Ali Hammuda – Our Ways in Raising Children Pt.3 – Episode 9 – Our Ways
AI: Summary ©
The speakers discuss the negative impact of parenting on children, including violence and abandonment, and the importance of avoiding violence and respecting children's emotions. They emphasize the need for parents to practice Islam and be aware of the consequences of parenting. The speakers also touch on the negative impact of parenting on children, including mistakes and negative consequences, and suggest ways to help children grow in their early childhood, including learning about their parents' behavior and finding support in their education.
AI: Summary ©
We said that there are three methods of
parenting.
That's where we started off in the beginning,
two weeks ago.
We said it was the firefighting parent, and
then there was the taming parent, and then
there was the positive parent, and then we
said that we were going to list how
many detractors of the positive parenting strategy.
How many have we covered?
What is the first?
Excessive shouting.
What was number two?
Blame and guilt tripping.
What was number three?
The use of threats.
Number four?
Mockery and belittlement.
Number five?
Comparisons between the siblings and others.
And number six?
Excessive Islamic corrective advice.
So we're now on number seven, and there
is an implicit understanding that when we say
the 12 detractors of the positive parenting strategy,
the implication is that you are to do
what?
Avoid them.
And to?
Do the opposite.
And I also mentioned a second caveat, if
you remember, which is just because we're listing
these things as negatives, things that you are
to avoid, it doesn't mean that they are
necessarily prohibited in their entirety.
Some of these 12 points are prohibited in
their entirety, and some of them are to
be used as and when.
Number seven, the seventh detractor of the positive
parenting strategy is violence.
The use of brute force against the son
or the daughter whom you are raising.
It's pretty much conclusive now in research that
extending a heavy hand, a bruising fist for
children to experience early trauma, specifically of physical
intervention, is associated with a whole host of
mental health disorders.
Whether that is anxiety, or depression, or PTSD,
or borderline personality disorder, sleeping disorders, eating disorder,
substance use disorders, and even suicide.
And so it is not strange when we
learn that the Prophet ﷺ was a man
who never extended a bruising fist against anyone
or anything except if he was in jihad
in the path of Allah.
Our mother Aisha, she said as is found
in the Sahih, never did the Prophet ﷺ
strike anything with his hand.
Not a woman, nor a servant, other than
if he was in a state of jihad
in the path of Allah.
And when he came across a Sahabi by
the name of Al-Aqra' Ibn Habis, and
Al-Aqra' Ibn Habis was one of those
harsh Arab Bedouins who saw the Prophet ﷺ
kissing Al-Hasan and kissing Al-Husayn, his
two grandchildren.
Al-Aqra' he said, I have ten of
those.
I have ten children, by Allah I haven't
kissed one of them in my life.
It's as though he was taking pride, as
though this was some sort of mantle of
honour that he was wearing.
I have ten children and I haven't kissed
a single one of them.
And the Prophet ﷺ said to him, He
who does not show mercy, Allah will not
show him mercy.
And in another narration he said, What can
I do for you if Allah subhanahu wa
ta'ala has removed mercy from your heart?
The issue with violence specifically towards children, whether
they are experiencing it at the hands of
mum and dad or experiencing it at the
hands of grandparents or an uncle or an
auntie or any other member of the family
whom they are exposed to and may be
abused, is that it reciprocates.
So a child who experiences this type of
early abuse in the family will then turn
to himself or herself in some sort of
abuse and then they will turn to their
siblings or their cousins.
Eventually they will turn their violence towards their
classmates and when they become older and they
reach their adult years, they may turn into
all sorts of sociopaths, criminals, even perhaps rapists,
serial killers and there is evidence to suggest
that not all, naturally speaking, a lot of
these criminals, they came from very troubled backgrounds
where they had experienced a whole host of
abuse by mother and father or neglect or
something to that effect.
Whether you look at a man like Charles
Manson who was the cult leader who orchestrated
the Manson family murders, you see in his
history as a young man he experienced a
huge amount of abuse by several members of
his family or a person like Ted Bundy,
maybe some of you remember his case, a
man who was described by many of the
women whom he abused as incredibly charming, incredibly
intelligent.
It was very strange that a man like
him would end up doing what he did
and on the onset or from the outset
it seemed that everything was okay from a
childhood perspective and even in his interviews he
said that I come from a very normal
background and everything was sound at home.
The person whom he thought was his sister
turned out to be his mother and the
person whom he thought was his mother was
actually his grandmother and so all of these
dark secrets that were kept from him seemed
to have played a very bad role in
the deterioration of his psyche.
You have others as well, the Boston Strangler
and the Body Snatcher, all of these people
are people who came from traumatized family, some
sort of abuse or neglect that they experienced.
Now this isn't to say that if you
have gone through some sort of abuse by
mother or father that it's always going to
be that you will be a * or
a serial killer nor is this a justification
for them as criminals.
We know children and we will continue to
know children sadly who have experienced a whole
host of abuse and they will not be
serial killers when they grow inshallah but we
also can't go to the other extreme and
claim that there is a complete disconnect.
No, there is a process here and there
is a connection.
So this is the seventh of the detractors
of the positive parenting strategy which is the
use of violence against children.
The eighth of them, take note of this
my brothers and sisters, it is the neglect
of context.
A parent who is unwilling to accept that
the context that he or she is raising
his or her children in is different to
the context that they may have come from
back home or any other place.
It's a new context and I will give
maybe two examples.
Back in the days the use of the
stick featured very heavily in the educational process.
The stick features just as commonly as a
textbook did.
Whether it's at home or whether it's in
a family gathering or whether it is in
school, the stick was always the center of
gravity.
It was always there, ready to be used.
Now for us, in our generation, perhaps this
is quite strange to hear.
If you speak to maybe Gen Z, what
stick are you talking about?
We haven't seen those things.
You're talking about the selfie stick for example.
No, this is a different stick.
Selfie stick is about capturing your smile.
The stick I'm talking about is about erasing
your smile.
It's going to wipe it right off that
smirk.
That's the stick that featured heavily back in
the days and it was the norm in
many cultures.
That's a bygone era.
Let's just be real for a moment.
We don't live in those days anymore.
It's a completely foreign concept and it will
not work and it will be seen as
an extreme form of abuse.
Today, unlike yesterday, we live in an ultra
sensitive culture.
How dare you even assume that you can
raise your voice now when you're a kid.
Anything you may say or a frown or
a cold shoulder, just crumble.
You can, you can.
Even you want to squint at them.
If you squint at them, it's some sort
of, they'll find the term.
You are aggressively optically signaling me and I
am anxious.
There will be something that they will put
on you in terms of a label, right?
Even sometimes you doubt, well, am I allowed
to inhale and breathe in and breathe out
in the presence of my child?
Maybe this will be some sort of inhalation
abuse.
Everything is abuse.
So it's a new era.
So neglecting the context is a problem when
we refuse to accept that my child is
raised in a setting that is very different
from the setting that I come from or
my parents come from.
Another example of how context makes a difference.
Back in the days, if you said to
a child, go to your room, all my
days, that would be the ultimate punishment for
a child, isn't it?
You've just taken him from the street where
he's playing with his kids football.
And now you're taking me to my room.
What am I going to do in my
room?
This is literally a death sentence for a
young man.
I have the four walls.
I have my thoughts and I've got some
dusty encyclopedias on my shelf.
It is such a bad situation, solitary confinement.
Nowadays, if you want to use the same
punishment or disciplining technique and you say to
him, go to your room.
He said, thank God.
And he will march to his room.
I've been waiting for you to say that.
Gets to his room, closes the door and
he's on his phone.
He's on his laptop.
He's on socials.
So what you thought was a punishment has
now become what?
The ultimate joy.
Context has changed.
And a parent who has chosen to raise
his child in this environment needs to be
aware that you live in a completely different
setting and you've got to be up with
the time.
You cannot fall behind.
Professor Ahmed Amin, he has an autobiography called
My Life or Hayati.
And he writes something really interesting in this
in this aspect.
And he says, speaking about how the generations
are so different, he's comparing his generation, how
his dad treated him with how his kids
are and how they are treating him as
a dad.
So he says that back in the days
when I was at school, my father enrolled
me in the Kutab.
The Kutab is in reference to those old
traditional schools that were quite harsh and boring,
dry.
My father enrolled me with the Kutab and
I was perfectly satisfied.
As for me and my kids, I've enrolled
them in kindergartens where they're being pampered and
spoiled and they are still unhappy.
He said back in the days, my dad
would beat me for the most trivial thing
and I wouldn't complain.
Nowadays, I may give my words, I may
give my children the most mild of words
and they are still very upset.
How dare I raise my voice at them?
And he said back in the days, my
father used to deprive me from some of
the necessities of life.
I was content and now my children, they
are upset if I don't indulge them in
the excesses of life.
So it's a completely different setting and you
as a parent, you have to be aware
of that and that is why Imam Ibn
Al-Qayyim, in his book Ighatat Al-Lahfan,
he said that there is a statement attributed
to Ali ibn Abi Talib and attributed to
some of the companions, though it doesn't seem
to be an authentic attribution to any of
them.
It's perhaps more of an authentic attribution to
Suqrat or in English Socrates, but it is
a phenomenal statement and it's true where he
says Don't force
your children to follow in your footsteps because
they were created for a time that is
different than yours.
There's going to be certain norms that are
different to what you are You chose to
raise your children, and so did I, here
in the West.
The West, they grew up here, they studied
nursery, primary, secondary, college, university, their friends are
from here, the football they watch is from
here, the food that they eat is from
here, the things that they watch is here.
You can't therefore assume that somehow they're going
to be just as emotionally connected and invested
and committed to all of the customs that
you have come from because that's not their
paradigm, that's not their experience.
And I'll give some examples, perhaps the expectation
that I as a father, as an Arab,
I'll speak about me to not cause offense,
as a Palestinian, I may have a particular
expectation of my child who is sat at
the back that you should be a doctor
or an engineer or a lawyer because that's
how things work in Palestine.
That's the epitome of success.
I cannot have that same expectation here.
He may wish to do something else within
the parameters of what Allah Almighty has permitted,
there needs to be some fluidity here, we
can't be as rigid.
Or the age in which I expect my
child to marry and the age where they
think is acceptable to marry, there needs to
be some give and take because it's a
different context.
Or the expectation of my eldest son that
he needs to live with me when he
marries, otherwise he is some sort of rebel.
There needs to be some give and take.
Or there is an expectation of my daughter
-in-law that she needs to run around
the house as though she was perhaps a
maid without a salary.
That may have been okay in certain settings
but is that the setting here that's for
you to think about?
So it is absolutely of the essence to
not neglect the context, be aware that you
are in a setting and you need to
be up to scratch with what is happening
here and how your children think and wherever
possible to accommodate.
Realize there will be some battles that you
will need to lose as a parent in
order to win the war.
If you insist on winning every single battle
with your daughter or son, rest assured you
probably will win most of them.
But when it comes to the war, when
you want to preserve their identity, you want
them to be practicing Muslims, confident in their
religion, proud believers in Allah Almighty, that you
may lose because you were so focused about
winning on all of these small fronts and
to make those small gains when it mattered
most, they slipped through the net.
So we said number one or number seven,
the seventh detractor of the positive parenting strategy
is violence towards the children.
Number eight, we said it was the neglect
of the context.
Number nine, the ninth detractor of the positive
parenting strategy is neglecting the how and the
why when offering an instruction to your child.
Neglecting the how and the why.
You've issued an instruction to your child, you
want them to do A, B or C.
And for a lot of us it's simply
as, it's as simple as just do as
you're told.
Why?
Because I said do it.
Your child, especially between the age of zero
to seven, there's going to be a plethora
of questions that they are asking.
Why?
Why?
Why?
On average, a child between the age of
three and five will ask about 300 questions
of why a day.
Why?
Why?
Because everything is new to them you see.
For you it's a given because you've been
doing it now for a good part of
20 or 30 years.
For your child, this is a brand new
experience.
So why is glass transparent?
Why is it that water doesn't seep through
glass?
Why is it that I'm not allowed to
go to school by myself?
And so on and so forth.
That can be very frustrating for a parent.
Your child is beginning to learn the world.
So when offering an instruction, beware of limiting
it and not giving the how and the
why.
John Whitmore has a book called Coaching for
Performance.
And he quotes one of the writers as
saying the following.
Listen to this.
SubhanAllah, it's beautiful.
He said that when I was a child,
my parents told me what to do.
And they shouted at me when I did
it.
And then when I went to school, my
teachers told me what to do.
And they caned me if I didn't.
Then I joined the army.
And the sergeant was now telling me what
to do.
And God helped me if I didn't.
Then I found my first job.
And now it was my boss who was
telling me what to do.
And what a struggle it was going to
be if I didn't.
And so he said, when I reached my
very first position of authority, he said, guess
what I did?
I told people what to do.
Because that was what my role models taught
me to do for the good part of
my life.
You see?
So parents are very good.
We, I, us are very good at telling
our children do this and don't do that.
And we mistaken the obedience that we get
from them for respect.
It is anything but respect.
It is compliance.
But rest assured, the first opportunity they have
to go against you, when you turn your
back, they will.
Why?
Because they don't know why they are doing
it.
And they certainly don't know how to do
it.
So as a parent, there is an instruction.
It is a huge mistake from a tarbawi
perspective, meaning from a nurturing perspective, to offer
the behavior before the belief.
Start with the belief, the understanding, the theology
behind it, the philosophy, why?
And then comes the instruction of what?
Do this.
The how and the why.
Let's give a demonstration or an example from
the prophetic way for both of these two.
The how.
There is an instruction that you have given,
show them how.
The Prophet comes across a young boy who
was skinning an animal and he was doing
it wrong.
So the Prophet ﷺ said to him, stand
aside for a moment young man, let me
show you how to skin the animal.
And so Abu Sa'id al-Khudri, who
was the narrator of the hadith, said the
Prophet ﷺ put his hand between the flesh
and the skin and he began to tug
until he got to the armpit and he
did this all the way until the animal
was completely skinned.
And then he said to the young boy,
this is how you skin an animal young
man.
Gave him a practical demonstration how to do
it.
This is the idea of the how.
And then comes the aspect of the why.
Why?
Why do I want you to do this?
Give the reasoning.
And al-Hasan or al-Husayn, the grandchildren
of the Prophet ﷺ, picked up a date
from the floor and they came to eat
it.
And this was a date that belonged to
the Muslim treasury, one of the sadaqat.
And we know that the family of the
Prophet ﷺ cannot consume money or food from
the Muslim charity.
So al-Hasan, he puts the date in
his mouth.
The Prophet ﷺ takes it out of his
mouth and he said, throw it away.
Throw it away.
He's speaking to a baby who is crawling.
And then he tells him why.
He gives him the reasoning, which is, did
you not know that we, the family of
the Prophet ﷺ, we do not consume charity
money.
So he gave him the reasoning.
There is a huge sense of inquisitiveness in
the heart of a child that wants to
know the wisdom behind things.
And if that is not satiated and bullied
into an instruction, they will rebel at the
earliest possible moment.
And that is why Ya'qub ﷺ, when
his son Yusuf told him that I've seen
a dream, what was the instruction of his
father?
Don't tell your brothers.
Don't tell your brothers about your dream.
You and I would have left it at
that.
So don't tell them.
Why dad?
Just don't tell them because I told you
not to.
Ya'qub didn't do that.
Because they will plot against you.
Shaytan is an open enemy for man.
وَكَذَلِكَ يَجْتَبِيكَ رَبُّكَ وَيُعَلِّمُكَ مِن تَأْوِيلِ الْأَحَدِيثَ And
it became a full-blown conversation between father
and son.
So that's number what?
Nine.
The neglect of the how and the why.
Number ten.
The tenth detractor of the positive parenting strategy
or style is when you fail to extend
trust and duty and responsibility to your child.
Take note of this my brothers and sisters.
There is a huge temptation in the heart
of every parent to do everything for their
children.
It is very tempting.
Why?
Because it's less of a headache and there's
less tidying up, less things to fix and
certainly less cleaning up to do.
And we fail to realize that by doing
this, we are actually decimating the sense of
duty, independence and responsibility, productivity and initiative taken
of our children.
And we wonder why they're so lazy, why
they're so lethargic, why they are so inactive,
why they're so uncreative in their life.
We fail to realize that we were the
ones who did this.
We were the ones who undid all of
these properties in their life and now we
are complaining.
I'll give you some examples.
Every time your son or daughter tries to
pour milk into their own cereal bowl and
you * it away from them, you say,
no, no, I will do it for you
because you know they're going to spill it
all over the floor.
What have you done?
You have preferred the cleanliness of your carpet
over the building of responsibility and duty in
your child.
That's what you've done.
Every time your child tries to break away
from the firm grip that you have in
his or her hand as you're walking in
the street and there's clearly no harm, there's
clearly no cause, there's clearly no pedos around
and the child is trying to let go
and you're holding on.
And every time he lets go, you *
him back because you're afraid for him or
her.
The child will eventually what?
Submit.
Fine.
I'll just hold your hand because learning has
just happened.
Any problem in my life, my dad's going
to hold my hand.
He's always going to be there for me.
What have I made?
An irresponsible child who has no sense of
duty, courage, responsibility, initiative taking, proactivity.
We did that.
And similarly, every time your child takes initiative
to do something like take something off the
shelf or does something that is semi-dangerous
and instantly you come down with a punishment
without giving the how and the why at
least, you come down with a punishment.
Eventually, the child will stop taking initiative.
Why?
Because learning has just occurred in the mind
of the child, which is initiative taking, independence,
duty, wanting to help equals punishment.
And I don't want that equation.
So you do everything for me because it's
safer that way.
See, more often than not, we were the
ones who emasculated our boys.
We were the ones who weakened our daughters
because we cannot get our minds out of
this setting that says, I want to do
everything for my children and I don't want
to clean up and I don't want to
fix anything and I don't want to waste
time.
We complain later on in life when they
behave so irresponsibly, so selfishly because we have
built a statue of snow and we cry
when that snowman begins to melt.
There is a problem with this over-protectiveness
and this excessive intervention and this obsession with
shielding our children from every small failure, every
small risk in life.
We're so afraid that they're going to be
harmed that we don't prepare them for the
future, for the necessary major setbacks and failures
that they will experience.
They will crumble.
Why?
Because we never gave them exposure to early
failure, early injury within limits.
We didn't allow them to grow on that.
And that is the secret and Allah knows
best.
Why the Arabs, even pre-Islam, would send
away their children from a very young age
when they were still breastfeeding?
Think about the attachment that you have as
a father and more so as a mother.
They would send away their kids instantly to
Banu Sa'd, to the wilderness.
I think you mentioned brother Sahib that they
have something similar in your culture.
You go out and you learn the outskirts,
in the deserts.
Why?
To ensure that your language is not spoiled.
You have eloquent speech.
They learn that from the desert.
To ensure that they grew up with a
strong, robust physical frame.
They're not spoiled by the city.
That they're eating the right food and they're
learning duty and responsibility and management of assets.
Even as kids, our Prophet ﷺ, when he
was sent away, from around the age of
four or five, he was responsible for a
herd of sheep.
From that age, why?
Management, protecting the assets of others, being a
trustee and learning and fostering a sense of
duty and responsibility.
They sent them away.
Go and do things.
Go and learn.
So here are some suggestions.
I know of a brother who has appointed
his 13-year-old son to oversee the
construction of his entire apartment block project.
He's a builder.
He appointed a 13-year-old boy to
oversee all of the builders, the plasterers, the
electricians.
That is a fine example of Tarbiyah right
there.
Your daughters.
It could be, for example, that you choose
to allocate a certain amount of your income,
my brother, and say, you will deal with
the bills.
Help us, a section for the rent, something
for the electricity and for the water and
keep some money aside for the spending of
the family.
Teach her financial management from a young age
and her husband will be very grateful for
you as a father-in-law.
I can promise you that.
When you go out shopping, bring your son
with you.
Let him understand how to be a shrewd
buyer, a shrewd consumer, not to be scammed.
Let him develop a realistic expectation of life,
not a false image, and send him sometimes
to go and do the shoppings.
And you will say, but what if he
gets, what if he gets scammed?
I say to you, he gets scammed.
May your son be scammed.
Let him be scammed.
Good.
It's okay.
That will teach him a valuable lesson in
life and he will not be scammed again
and he will go out the next day
like a lion.
Who's going to scam me now?
Why shield them and mollycoddle them from these
experiences of life?
When your car breaks down, you're calling the
AA and you're shouting at your kids because
they're making too much noise.
And now you're stressed.
So you're projecting your stress on them.
Why not tell your son to come to
the front, open up the bonnet and show
him what a dipstick is and what a,
what a, you know, beneath what a brake
pad is.
And this is where the engine is.
And this is where the washer fluid is.
Okay.
We're calling them mechanics.
They're going to show us what to do.
Give him a sense of duty and responsibility.
We make statues of snow and we cry
when they melt.
This is a reality.
Resist the urge of over-intervention and excessive
protection.
Delegate responsibility.
Give them a sense of duty and watch
how their sense of responsibility will be expedited
and fast-tracked and they will, they will
want to carry a burden off you and
they will want to add value to their
community.
And you're not going to have a child
later on in life at the age of
20 and 30 who's in his room all
day because he's gaming.
He wants to be out helping his dad,
carrying the burdens of the ummah, building his
place in Jannah.
And you are the person who made that
inshallah.
So this is what number?
Number 10.
The idea of extending trust, delegating duty and
responsibility to your children and trusting that they
will do good.
And if they fail, they will learn and
you will teach them.
Number 11.
The 11th detractor of the positive parenting strategy
is the lack of affection between husband and
wife, mother and father and parental conflict.
UK and international studies over decades of years
are suggesting the same thing and that is
children from as young as six months when
they experience inter-parental conflict and the raising
of voices, their stress hormones are released and
their heart rates increase.
From as young as six months and later
on if this continues and Dr. Abdullah will
correct me, there are also evidences to suggest
that there will be a limitation of their
cognitive abilities and the development of their brain
and all sorts of phobias and disorders connected
to that.
Seeing mom and dad fighting in front of
them poses a huge risk to the development
of our children.
Therefore, the greatest thing that you can do
to love your child is to love their
parent.
It's from wife to respect their father.
For the father to love and show affection
to the mother and for the children to
see that.
To see that.
Because if kids are only ever seeing you
putting down the spouse, embarrassing the spouse, comparing
the spouse with somebody else, shouting at them,
God forbid hitting them, then you're going to
create a child who is developing all sorts
of chronic stress disorders and that child will
have no understanding of what love and respect
should look like in a relationship and that
then is passed down from generation to generation.
How will the child develop a barometer, a
measure of what love and respect looks like
if they don't see mother and father exhibiting
it between them?
One of the most stabilizing factors to give
harmony and calmness in the development of a
child is for them to see love and
affection between mom and dad.
We don't know what it does to the
mind of a child and their development.
And the opposite is just as true.
Now it's natural, it's completely normal for husband
and wife to fight.
We make mistakes.
We will raise our voices occasionally in the
presence of the children.
But that isn't to say that all is
lost because the kids, they also need to
learn later on in life that if mistakes
happen, how to redeem ourselves.
How to course correct.
So yes, you apologize to the mother in
their presence.
Wife apologizes to the father in their presence.
I made a mistake.
I was wrong to do that.
And you hug and you make up.
So let the child learn that in the
case of disappointment or conflict in my life,
this is the way that we fix things.
So this is number 11.
And finally number 12, the 12th detractor of
the positive parenting strategy is the neglect, the
self-neglect of the parent.
The self-neglect of the parent, him or
herself.
Now fathers, they don't usually have this problem.
Males don't usually have this issue as parents.
You can ask any parent and you have
any male and say, what's your recreational activity?
And he will say it's gaming or it's
football or it's weights or it's surfing or
whatever it may be.
But you ask mothers, what's your recreational enjoyment?
And what will their response more often than
not be?
What's the response?
I don't, I don't have time.
What recreational activity are you talking about?
With all these kids, I don't have time.
If somebody reckons that makes sense, then that's
just as sensible as a person saying, I'm
not filling up my car with petrol because
I don't have time to fill up.
That's just as nonsensical.
Sooner or later, you will burn out and
you thinking that I got to give all
of my time and all of my attention,
every spare dollar in my pocket for my
kids, you burn out and you're unable to
do anything for them soon after that.
And that's why the Prophet ﷺ, he said,
وَإِنَّ لِنَفْسِكَ عَلَيْكَ حَقَّةً that your own body
has a right upon you.
There was a phenomenal case study mentioned by
Dr. Mustafa Abu Saad.
I quoted him about two weeks ago.
And he said that there was a Kuwaiti
sister who came to him and she said,
doctor, I've got a real issue.
What's your issue, sister?
She said, my kids don't want to spend
any time with me.
I'm just very unappealing to them as a
mother.
My husband, we are barely able to engage
in any type of conversation.
I'm just a loner in the house.
Dr. Mustafa, he said to her, let's not
talk about any of this for a moment.
Let me just ask you, what are your
top three recreational interests?
She said, doctor, please, I haven't got time
for any of this.
My kids, my husband, my teenage daughters, I
mean, they come home from university, just lock
themselves in the room and I'm pleading with
them, come out, let's talk and nobody wants
to see me.
He said, ignore it.
Tell me, what are your recreational interests?
She said, I haven't got any.
He said, no, I'm sure you do.
She said, no, I really don't.
He said, come on, I don't know.
Walking in the street?
No.
Restaurants?
No.
TV?
No.
He said to her, come on, there must
be something.
Coffee?
Do you like coffee?
She said, yeah, I like coffee.
He said, okay, alhamdulillah, let's work with coffee.
Here's your plan.
He said, I want you to do this
for a course of two weeks.
Find a space in your home, beautify it,
perfume it, put a table and chair, put
one or two candles perhaps, and wear your
finest clothes, do your hair, do your makeup
as though somebody was coming, and prepare your
favorite dessert dish, and put a flask of
coffee on the other side.
She said, who am I doing this with?
He said, yourself, just yourself.
And come back to me in 14 days
and tell me what happens.
She said, okay.
So she comes home, she sorts herself out,
wears nice clothes, puts a table out, a
few candles, her favorite dessert dish, and a
flask of coffee.
And she's there eating from the dessert and
sipping from the coffee.
First daughter comes back from university.
She's looking at her mom.
Mom, who's coming today?
She said, no one.
He said, well, what's all this?
She said, it's for me.
He said, oh, okay.
She went back into her room and closed
the door as usual.
Weird situation going on there.
She said, my other daughter came back.
She looked at me, she goes, mom, who's
coming today?
She said, no one's coming.
She said, so what's all this?
She said, it's for me.
I want to enjoy myself.
Okay.
So she went back into her room.
She said that then husband comes back from
work and he looks at me, but doesn't
say anything.
He said, do you mind if I take
a seat next to you?
She said, yeah, no problem.
Come in.
So he sits and he says, can you
pour me some coffee?
She said, yeah, of course.
He gives him a cup of coffee.
She said, subhanAllah, we spoke for about an
hour.
Before this, she said, we couldn't sustain a
five minute conversation before both of us got
bored and run out of things to say.
An hour we spoke.
Next day, she said, I did the exact
same thing, but I wore an even better
outfit.
I did my hair, candles, dessert, coffee.
Daughter comes back from university.
Mom, who's coming today?
She said, no one's coming.
What's all this about then?
Get to the bottom of it, please.
She said, it's for me.
She said, can I, can I take a
seat with you?
She said, yeah, come sit with me.
Other daughter comes in.
She goes, can I join you two?
She said, come in.
Husband comes back from work.
Can I, can I join you three?
Come in.
She said to Dr. Mustafa Abu Saad, it's
strange to think that there came a time
where I couldn't get them to talk to
me because now I just want them to
go away.
SubhanAllah.
What's the, what's the lesson from all of
this?
What do you think the lesson is?
Tell me.
What's the key lesson you take from this?
Fire away.
There's no right and wrong inshallah.
Go ahead.
You have to sometimes give them a reason
for what?
Good.
Yeah, good.
Yeah.
You got to show them a reason for
them to come and spend time with you.
Good.
When you have some self-respect, others will
respect you.
When you attach value to yourself, people will
attach value to you.
You undermine yourself.
Why will people attach any value to that
when you don't see yourself in a positive
light?
There has to be a point in the
life of a murabbi, a teacher, mother, father,
where they attend to themselves.
It's not selfish.
This is human.
So that you can continue being a dutiful
husband and a respectful or dutiful wife and
an effective parent.
And as a rule, we don't have to
offer this advice to the brothers because alhamdulillah
they take care of their recreational activities.
Sometimes to their own detriment, to our sisters
we will say, there needs to be say
three recreational activities that you engage in at
some point in the week.
That doesn't necessarily involve your husband or children
or it could, but it has to be
something that you enjoy and it's not for
the kids, it's for you.
The husband as well and some of us
perhaps a little bit more hands-on than
our fathers were.
Same thing for yourself.
Why?
Because in the absence of this, everything bothers
you.
You think you're a great dad, you think
you're an amazing mom, but in reality you're
just angry, you have a short fuse and
everything is making you switch.
It's a reality.
Kids run around, stop running around.
They're making a mess, stop making a mess.
When they raise their voice, it's like electricity
is going through your veins.
You can't hear it.
A child cries, you want to jump off
a bridge.
Why?
Because you're stressed.
You're stressed.
When you give yourself some time, وَإِنَّ لِنَفْسِكَ
عَلَيْكَ حَقًۭ As the Prophet ﷺ said, you
have a right upon yourself.
When the child cries, it's music to your
ears.
Children are running around, enjoy yourself, just don't
smash your head on the table.
I don't feel like going to Heath Hospital
this afternoon.
Right?
Everything is calm.
Why?
Because you're calm.
So this is detractor number what?
Detractor number 12.
As you see, my brothers, my sisters, these
detractors that I shared with you, they're quite
logical and none of these were things that
you are to do.
If you notice, they're all in the negative,
meaning things that you are to stay away
from and abstain.
Because what we said in the beginning and
I will repeat it now in the conclusion,
Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala in the positive
parenting strategy that we are speaking about and
the honorable child whom we said we want
to preserve his honor and his dignity and
her dignity, that's our birthright.
That's how Allah Almighty made us.
So it's not something that you need to
install in the child.
It's something you need to preserve from being
what?
Damaged and blemished.
And these 12 things, they damage them.
If you avoid them and you try to
do the opposite wherever possible, then the dignity,
the honor of the child is preserved and
we have, by Allah's permission, a child who
can be effective later on in life.
I think next week will be our last
class on the topic of parenting, which will
be our class number four inshallah on this
topic and then we will conclude then.