Altaf Husain – Navigating Adolescence Recap
AI: Summary ©
The speakers discuss the issue of autopilot and lack of parents and guardians for children in schools, as well as the importance of healthy spiritual connections and early development for positive lifetimes. They stress the need for early childhood education and early development for mental health and emotional development, including depressive episodes and early intervention for these children. The urgency of developing curriculum to achieve healthy gender roles is crucial for children to grow healthy and enjoyable in their homes, and the development of currency-based curriculum is crucial for achieving healthy gender roles.
AI: Summary ©
The growth and the development,
the growth and the development of teenage of
young children and adolescents,
ultimately cannot be on autopilot.
And this is one of the critiques that
I have in studying this population,
is that I think for too long we
have maintained a,
sort of an autopilot
kind of an approach.
That indeed children are being raised in a
Muslim household,
so they must, you know, inshallah they'll turn
out okay, you know, we live by the
masjid, we take them to the masjid, so
they're being, you know, touched by Islam, and
somehow they'll just be fine.
Also, a rude awakening clearly has occurred,
whereby
just the sheer amount of information being given
to children
at very, very young ages,
sometimes without the
presence of parents and guardians who are Muslims,
which And by that I mean whether in
nursery schools, in,
in nursery programs,
in preschools, and wherever, whereby we are not
there to help our children even internalize or
listen to and make sense of what is
being presented to them. And it is just
by chance
that,
sub alhamdulillah,
many of them are coming out well, but
there are clearly issues arising from the fact
that we don't have necessarily
a grasp on this
age group. There are cultural and social forces
also
that are really bent on ensuring
that there's a particular
angle, if you will, a particular,
healthy, quote unquote healthy
developmental,
project that is being, you know, presented,
that if you don't subscribe to it, if
you don't subscribe to that project, if you
will, that somehow you are the one out
of line, and you are the one out
of, a sequence sync.
Connections matter.
Attachment parenting,
one of the styles,
talks about connections.
And this idea, and the Prophet peace be
upon him, subhanAllah,
when you look at the little things that
we think are little that he did with
children,
He was known.
He was known
to hold,
and to embrace, and to hug, and to
kiss his grandchildren
all
the time. All the time.
Ali radhiyallahu ta'ala Anhu and Fatima radhiyallahu ta'ala
Anhu obviously inherited these behaviors and watched them,
and they displayed similar.
Why is that critical?
Touch
for the young children, at an early age,
from loving guardians and parents, is something that
starts to develop a level of trust.
A level of trust that all is well.
Even to the orphan
who may not have guardians,
and he was an orphan, as you recall,
who never saw his father, his mother passed
away by the tender age of 6. Even
to the orphan to show the love, he
said,
he said, for the one and this is
a cultural thing where you comb the or
you brush your,
hand through the hair of a child,
basically kind of going like this as a
gesture of love.
Gesture of love. I'm I'm married, masha'a, with
4 kids, if I visit my mother, it
still happens, so don't think it's all that
strange.
He said to the one who does that
to a child and who is an orphan,
by by putting your hand through their hair,
sort of showing a gesture of love, for
every single
strand of hair that your hand touches, Allah
subhanahu wa ta'ala will reward you.
To show you how much,
you know, healthy,
embracing,
and kissing, and holding of our children was
critical. So connection
in the lives of these children who were
at risk, at birth, and then through 40
years emerged as the one of the most
significant factors. Believe it or not,
spiritual
sort of connecting with some higher deity, if
you will,
and some level of connection to faith emerged
as the second
strongest predictor
of,
a positive development.
And so here's a culture saying, run away
from religion.
In fact, abandon God. And remember in the
eighties, you know, is God alive and all
kinds of, you know, these, headlines that were
there. When we're saying, in fact, do the
exact opposite.
In fact, not only introduce the children at
an early age to who is their lord
and who is the prophet and what is
the Quran, and on and on and on,
then create in them
positive associations
with the religion in early life. And the
recent Harvard study talked about this, that people
who go on to have very positive development
developmental
outcomes, they have had a very positive relationship
with religion, and ultimately for us, that would
be God.
In what environment are we talking about this?
So, in other studies,
it has,
recent data has shown
that 1 out of 5 children
will likely suffer
a major depressive episode
before even leaving high school.
Brain development
is among the major concerns
of developmental
psychologists, social workers, and others who are focused
on adolescents
because this is the time
when the brain is most undergoing undergoing the
most change, which is this idea of early
teens and teens and so forth.
In fact, a not a disclaimer, a, a
preface to this is that whatever we did
know about when adolescence starts
is literally being have having to be thrown
out the window
because of how much
hormones, steroids
and other chemicals have been introduced into our
foods
that have triggered,
triggered
the early onset of puberty
in children
that was never seen before prior to this
last decade and and 2 decades. So whatever
we thought would happen at 7, 8, 9,
10, or 11, 12, 13, and on and
on, whether it was Piaget or Ericsson or
any of the other psych, developmental,
psychologists,
some of that is being having to be
reconsidered
in light of the fact
that these changes are occurring so fast, but
it's also altering
the thinking of young children in terms of
that hormonal development, but also societal forces for
the chemicals and the
steroids and stuff are affecting who they are,
how they are developing physically, and then psychologically,
they have the impact of culture and society
on them. So what are the things they
go through? Among the things that adolescents have
a hard time with is perspective taking.
They are often one-sided in their thinking. Not
every adolescent.
It's just the case. It's just how they
grow out of it, most of them, and
then ultimately if they don't grow out of
it, they end up becoming dictators who head
up countries who only have one perspective.
So we wanna pray for people who grow
healthily out of this, inshallah.
The reality
is that while the brain is under development,
there are societal,
cultural forces
literally attacking and hitting hard
at that vulnerable age group.
Magazines,
websites,
blogs,
all kinds of, you know, marketing forces that
are there. 1 of the students in my
class did a study about how young girls,
for example, with any who develop
ultimately
eating disorders or, or con overly, you know,
concerned with their physical shape, partially it comes
from an industry
that is destined
to create in them at least schizophrenia,
if not complete loss of self esteem if
they don't fit a certain shape or size
or look as is being prescribed by those
marketing forces.
So while that brain is under development,
who is there for them?
Who is there for them? So I'm raising
more questions
than potentially giving answers in a setting like
this, but this is what we need to
have. This is what needs to be done.
We need to be talking about these questions
and and looking at this. They're also more
prone
to emotional outbursts
because of, again, that development they're going through.
They're also more prone to misread,
misread emotional cues.
Which is why, by the way, and I
and I said, I have a 17 year
old, I have a 13 year old, and
I'm sure I was a teenager, others are
teens now and raising
teens. Right? Sometimes it's a strange reaction between
parents when we say something to them and
how they ultimately react to us. And they
read anger when there is no anger present
because they misread those truth, they misread it
as controlling.
So if we're gonna be having a compassionate
environment,
in which they're able to explore who they
are, and some of these questions about gender
and other things. Have we done the homework
from the very beginning to introduce them to
a very healthy concept of gender,
and a healthy concept within Islam, of both
genders, not just the male, but also the
female, and to do it equally and, and
equitably.
If young children
are in a society where everything is always
open to questioning
and seemingly done in a vacuum where no
guidance is provided,
they will have, they will develop a lot
of trauma.
Alhamdulillah, we are not a people who are
left without guidance.
So how do we use that guidance, and
what can we do? Number 1.
It is urgent.
It is a matter of urgency for us
to develop curricula or curriculum
that can be shared with parents
so that this conversation
about gender, and socialization,
and roles,
healthy gender roles,
understanding and appreciation of those begins at the
earliest of ages.
In our home, for example, as I mentioned,
with 3 girls and 1 boy, it is
not at all,
another day goes
by that I don't have to watch my
language when I speak to the children and
not just say, hey boys or hey guys.
And if I forget
if I forget, my 8 year old
will fold her hands and then I'm almost
in timeout. Right? Because she gets it. She
gets it. If we're doing activities, I have
to be careful about what I'm promoting
as being the in thing to do and
making sure that she and they are both
being raised in a way that is healthy,
but also indeed enjoyable for them. At home,
and I've mentioned this before, and I don't
say this just lightly,
I'm, because of different, you know, obligations with
the community and other things, what can I
do at home to help the family? I
do the laundry, I do the ironing.
Typically, that is not known to be gender
roles in terms of males.
So when my daughter sees me doing that,
and my sons see me doing that, I've
already contributed to a healthy understanding
of not my
thinking or my views, but how the prophet,
peace be upon him, conducted himself in the
life of his family. You follow what I'm
saying?