ideas that they have studied in other courses,
say in management or leadership, and they're superimposing
it on the family.
And that crossover doesn't always work, it creates
dysfunctionality.
A person who says this as a father
will more often than not have attended a
course in leadership and management, and they talk
about the difference between a leader and a
manager.
Have you heard this before?
The leader being higher than the manager.
The leader is the visionary, and he works
on the business.
The manager is beneath the leader, and he
works in the business.
So he says, I'm a father, he brings
the concept into family, so I am the
leader, I work on the family.
And wife, she is the manager, so she
works in the family.
That type of transfer is not seamless, and
it's not accurate, and it doesn't work in
family life.
So this is the first type of parent,
the firefighting parent, who is looking for a
problem, and then he involves himself, and then
he withdraws.
Dr. Mustafa Abu Saad, the one who I
cited earlier, the murabbi, meaning the specialist in
the field of nurturing children or people, he
says that on a daily basis, I receive
around 5,000 emails from parents asking me
various questions about their children, how to raise
them.
And he admits that it's impossible to respond
to all 5,000.
So he said, one day what I decided
to do was to do a quick funneling
and categorization of these emails.
And he said that 75% of those
emails are questions posed by firefighting parents.
Problem?
How do I fix it?
Abuse it?
Abusive?
How do I change it?
Breaking things?
How do I tell them to stop?
He said 75% of those 5,000
are like this.
He said 24% is of the second
type of parenting, which is the tayma, al
-murawwud.
We're going to get to this in a
moment.
And only 1% has category number three,
which is al-ijabi, the positive parent, and
we're going to get to this as well.
So this is category number one, the firefighting
parent.
I think we're all guilty of this to
some extent.
The second type of parent is al-murawwud.
Al-murawwud we can translate as, what did
I say earlier?
The tayma.
What is a tayma?
If you don't really appreciate the accent, t
-a-m-e-r, the tayma.
What is a tayma?
Calm it down.
Yeah.
A tayma, exactly, is the name of an
animal trainer.
And his job, as you said Kaba, is
to train an animal to transfer that thing
from being wild and savage to an animal
that is domesticated, calm, docile if you wish,
castrated if you wish.
That's the job of a tayma.
Some parents assume a similar role with their
children.
Their understanding of successful tarbiyah, nurturing of children,
and their definition of success is when I
get my daughter or son to do exactly
as they are told.
When I tame them, I train them, I
domesticate them to a level where they no
longer say to me no.
When I extract from them any type of
stubbornness, and they do exactly as they are
told every single time, I say stand up,
they stand up.
I say jump, they say how high.
No back chat, no resistance, they do as
they're told.
And as I mentioned, for some parents this
is a metric of success.
MashaAllah, my son does as he's told and
we celebrate this.
We say Alhamdulillah, my child never bats an
eyelid when I ask something.
My child has never answered me back.
My child essentially has no personality of his
own.
This, my brother, my sister, may seem to
be success in the early years of the
child.
Why?
Because it gives you peace of mind as
mom and dad.
No hardship.
They do as they're told.
Sit down, sit down, stand up, stand up.
But here's the issue.
That child is, whether you realize it or
not, a ticking time bomb.
They will explode or implode sooner or later.
You don't see it now because he's a
kid.
Why?
Because you are only able to tame a
child in this way only after you have
first crushed his self-esteem.
You want to make sure that they obey
you unconditionally.
The child resists because that's his fitrah.
That's the way Allah created us.
He resists.
She pushes back.
No, mom, but this, but what about this?
They ask and you don't want it.
You just want them to walk straight like
this every single time.
Eventually the child stops putting up a fight
and they become how you want them to
be, tamed.
And they do as they're told every single
time.
But here's the issue.
The rule says that he or she who
obeys you unconditionally will now obey anybody else
unconditionally.
Because you as a parent have uninstalled from
them that software that says I have a
mind of my own.
You've crushed that ideal of esteem and autonomy
and independent thinking.
So now this is a child that requires
so much sheltering and protection.
That's why I describe this tamed child as
a ticking time bomb.
Because for the rest of his or her
life, because of our doing as parents, that
kid is going to require an immense amount
of protection and sheltering.
Because he or she will crumble in front
of any challenge in life that they are
posed with because you are not there to
rescue them.
Why?
Because you've removed from them that ability to
say no, I think for myself.
So if your child has an element of
stubbornness, don't think that this is something that
you need to necessarily erase from them.
No.
Stubbornness is a ni'mah from Allah subhanahu wa
ta'ala.
I agree it is annoying for us as
parents.
It is frustrating when you got to say
the same thing 10 times as opposed to
once.
It's annoying when your child seems to have
opinions that are a little bit too big
for their boots.
It's like what?
You have an opinion now as well and
you're challenging me?
There's like a 30 year gap between us.
No, that stubbornness that they are exhibiting is
what will protect them in the future.
So that when a deviant comes to them,
or somebody with an extreme thought, whether in
religion, whether in politics, or whether in sexuality,
the child does not cave in every single
time.
No, they say no.
No.
Not just because it is haram, but because
I don't want to.
So many kids can't do that because they're
so afraid of rocking the boat.
They're so afraid of upsetting anyone because back
when they were still children, their parents had
tamed them.
They removed from them their ability to say
no and to think for their own.
And I always lament, wallahi, I grieve over
that parent who sits in a gathering so
smug, so proud that his kid there next
to him sat like an idol.
Still, no movement and all of the other
parents are looking in awe.
How did you achieve that?
MashaAllah.
No movement, no breathing, is he even alive?
Does he speak?
Is this success?
It looks like success for now because he's
not going to humiliate you in front of
your guests.
But come the teenage years, you can't bat
an eyelid.
You can't keep your eye off him for
a single second because any breeze can knock
him off and anybody can take him or
her away.
So this is category number one.
Two, this is the al-murawwid, the taming
parent.
Parenting style number three.
This really is where we would like to
be.
This is al-murawwil ijabi, the positive parent,
the positive nurturing mother and father.
What are the signs of a positive parent?
They have three signs.
You can measure yourself against them.
The first is that there is a mutual
sense of admiration between parent and child.
Parent admires the child and perhaps more importantly,
the child admires the parent.
Your ultimate goal as a righteous man and
a righteous woman parent is for your child
to imitate you, especially when they're young.
You want them to imitate you.
You don't want them to just do what
you say.
You want them to act upon what you
do.
You want to be seen as a role
model.
Take this as a rule in life.
There can only be imitation if it is
preceded with admiration.
You only imitate one who you admire.
That's when you're willing to follow them and
take them as a model in life.
That's why the companions were so keen to
model, to imitate everything of the Prophet ﷺ
down to his beard and his dress and
his character and how he walked and talked
and ate and slept because they admired everything
about him.
So the first sign that there is a
positive parent involved here is that the child
looks at you with the eye of admiration,
does not look at anybody beyond you.
The second sign of a positive parent is
that al-murabbi al-ijabi, the murabbi who
is positive treats the underlying causes of a
problem as opposed to just treating the surface
level symptoms.
So you look at some of the solutions
that are given to parents with problems and
you realize they really lack a lot of
detail and nuance.
My child does this, do that.
My child does not do this, okay do
that.
A parent who is positive, who is proactive
is one who will look at the underlying
causes of this negative behavior because they realize
that negative behaviors are usually expressions of something
deeper at play.
So take a child for example who is
angry or violent or abusive or foul in
their talk.
The average parent will deal with these issues
individually in isolation as symptoms but they will
not get to the root of why they
are behaving like that and so what ends
up happening because you are dealing with the
symptom, the child just channels this problem into
a different manifestation because you haven't dealt with
the root issue.
I'll give you an example to make it
clear.
A child who has problems with rage, anger,
always full of fury and so they go
and they hit their siblings.
What is the problem here?
Is it the hitting of the siblings or
is it the rage?
Which one is it?
Which one is causing the other?
It's the rage that is causing the the
hitting.
So if I go and I treat the
hitting and I stop him from hitting and
yes sometimes intervention is needed but I restrain
him without dealing with the underlying issue he
will just channel that rage down a different
path.
He won't take the form of hitting something
else depending on whether his or her personality
is strong or weak.
If their personality is strong they're just going
to hit something else even if it's just
the wall.
If the personality of the child is weak
that rage has to take a different path
so it goes down the idea of nail
biting.
Some kids they do this or they start
stuttering in their speech.
They start stuttering or they pull out their
hair or they relieve themselves on themselves.
What is this?
That's just the rage that you have suppressed
but it's now finding a channel to express
itself in because the underlying cause was not
dealt with.
So the positive parent is he or she
who tries to not deal merely with the
symptoms but they look at the underlying causes
to see why my child is behaving like
this.
Doctors they do this all of the time.
A patient may come to a doctor to
local GP and say doctor Dr. Salman I
have pain in the nape of my neck.
I have tightness in my chest.
I am struggling to breathe sometimes.
I have lower back pains and I have
gastroenterological issues.
The doctor could give you a medication for
each one of those symptoms in isolation or
he may look at the underlying cause of
these pains and he says these are signs
that you are stressed.
Maybe you are overworked so I suggest you
minimize your working hours.
I suggest you spend 30 minutes a day
walking in the park and I suggest you
spend some more time with family.
That way in some cases less medication is
required because you have dealt with the underlying
cause as opposed to treating these symptoms in
isolation.
So what are the signs of the positive
What was number one?
Mutual admiration.
What was number two?
You treat the underlying issues.
The third one.
The third sign of a positive parent is
that they make the nurturing and the development
of dignity, karama, honor in the heart of
the child of paramount importance.
It is a priority for the positive parent
that my child is raised in an honored
and dignified way.
What is the use of a child who
is praying five times a day and is
reciting Qur'an flawlessly perhaps has memorized it
from a young age?
What is the use of that child if
they don't grow up with a sense of
honor and dignity as a Muslim and of
course as a human being?
What is the use of raising a child
and eventually they do follow a career of
being a doctor or an engineer or a
lawyer or the fourth option in the Arab
world, the failure.
These are your four options in life.
What are the use of these things?
A practicing Muslim child which is our ultimate
goal, a hereafter centric child and somebody who
is successful in his career.
What use is that?
If they are so weak in their personality
that any breeze topples them.
And that's why when you look at the
khawarij, those who fought, Ali ibn Abi Talib
they did not lack in worship.
In fact their foreheads looked like the knees
of camels because their prostration was so long.
They would recite Qur'an without mistake and
he said to the companions that their worship
is so intense, so amazing that you are
my companions, the best of all people, you
will belittle your salah in comparison to their
salah and you belittle your Qur'an in
comparison to their Qur'an.
Yet he described them as being the dogs
of hellfire.
What went wrong?
Weak personalities.
All of the outward forms of worship seemed
to be in place, no doubt.
Some of them were brave, some of them
were chivalrous, courageous, no doubt.
They really believed in their cause.
But what was their issue?
Of the many, it was personalities that were
not necessarily strong and honoured and dignified.
So any wind, any deviance, any bid'ah,
any innovation could take them to a different
path.
So the positive parent, trait number three, makes
it of paramount importance that my son and
my daughter will be dignified, will be honoured.
And that is why, subhanAllah al-Azim, when
you look at Prophet Yusuf when he was
taken into the care of al-Aziz, the
Aziz of Egypt, an authority in the land,
what was the advice that he gave his
wife as per how she is to raise
Prophet Yusuf in this palace?
What was the advice, my brothers?
He said to her one thing, not four
long lectures of me blabbing on, may Allah
forgive me.
He gave her one bit of advice.
He said, make his stay with us honoured
and dignified.
It's as if he knew that the basis
of good tarbiyah, of fine nurturing, is to
raise this child upon principles of honour, dignity,
self-respect.
And that if he grows in this way,
he will know how to make the right
and wise decisions when he becomes an adult
and he will be fit to take my
place in Egypt.
He said to her, make his stay with
us honoured and dignified.
Now, having said this, we've understood the three
parenting styles of the, what was the first?
Firefighter.
And then the?
Tamer.
And then the third is?
The positive.
How do we maintain, how do we uphold
and live by positive parenting techniques?
I'm going to suggest that there are at
least 12 things that detract from the style
of a positive parent.
Tarbiyah is one of those very sophisticated and
simple topics to deal with.
It is so simple from one perspective and
so complicated because of the unlimited variables from
another perspective.
Allah Almighty, from his mercy, has created all
of us with an inherent state of honour,
the karamah that we are speaking about.
That's our birthright, that's our fitrah, that's how
he created us.
So one of the key strategies of a
parent is to simply not interfere with the
goodness that Allah has placed in us.
There are 12 things from the many which
if we do, we begin to detract and
chip away from the sense of honour and
dignity from the child and they become that
castrated child that we spoke about earlier.
No personality, with no mind of their own
and very prone and vulnerable to any deviance
out there.
12 characteristics.
Allah Almighty, he said, we have indeed honoured
the son of Adam, we've honoured him.
So by his nature, Allah Almighty has given
us all of the qualities needed, installed in
us already, that we are required to live,
that we need to live an upright life
and to take us to Jannah.
So we don't want to interfere with that.
What are the factors of interference?
I'm going to suggest 12 for this evening,
perhaps we'll only get through 6 of them.
Take note of the detractors of the positive
parenting style.
Detractor number one, shouting, you've come across the
Maslow hierarchy of need.
Motivational theory, it's a pyramid, several layers, it
suggests that you can only move your way
to the layer above it if you've achieved
a layer beneath it.
So you have to start at the bottom
of the pyramid and you work your way
up to the peak of it, which is
self-actualisation.
But you can't get to that level till
you get to the levels or you achieve
the levels before it.
And one of the earliest levels in Maslow's
hierarchy of needs is the search for security.
It begins with the physiological needs, food and
drink and shelter.
Then when you have that, you start looking
for security.
When you have security, you continue to work
up.
So one of the very first needs of
a human being is an unsecured, because nothing
can be achieved before it.
As a city, as a constitution, the very
first thing that has to be the priority
of any government is to restore security.
Before you talk about economy, before you talk
about governance, before you talk about military, before
you talk about foreign affairs, it has to
start with security.
Security is where it starts in a country.
Security is where it starts in a family.
Security is where it starts with you and
your children.
And the idea of constant shouting and raising
of the voice, especially when it is uncalled
for, undermines that essential sense of security that
is needed in the nurturing of that child.
There was a study that was done in
2001, an Australian study that found that teachers
who used more aggressive and coercive techniques of
teaching, like shouting, they reported that students were
far less likely to behave in a responsible
way as opposed to children who were not
shouted at.
And that's completely understandable and natural because the
child is acting out of fear and compliance,
not because of a sense of responsibility and
duty.
Our tradition, certainly from the Qur'an and
the Sunnah, is one that exhorts you as
a Muslim, as a parent, as a businessman,
to not raise your voice unnecessarily.
And that is why Luqman, the wise, al
-Hakim, he advised his son, as is found
in Surah Luqman, what did he say?
Be moderate in how you walk and lower
the tone of your voice.
He said to his son, lower the tone
of your voice.
Because the ugliest of all sounds is the
brain of a donkey.
The donkey, in most cultures, is the symbol
of stupidity.
So we are being told that Luqman, he
said to his son, lower those decibels when
you are speaking, when you are shouting, don't
do that, he said.
Because the worst and ugliest of sounds is
the sound of a donkey.
And a believer will never allow this type
of analogy to fit him because the Prophet
ﷺ said, the evil example should never fit
the believer.
Never fits the believer.
And our mother Aisha, describing her husband, the
Prophet ﷺ, she said, he wasn't obscene and
he never feigned obscenity and he never raised
his voice in the marketplaces.
Furthermore, the problem with constant shouting at children
to get what you want as a parent
is that your children eventually tune out of
every tone and they learn with the passage
of time that if you are not shouting
then it must mean that it's not that
important because dad's not shouting.
So what ends up happening is that you
constantly need to raise your voice because the
bar is raising, rising in the life of
your child.
So now shouting begets more shouting and that's
a slippery slope to go down.
Also, a parent who is constantly shouting at
their child loses their sense of authority in
the eyes of their children.
And this was a study that was done
in the Journal of Adolescence and they found
that children who are constantly subject to the
shouting of their parents are far more likely
to see their parents as less of an
authority in their lives as opposed to children
whose parents do not shout at them all
of the time.
Shouting, generally speaking in life when there is
no need for it, like for example a
Khatib who is giving a Friday sermon and
he is required to raise his voice or
somebody at war they raise their voice or
someone giving the Adhan they raise their voice.
When raising children, generally speaking the idea of
shouting reduces your decorum, it reduces your haybah,
your sense of awe and do not mistake
the obedience of your child that you get
because of shouting with respect.
That will become more apparent as they grow.
So this is detractor number one of the
positive parenting style which is what?
What is it my brothers?
Shouting.
The second detractor is the idea of blame
and guilt tripping.
Now don't get me wrong, it is very
healthy for our children to understand the feeling
of guilt, the feeling of blame, the feeling
of remorse, a panging soul, the blaming soul
as Allah Almighty speaks about it in the
Qur'an.
We cannot say that a sense of regret
and guilt is bad.
How could we say that in its entirety
when the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam said
an-nadamu, tawba, regret is repentance.
The ultimate pillar of repentance is regret.
So it is healthy for our children to
understand these feelings and these emotions and values.
The issue is that when it goes overboard
in every other move the child makes, certainly
if they are mistakes as well, no doubt,
they are constantly made to feel that they
were unworthy, blameworthy, they are guilty, what happens
with the passage of time is that they
lose their sense of self-esteem and they
are unable to maintain healthy relationships later in
life because they are constantly afraid that they
are going to let someone down because they
were raised by their parents to believe that
you are always going to make a mistake.
But Allah Almighty He takes an oath upon
the nafs al-lawwama, the blaming soul.
It is an honorable soul to have.
Allah Almighty said laa uqsimu bi yawm al
-qiyamah, I swear by the day of judgment,
wa laa uqsimu bin nafs al-lawwama, and
I swear by the blaming soul.
It is an honorable soul.
The blaming soul is the one that nags
at you when you commit a sin and
it says to you, why did you have
to do that?
And it also nags at you and pangs
when you do a good and it says,
couldn't you not have done more?
It's an honorable one, but it should not
be your go-to technique every single time
till your child believes that he is good
for nothing.
So I better play it safe.
I don't want to make relationships and I
must never say no to any suggestion that
comes my way in school or online or
offline or with friends because I don't want
the trauma of remembering that I am blameworthy
and I'm guilty for everything that I do.
And so they offer a blind compliance every
single time.
This was the technique of the Prophet ﷺ
and that is why Anas ibn Malik, who
served the Prophet ﷺ, he said the following
words praising the Prophet ﷺ.
He said, listen to these words.
He said, He said, in my life, I
have never touched a velvet or a brocade
that was softer than the palm of the
Prophet ﷺ.
He said, And in my life, I have
never inhaled a scent that was more beautiful
than the scent of the Prophet Muhammad ﷺ.
And then he said, I served the Prophet
of Allah ﷺ for 10 consecutive years.
Not once in his life did he say
to me, Not once did he say to
me, Listen, And
he never said to me for something that
I did.
Why did you do it?
And he never said to me for something
that I did not do.
Why did you not do it?
The blaming and the guilt tripping technique was
absent from the life of the Prophet ﷺ,
particularly when he was communicating with children and
raising them.
So this is detractor number two from the
positive parenting technique, which is what?
Excessive blame and guilt tripping.
Number three, threats.
Threats work with children up until they become
teenagers.
So it's not a long-term technique.
And it gets to a point in the
life of that child when they say, Baba,
say what you want.
I don't really care anymore.
If your constant go-to technique is a
threat, if you do this, I'm going to
do that to you.
Then there will be a point when they
turn and say, I'm not scared.
Do what you want.
It doesn't really matter because you're always upset
anyway.
The moment the child says that to you,
realize that you have just lost that special
bond with your child.
And now what used to be love and
respect has now become disrespect and disrespect eventually
becomes resentment because we resent the people who
threaten our sense of security.
So it's not a long-term strategy.
And also a child is intelligent.
They will call you up every time you
make a threat.
Be honest.
Have you given your child a threat before?
I certainly have.
We do it all of the time.
Do you follow through every threat that you
have given?
The answer is no.
We change our mind.
Our children are aware of this.
Every time you make a threat to your
child and you don't follow it through for
one reason or another, learning has occurred in
the mind of the child.
That non-compliance pays off.
And so your threats don't sound like anything
scary.
We tune out of your threats.
So there are better alternatives.
And I will suggest a few.
A better alternative to threats, if you do
this, I will do that, is to offer
choices and connect consequences with them.
So you will say something to the effect
of, if you do this, then these are
the consequences.
If you do this, then these are the
consequences.
This option will take you here and this
option will take you there.
Make the decision that you think is best.
This is a perfectly legitimate parenting technique.
Why?
Because you have made it a natural consequence.
You have not connected it to yourself.
So he can't really resent you.
You're not saying if you do this, I'm
going to do that.
You're saying it's a natural consequence.
If you do this, this is what's going
to happen.
Much like a person who says to his
children, if you run too fast on the
slippery slope, you're going to slip and break
your arm.
Or if you touch that hob when it's
on, you're going to burn your hand.
So similarly, you are saying these are the
options.
These are the consequences.
So that's one alternative to threats.
Another alternative would be to maybe inspire the
child.
Maybe they require inspiration.
Maybe they need to know the wisdom of
what it is that you are instructing them
to do.
And we're going to dedicate a point on
this next week, inshallah ta'ala.
Maybe you need to appeal to the nobility
of your child.
You're a noble child.
You're a good man.
You're a good girl.
You're a good woman.
Maybe that's the incentive they require.
Maybe it's gratitude, shukr that they need.
Maybe it's appreciation.
Maybe it's encouragement that they need.
Don't estimate encouragement.
And we have a whole section on encouragement
in about two weeks, inshallah.
Why is it that no child ever fails
to learn how to walk?
Do you know of a child who never
learned how to walk without any physical impairment?
More often than not, most children will learn
how to walk despite it being so difficult.
Why do they achieve it almost every single
time?
Look at the encouragement that is given to
a child the moment they stand and they're
holding onto a table.
Whole family get together.
Everyone's dropping their tea and their toast and
look at what's happening and photo and send
it to auntie in Pakistan.
Look, they're standing.
So the child is like, OK, I'm doing
something right.
Let me let me see if I can
let go of this.
They fall and they hurt themselves and they
do it again.
Why?
Because the ecstasy, the dopamine of the encouragement
was so strong.
They end up walking, running faster than you
would like.
So instead of threats, could encouragement be the
thing?
The idea is that there is a whole
host of things that we could try before
resorting to something like this.
And I'd like to say as a quick
disclaimer here, when we talk about these things,
we're not saying that they are all a
hundred percent negative.
Now, sometimes you need to use some of
these techniques, but more often than not, they
shouldn't be your first port of call.
Port of call.
So what have we covered so far?
Shouting and blaming guilt tripping.
Number three, threats.
Take number four, mockery, belittlement of the child.
I think every one of us will remember
a time in their life when they were
mocked, belittled and it hurts the most when
it comes from somebody you love and respect.
Who do you love and respect more than
mom and dad?
Don't undermine or underestimate the power and the
negative influence of mockery, belittlement when it comes
from mom and dad.
You remember the sense of emptiness, that void
that is created and sense of isolation and
loneliness when somebody mocks you in this way.
It is truly a sign of tarbawi incompetence
when a parent exercises mockery of their children.
Really, that was a parent who we are
tempted to say was not ready to have
kids.
If that's the technique that they are employing,
more often than not.
As for mistakes, may Allah pardon us, we're
all guilty.
Why do I say that it is a
sign of ignorance and incompetence?
Because the Prophet of Allah, Musa alayhi salatu
was salam, when he said to Bani Israeel,
inna allaha ya'murukum an tazbahu baqara, Allah instructs
you to slaughter a cow.
What was their response?
Atattakhiduna huzuwa, they said, are you mocking us?
What did Musa say?
He said, a'udhu billahi an akuna minal
jahileen, I seek refuge in Allah Almighty from
being from the ignorant ones.
Musa didn't say, no, I'm not mocking you.
He said, I seek refuge in Allah from
being from the ignorant ones, as if to
say that if I was mocking you, I
would be from the ignorant ones.
Because mockery, more often than not, the mockery
has its place in the religion, but not
of your children, of the enemies of deen,
no doubt.
And even then, there are parameters of when
and how.
But of your children, it's a telltale sign
of an incompetent mother or father.
May Allah protect us from this.
So mockery is not a strategy.
And there are different types of mockery.
Sometimes it is comparison.
Your brother is much smarter than you.
Your cousins are far more bright than you.
It could be in the form of shaming.
Yeah, get out of my face.
You're such a disappointment.
You're good for nothing.
It could be in the form of rejection.
It could be in the form of name
calling.
You fool, you idiot.
So all of these are detractors from the
positive parenting style.
Insulting.
The Prophet ﷺ was described as being.
Or he said, the Prophet ﷺ said, لَيْسَ
الْمُؤْمِنُ بِطَعَانِ A true believer does not taunt.
وَلَا لَعَانِ He never curses.
وَلَا ثَاحِشِ He's not obscene.
وَلَا بَذِيءِ And he's not foul-mouthed.
That's not the quality of a believer.
By the way, if we have made this
mistake with our children, we're humans.
And you do end up mocking them or
belittling them.
That can be corrected and it requires an
apology.
Yes, apology from parent to child is required.
Look, I made a mistake here.
I shouldn't have said that.
استغفر الله Please pardon me.
But you are still wrong in ABC and
there's going to be consequences here.
You need to fix up.
But the idea of mocking was incorrect.
Why?
Because you want to teach the child that
there can be course correct.
Course correction.
If I made a mistake, you're not afraid
or stubborn as a parent to say I've
made a mistake here.
So this is number what?
Number four.
Number five is the idea of making comparisons.
Comparing the child against another.
This is demolishing for the personality of a
child.
Have you been compared in your life to
somebody?
Though you may love that person, but all
of a sudden your heart begins to change
towards them when you're pitted against them in
study or in sport or in looks or
in any other metric in life.
Now, it's perfectly natural that we compare.
We can't avoid that.
That's a human construct.
That's a human tendency, I mean to say.
We're always comparing our phones against others and
cars against others, our spouses against other spouses.
Let's be real.
We compare everything.
We're doing it all of the time.
But how much is too much?
Now, I'll tell you this, brothers and sisters,
as a suggestion.
You know that you've gone a little bit
overboard with the idea of comparison.
When you cross over from the space of
monitoring the development and the growth of your
child, that's their physical development, their mental development,
their emotional development, so that you can offer
some intervention early if they need it.
You cross over from that space, which is
perfectly legitimate, to comparing your child against another
child that is not like them, and then
disparaging your child for not being like them,
though they are different from every perspective.
The first is essential and wise.
The second is ignorant and soul-crushing.
And it's a fine line.
And I give you several reasons why comparisons
is so devastating for a child, especially in
the early development.
The first is that it is a thief
of motivation and self-esteem.
When the parent compared the child to somebody
else, what was their need?
What was their intention?
The intention, more often than not, was to
motivate the child to be like somebody else,
isn't it?
That's the idea.
Why weren't you like so-and-so who
got an A?
Why did you have to get a C?
Muhammad got an A.
Your intention as a parent is perfectly innocent,
which is work harder.
Be motivated to do more next time.
How does the child interpret this?
I have every reason now to do less.
And I am now demotivated like never before.
Why?
Because there's nobody in life that I want
to impress more than mum and dad.
And guess what?
Mum and dad are thinking about somebody else,
not me.
Number one, comparison does the opposite of what
you intend.
It completely demotivates the child and saps them
from any energy.
Number two, comparisons are usually very inaccurate by
their nature.
You're comparing apples and oranges.
You're comparing two things that are different by
their birthright.
So it's inaccurate.
When you see a child who seems to
be praiseworthy, remember, more often than not, you're
not seeing the whole picture of the child.
You're not.
So you're there in a restaurant with your
wife, and your child is dipping his finger
in the water in and out, and he's
dropping the spoon and picks it up and
drops the spoon and picks it up.
And then he's shouting and screaming and sneezing
over everyone.
Right?
And you're there thinking, And then you look
over to the other side and you see
another family, and the child is sat there
like an angel.
As I said earlier, Doing as he's told,
eating as he's told, his napkin is tightly
here somewhere in his collar and doesn't move.
You think, mashallah, I wish I had this.
Why do I have this, Shaytan?
Are you seeing the whole story?
Could it be that yesterday this child was
putting food up his nose?
Maybe.
He was doing that yesterday.
Could it be that this child is suffering
from a medical condition?
Maybe he has some sort of chronic lowering
in energy levels, chronic lowering of energy.
And so he doesn't react in any specific
or hyped way because physically he's unwell.
So what you are idealizing is, in fact,
the daily nightmare of his parents.
And they're looking over into your table and
they're thinking, we wish our child was sneezing
and shouting and dropping the spoon because it
would be a sign of a healthy child
with energy.
You know how stressful that is for a
parent.
And they're not moving as they need to
move.
So you're comparing things.
It's an inaccurate comparison.
And that's why Albert Einstein is narrated to
have said that he said everybody is a
genius.
Everybody is a genius.
But if you compare or if you judge
the intelligence of a fish by its ability
to climb a tree, it will spend its
life thinking that it is stupid.
Clear?
He says everybody is a genius.
But if you judge the intelligence of a
fish by its ability to climb a tree,
which is somebody else's skill, not swimming like
a fish, it will spend its life thinking
that it is stupid.
So look at the limitations of your child
and how Allah has created them different to
somebody else.
And then we teach them to show gratitude
to Allah for how different they are.
You're handicapped.
You're wheelchair bound.
Maybe you're more about the arts than the
sciences.
Maybe you have an impairment in the vision.
Whatever it is.
We find a way to channel this situation
and make it into a strength.
That's why the Prophet ﷺ, he never gave
the same tasks to every Sahaba.
Some memorized Qur'an.
Some fought on the front lines in Jihad.
Some were writing for the Prophet ﷺ as
his scribes.
Some were sent to Jarash to learn military
techniques to develop it for the Medinan people.
And to fight in war.
Others were the sermon givers.
Others were the media reps, the poets of
the religion.
Everybody had a role.
Those handicapped, Abdullah ibn Ummi Maktoum, he had
a role though he couldn't see.
He wasn't seen as deficient or compared against
somebody else.
He was given a role that suits him.
Another reason why comparison is such a failed
strategy, comparisons sow the seeds of resentment between
the kids.
So we're there harping on about the importance
of loving your brother.
Love your sister.
Look out for your brother.
Look out for your sister.
Why don't you share?
Why don't you sacrifice for one another?
Why don't you love one another?
And we sometimes fail to realize that we
were the ones who pitted them against one
another when we constantly compared them in this
way.
So we're telling them with our words to
love one another and through our actions we're
encouraging to hate one another.
If resentment between prophets who were brothers was
possible.
The brothers of Yusuf alayhi salatu wasalam who
resented him because they sensed that their father
loves Yusuf and his brother more than them.
According to the majority of the scholars, they
were prophets.
When they said Yusuf and his brother are
dearer to our father than us.
And we're a big group.
Our dad is clearly mistaken.
Solution?
Let's kill Yusuf.
Or cast him away in a distant land
so that your father's attention will be all
yours.
Then you'll repent later on and you become
righteous people.
So if resentment was possible between brothers and
their father was a prophet Yaqub alayhi salam
and we don't think for a single moment
that Yaqub failed as a father or that
he had compared his sons.
But there was a natural inclination to one
over another that he would not purposely show.
And this was possible.
So what about your kids and mine?
So these are three or four reasons why
comparison is such a failed strategy.
These are how many techniques so far?
How many detractors so far?
Five.
I'll give you in two minutes now the
last of them.
Which is excessive Islamic corrective advice.
Constantly advising your son or daughter.
Constantly giving them nasiha all of the time.
It turns into the opposite where the child
tunes out and no longer wants to hear
it.
Why?
Because reminders by their nature are heavy on
the heart.
And that's why subhanallah.
Our mother Aisha she said Bukhari and Muslim.
Speaking about the prophet salallahu alayhi wa sallam.
Innama kana yuhadithu hadithan law addahu alAAad la
ahsahu.
She said the way of the prophet salallahu
alayhi wa sallam was that when he would
speak you could count the number of words
that he used.
He was so few in the words that
he used.
He wasn't always talking.
You could actually count the number of words
in a sentence that he strung together.
It wasn't his way to speak at length.
And it wasn't his way to constantly give
advice.
And when they said to Abdullah Ibn Mas
'ud you're only coming to us once a
week to give us advice.
The tabi'een they said to Ibn Mas
'ud the companion just once a week can
you give us higher dosage of reminders.
He said no.
Because the prophet salallahu alayhi wa sallam kana
yatakhawwaluna bilmaw'idah.
He would choose the right times to give
us advice.
Makhafata ssa'amata alayna.
Because he feared that we would get bored.
Subhanallah.
So excessive corrective advice for the child.
It's overwhelming.
And that is why Atta Ibn Abi Rabah.
He said that me and Ubaid Ibn Umair
who was the wa'id the preacher of
Makkah.
He said we came into the gathering of
our mother Aisha.
These two were tabi'oon.
Atta and Ubaid they were from the tabi
'een second generation Muslims.
We entered into the gathering of the mother
of the believer Aisha.
We asked her for advice.
And what did she say?
She said ya Ubaid khaffif.
Ubaid lessen the reminders that you give please.
Decrease them a little bit.
Because reminders by their nature are heavy on
the soul.
As in when.
So as they say if something goes overboard
then it converts to its opposite.
So these are six detractors from the positive
parenting style.
After we have learned the three parenting styles.
We said number three is the ideal one.
And we've suggested that simply leaving the child
as he is without negative interference.
Can suffice in much of the tarbiyah that
you require of your child.
We've mentioned six of the twelve detractors.
Next week we'll go over the remainder of
the six.
And then we will speak about some interventions
that are required.
So now we're talking about things that we
avoid.
Things that we don't do.
But there will be also a section dedicated
for things that are required of us to
do.
Some intervention that is required.
We ask Allah Almighty to guide us and
to give righteousness to our children.
And make them honored and dignified.