Mastering Non-Verbal Influence with Kids and Teens – Michael Abraham

Okay Bismillah Alhamdulillah wa salatu salam ala Rasulillah Dear brothers and sisters are Salam alaykum Warahmatullahi Wabarakatuh. And welcome to this special session that we're having today with our raising believers, cohort to parents.

We have with us a special guest, masha Allah brother,

Michael Abraham.

He is an experienced public school teacher, teacher, trainer and author Shala. He has notably improved educational outcomes and school climates at various levels from elementary to high school.

And my co brother Michael has led professional development for public school educators across North America. I believe He's based in Canada. Now Minnesota, Minnesota, in Minnesota. We're like Canada, but we're in the United States. I remember that's what you said. And so then I just remembered Canada. Yeah. As well as Islamic private schools with over 3000 educators taking his programs Masha Allah, He is the creator of the K 12 I think educator training program engaging Muslim students and publicly public schools and author of the book by the same name and you can find him on Instagram I sent everyone the link to his page A salaam alaikum. Brother, Michael, why call Mr. Lamb are so

broke out to thank you, sister, thank you for having me here. Very excited for today.

So, brother, Michael, one of the themes that has kept coming up throughout these weeks that we've been having the raising believers course, has been communicating, you know, communication with children, teenagers, younger children even right and you know, disciplining them or basically getting what you what you as a parent need them to do.

Getting them to be able to understand you and getting to be able to influence them without resorting to any kind of extreme or, you know, the wrong sorts of means, right?

Our session today is about nonverbal communication, and how to influence teens and children

with nonverbal communication can you please

tell us what you know about this subject and what you'd like parents to know about it?

Yeah, it was me Allah, I can talk a lot about this topic and I have some video to share inshallah of adult child

student teacher interaction that we can break down in this in this respect,

to talk about nonverbal communication, and it's actually some of the resources let like the inshallah the the attendees and viewers of this can get a little taste of things that I trained schools in. So like you said, you know, I work in the city of Minneapolis, I work in inner city school, I've been part of successful turnaround projects in inner city schools, behavior management is always a really big challenge in any school, really, especially nowadays, but certainly in American inner city schools. It's a notorious problem from from long time ago. And, you know, of course, you know, all cultures, including the West, they've gone through this sort of

swing with child management, where they used to be very, very punitive. And almost the abuse of Western culture is extremely abusive to kids. Not that long ago, you know, it'd be common both in American British schools, the teacher would be carrying the stick, they'd hit the kids in the hands, sometimes very derogatory things and kids with mallets, all this type of stuff. Even as, as recent as my parents generation experience that, you know, then they got traumatized by that, you know, especially like that baby boomer generation, they had parents who were traumatized by the wars, in the World War periods, all this type of stuff. So they went through their own trauma with that, and

then kind of as a as a backlash to that, that they've sort of swung to the other side of the pendulum, which, which a lot of Muslim culture is doing now to where, okay, if we don't want to be punitive with the kids, we don't want to scold the kids, you don't want to hit them, or what do we do instead? Usually, the conclusion that people arrive at if they don't have anything else is well, we'll just positively reinforce the kids and we will reward them and we'll give them toys, we'll give them candy or whatever, for things that they do. Well, now that works for a time being and you know, both of these measures, punitive measures and rewarding measures. There's a place with that

for kids there is but sole reliance on either one of them is really really a mistake because it can either traumatize the kids or it will condition them to be safe.

boiled. And either way, it conditions them to not really have internal motivation for whatever it is you want them to do. It just it only nurtures in them a motivation that is based on something external, either avoidance of punishment, or getting rewards. The only thing with both of them is whichever kind of external motivator that you use with kids, whether it's punitive or positive, whatever you do with the kids get desensitized to it eventually, and you need to up the ante with it. So with punitive measures, right, you know, it's habitual to a degree it's it's intuitive to a degree to yell with kids when they misbehave when they're not compliant, and when they annoy you.

Because they because kids, adults do experience kids, and has been annoying, and especially with your own kids hit you harder. So things like yelling at them is like a natural reaction. And when kids are young, when kids are maybe first experiencing it with like a teacher, or someone and their first and their initial relationship with them, they'll respond to that yelling, and they'll want to stop. But if that's the only thing the adult relies on, the kid will become desensitized to it eventually. And then what do you have to do? Well, you have to yell louder. And if you have to yell louder, and that eventually doesn't work, then you feel like you gotta do something else. And all

those types of things. Again, it ruins motivation, kids, and nurtures negative behavior patterns in the kids, especially with the way that they learn to, to test the adult to get into power struggles with them and control the adults emotions in that way. And more than anything, both adults and teachers who rely on either one of those measures, they end up suffering from burnout. So what are the solution, the solution is, adults need a method to be able to control kids, or get them to comply with them in a way that is not stressful for the adults. And in a way that maintains a relationship where the kid is doing it out of authentic, authentic respect for how they experience

the adult. Now, there are behavior management specialists who have studied this pretty thoroughly in the West. Although they're not there, their methods aren't actually the most popular ones that are used. But it turns out, when you look at this, a big part of it comes down to nonverbal communication, and how the adult exhibits themselves with their body language, their facial expression, their tone of voice and their speaking pattern.

And there's specific things that can be learned with that. And this is basically what I teach the schools that are struggling with, with,

with behavior management, because especially working in like the inner city, like a teacher who doesn't have the skill set, they really won't survive very long in teaching. It's a big reason why in the United States, at least half of people get licensed and teaching, they leave the profession within two years. Because you need the skill set to stave your own stress level, when you are dealing with the kids. And just for the kids to experience you in a way where they're going to respect your authority. And kids are extremely sensitive to nonverbal communication, it's something that's been studied this more so than adults. So there's studies that have been done, where they

will show facial expressions of adults to a group of adults and a group of kids and facial expressions that they show that adults will interpret as being like neutral, or like, oh, that's just the person's resting face. When you show it to kids, they will cast things onto it, that the person showing that face in that picture never intended, like they'll say, Oh, that guy, he's mad about something, or he's He's really upset about this type of thing. So they're very, very sensitive to this type of stuff. And there are things that have been studied, observed in schools over a long time that kids are known to respond to, that you can get predictable responses from kids. And

inshallah I will, you know, what I tend to do here today is to show some video of the negative stuff with teachers, and then just show some positive and give a glimpse into what some of these things entail. And you believe that this can be transferred, like it's relevant to parents as well as teachers, it can be in different sector, it's completely irrelevant to parents, it's completely, because you know, at the end of the day, you're getting the kids, you're getting kids to try to listen to you to respect you, and to earn compliance from them. And what you want them to do, it's exactly the same with the different dynamics with a teacher, you're in front of a larger group of

kids who aren't your own kids. So you're working uphill in that regard. So a parent actually has more of an advantage in working with this stuff. The disadvantage with its with the parents have is they experience their kids with emotional with an emotional tightness that teachers don't have with the kids who aren't their own. So like, what will what I'll get into it. But at the base of all this is being relaxed when you interact with kids, especially when the kids trigger you, and especially when the kids stress you out, which is very counterintuitive, because the kids trigger stress reactions in us. But people who master this stuff, they train themselves to initially calm

themselves with three

mean, before they react to anything that the kid does. That's easier if it's not your kid. If it is your kid, you just, you just inherently get more worked up at their own upsetness and their own testing the boundaries, that type of thing that you do whether it gets, that's the disadvantage that parents have, that they're working against.

Hey, yeah.

So would you like to share the video with them? Yeah, let's get to some video. Okay, so I'm gonna play us for a second. Okay, these, this is all natural video, it's all raw video, there's all video classrooms, where some sort of tense interaction started taking place between a teacher and a student. And then some kids who got on a phone. So got caught on camera. And we're going to look at the, the negative examples first. Because these are teachers who didn't know what they were doing, they didn't have a system or game plan in place with their nonverbal interaction. So they end up exhibiting some things that are really common patterns that we can identify. So this teacher right

here, he's mad at this boy, who's in the middle

of the white headed about something his name's Isaiah.

Hey, what do you got to say about this? Okay, you showed all this. Okay, now you have just a few seconds into this just to invest some things we can observe, observe to take a look at the scene here, both the teacher and the kids, some things about nonverbal communication, okay, he's yelling at this boy right here, who's behind the SmartWater bottle he like didn't take his book out or something like that. And he's got, he's had enough, he's gotten all upset about it. Now, even though that's the kid that he's upset at, like, if you look at some of the kids around him, just the fact that there's tense interactions taking place, you see things with those kids, okay, the one kid in

the back, he's all tense, he's got his hands up over his head, he's pulling his hair back, you see this girl who's next to him, she's got her hands planted in her face. Okay, that what you're seeing from that from that girl right there, that shows something that is a very real physiological reaction that kids have when they experience tense interactions with adults. And you'll see as I play the video, she actually like really like you can see her eyes and right now, she will actually begin to like plant her face in those in her hands. And what she's doing Actually, she's fighting a natural reaction that she's having where her tear ducts are actually activating. Even though she's

not the subject of the tense interaction, just the fact that it's taking place is making her feel that way. What that indicates about this girl is, she's a girl who's not used to this tense interaction, she doesn't get a whole lot of it herself. And any kid when they're at a point in life, where they haven't gotten a whole lot of that tense interaction themselves, this is how they feel. This is what it first instigates in the instigates a reaction to want to cry. Now, when kids are in a situation like this, where it's teenagers, and they're around their peers, there's no way they're going to let them let themselves cry. So you'll see this, you will see kids do this a lot, where

they will smother their face into their hands to try to suppress that activation of the tear ducts. They might do the same thing, if they're around adults, who they don't feel enough emotional safety and emotional comfort with to cry in front of them. Now, kids who have gotten this a lot before which Isaiah, he's maybe at like the mid level, he's not like totally defiance, he's maybe experiencing some of that interaction. But he's maybe gotten some of this before, but he's not dead into it. The more that kids get experienced tense interactions, the more they build up a resistance to this type of natural reaction. And the more they deaden themself to whatever the adult is trying

to tell them. And the more they have built up defense walls to adults, and are shut down and hearing anything from them. And they'll experience this differently with different adults, depending on how adults interact with them. But it's not uncommon at all that kids, they experienced so much tense interaction with adults through childhood, early and pre and early adolescence, that by the time they get to late adolescence, they have these defense walls built up where they're shut down from really hearing anything from their parents, a lot of times that they want to separate emotionally from their parents, or in like their later teens. They've been holding something back from their

parents for so long. And their brains develop to the point when they get into their later teens, where they can integrate concepts enough that now they will come back with their parents with some like really harsh and sometimes very sharp criticism that they've kind of known inside themselves that they have for their parents that they've been holding on and didn't quite know how to articulate or have the bravery to come out with when they were 12. So, point is these tense interactions like they were kids down and they build up defense walls and you need an alternative for the adult. What is he doing? Okay? He's doing something that for some reason is extremely common

for

for adults to do when they're educate, agitate with kids, which is he's got his knuckles on his hips, and his arms are flailing out like this. There is actually a specific term for this, it is called a pheasant posturing, or chicken posturing, because he kind of looks like a piece of poultry. And he's like, flapping his wings out there and pecking away at the kids. There's something about adults, when they get stressed out, this is something they do with kids, body language, experts say in general, the higher your limbs are up, and the more they are external, the more aggressive you look, and the more agitated you look. And the more out of control of your own emotional state, you

look. So in general, it's better to have your kid have your arms by your side, and have your shoulder relax, when the kids triggers a stress reaction in you, because it shows that you are in control of yourself. And if you are in control of yourself emotionally, what that signal signals to the kids as you are in control of the situation. But you have no clue what's going on here because you've got an attitude about this. And this is nonsense.

I've been talking to everybody in here, okay.

Yes, I have them and telling me I don't know how to teach.

Look at that. Girl smush her face in her hands. I've been doing training all over North America. And I know exactly what's going on. Okay, when you sit back, and when you sit back and read papers up and you don't take notes, you don't read your book, and you don't and you do what you do. I know exactly what's going on. I know how to teach Okay.

Fine.

You know,

you're the one who can make excuses for yourself. I'm you can be either the excuses or make excuses. Or you can be the accuser. You can say I'm not going to make excuses. I'm going to when you got your choice to make an excuse, or not make an excuse. And when, you know, that's the way like you got to

win. I've been I've been down there. Okay, you can just tell. I mean, just ask yourself, Does this guy have control of the situation?

Actually, the kids look like they've experienced this before.

Okay, good. Yeah, they do. And look, the thing is, there's a process, there's this deadening process and a coping process that goes on with the kids, you have to understand kids do not empathize with the emotions of adults very well, because they have never experienced before and adults, adults actually struggle to empathize with the emotional experience of kids as well, usually, because they are distance from their own experience as a child, and your own experience as a child is a very, very good thing to reflect upon. Now you hear the kids laughing behind the background, okay. Now, now in a classroom situation, when this type of any interaction that's always going on between the

teacher and students, where are the leverage of social of where the, the axis of social leverage is? What, especially when a kid enters into a power struggle, the teacher is very, very important because it's either going to be on the side of the kids or on the side of the teacher. When the teacher goes all tense like this, it always ends up being on the side the kids and a way that you feel them coping with it. Okay? You see the some kids putting their heads down, and they're the faceplant type of stuff. Yeah. It's, other kids will cope with it by

by laughing at it's okay, by Lafayette, trying to make a joke of it. Now, what is that that is an emotional cope, because they can't blame themselves for whatever the emotional experience of this adult is. Because they don't totally get where it's coming from. They don't understand the stress of being a teacher, they don't understand the stress of being a parents, you have the kids here, they're laughing about it a little bit in the class, when they get out of the class, the cool thing to do is going to be to laugh about it even more. And I can tell you exactly what those kids are going to say about their teacher, they're gonna say he's crazy. And they're gonna say he's got

issues. And they will never get to a place where they feel like that teacher is someone that they can trust, or someone that they can open up to. And they will be defensive as to whether or not he even has anything of value to ever give them despite the fact that he's saying, Well, I've trained people all over North America, I've run businesses, and I know let's go doesn't matter what he's saying. What he's the words he's saying mean nothing here, because the nonverbal interaction that he's having, now that kids go through the same thing with their parents, they might be less likely to laugh at often their parents but when the kids constantly get this tense interaction from this

from their parents, the defense will always go up. And they go internal with it with the feelings towards it. And they will get to places where those internal feelings they express externally somewhere you

usually to a peer group, and with the peer group, it's gonna be the same thing. Oh, your mom and dad don't know what they're talking about, you know, they're just okay. They're just old. And they don't know how things are these days, you should tell them this, you should tell them that nowadays, our kids, they don't even need other kids to get that kind of feedback, they can go on Tik Tok, they can go on Snapchat, that tick tock of algorithm. The algorithm of tick tock is particularly good at feeding young people videos, where people are complaining about their parents and saying, if your parents tell you this, this and that, you tell them that blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, all this type

of stuff. So you can't really let your kids get in that type of defensive position in the first place. And it all begins with them experiencing these tense interactions, because that's the emotional process that takes place. I'm saying some things in the chat. Okay. Yeah. Can I just ask you one thing as well. It's interesting, because even the fact that he, a teacher is kind of going talking about his own credentials. And it feels like, like, why did he even have to mention them? You know, like, nobody asked him, nobody said anything about them. It's as if he's having to. He's, he's, he looks more insecure. And he's having to overcompensate. And

he's almost trying to say, well, because I've, I'm this person, you should be respecting me more, right or something.

And look, you know, kids, they want guidance, badly. They want adults with wisdom that they can accept. But getting that from an adult, and accepting it is something that they feel much more than they logically think themselves into. So it's like the biggest mistake I always see with parents especially. But even with a lot of teachers, when they're having issues with kids, they want to know, like, what's the right thing to say to them. And for kids, it's not really about what I mean, we know the right things to say to kids. It's not really about what you say, and kids are, their logic is limited life is much more an emotional experience for kids, that they're feeling a lot

harder. So an adult that they can accept wisdom from is an adult that they have to have a certain emotional experience with. And kids are comforted by adults who are in emotional control of themselves. Kids are adults who they have that experience with ease, especially when they are tested. Adults who they have that experience with that is those are the adults that they buy into. Those are the adults that they feel incentivized to sit down and listen, when they come to the classroom, this type of thing. And again, I mean, in an inner city school, people always think that the kid has been all rough and tough and all this type of stuff. And they do exhibit those types of

behaviors. But the adults who they response to, you know, and I'm not saying that they're, you know, a whole other, you can make a mistake by going to the other extreme of being like overly nice and overly like pitying towards the kids in this type of thing. The adults in kids respect are adults who exhibit emotional control of themselves, because there is a comfort in that, because it feels like they're in control of the situation we're in. They are in control of their life. They're in control of themselves. So they must know what they're talking about when they say something.

Okay.

Yes, he looks weak. Someone says in the chat, yes. Okay, let's first let's fast forward a little with this one, can you give us one, he actually tries to turn it positive later on, say, like, you know, you've got a lot of potential as a or this type of thing. But, you know, the kids have no place to buy it in this type of stuff. Get started. Another thing, another thing I was just thinking is, you know, when you criticize a child in front of other kids, yes.

A certain amount of it might be inevitable. But then when you start properly, fully disciplining them and going on and on, like, in front of others, and you're basically taking everybody's time you're in, you're humiliating that person in front of everyone. Yes. I know, from my own experience, like with my kids, you'd, if there's a child who's really going over the top, you want to separate them and talk to them later or separately. You know, well, look, I think with that, okay, okay, like speaking of a teacher, okay, separating kids from the classroom, you know, speaking from a teacher perspective, alright. Separating kids from the situation um, that's an expensive thing as far as

time and energy and school resources for a teacher to do another thing too okay. Most Defiance is petty when it starts it's very, very small. And you want to you want to deal with it when it first appears and again, if you have the education skills, but yeah, the other nonverbal communication skills especially you can turn it around very, very efficiently. A lot of times without even you say, without even having to say something. But the thing is when it when it gets started to expand

relevancy with defiance, sometimes it's just a lack of impulse control, especially for kids like under age nine, eight, okay? After that there is maybe some experiment, some intentional experimentation that goes along with, with willful defiance towards adults. And when you send a kid out of a room or you separate them, you get them out of the situation where you're trying to teach themselves, they're talking about something. You know, when when a kid exhibits defiance, first, they've entered into what we call a power struggle with you. And if you sometimes certainly with the teacher, in a classroom situation, if you have to tell the kid to get out of the room, or go into

the hall or something like that, what would you've actually communicated that kid is I can't handle you. And therefore the kid has actually won the power struggle. And even you know, a lot of times adults, what feels intuitive is, is you get tough, and you get forceful. So that's why you get loud with the voice. And that's why you get that way. But that's but the kids who are who are experimenting with the defiance, or they've mustered up the courage, or the apathy to start exhibiting the defiance, the way they are experiencing that emotionality of the adult is, I'm controlling him, or I'm controlling her, I have the ability to work them up, you know, I can agitate

them, so so they are actually winning the power struggle that and you don't win power struggles with kids, without emotional control, okay, especially when you lack networks of support, okay, sometimes when you know, and I will talk sometimes with people, you know, in Old World Cultures, the kind of snapping at kids that are getting upset at them really quick, that type of stuff, you can maybe get away with it more, and you can get kids to respond to it more, because they're experiencing it from everybody in the society. So it's kind of like there's no way out from it. And I think that in those types of conditions, kids actually respond to it even sooner. But when you're raising them in the

West, or raising them in the modern world, they'll have a certain emotional feeling when you give them that type of reaction. And then there's other places they can go where they can say, well, so and so's mom and dad don't do that. So and so can do this and get away with it, you know, there's all the, all that type of thing. So that incentivizes them to just again, see, you see the problem as being you. And that incentivizes them over time to build up the defensive walls, and eventually push back and reject you in some ways.

Because as a gym teacher was like talking to the kids about something,

before they're gonna go to the gym, and do their activities, or whatever, and the students like, wouldn't stop talking about it, put his phone away, or whatever. And it's funny, because they're sitting on these yoga balls, I'm looking at the UK schools do this, but some, you know, some schools are trying to get creative with their management of kids. And having kids sit on yoga balls, the theory with it is it allows them to wiggle around a little bit, which helps them relax. But, you know, if the teacher is not relaxed, they can't relax. So we'll break down this interaction a little bit.

So AQ asks, is that even though they elicit a negative emotion from you that they don't like? Do they see that as winning? Yeah, okay, when a kid's being willfully defiant. And like, you know, what, in a power struggle, they're looking for kind of a power trip. So if they elicit a negative reaction in you, and you're not in control of yourself, which if you're operating on your stress reaction, you're not, yes, that that is how kids will take that it will fuel the behavior more because they'll say I'm winning, I can control them. And it's funny, you know, and the thing is, too, they don't kids don't have like a reasoned out end goal with these things. Whereas adults do in

the interaction. So like experimenting with the way that the adult reacts is a big thing of what the kids are doing in these situations. And you can get lost in that.

You already

tough guy.

All day long, all day. Don't listen to anyone can respectfully ask you to put your phone down. And respectfully ask you to stop talking. Don't just don't stop.

You're trying to get louder. I'm trying

to touch your face on my face. That's the thing you ought to get my

job. get in trouble and you

don't think

you're tough. This is really

Okay, now this one's really interesting, because it's a really good example to show how the kids, they really feed off the energy of the adults very directly. Now this young man, he's not actually like totally defiant, because he thinks he's innocent, whatever he's done here, but this also isn't his first rodeo. And he is a little older than the other kid we saw. So he's at the stage where his willingness to push back on adults with these types of interactions is even higher. Now.

Interesting things took place because he started pushing back, and he sat down. And then the adults when he started going in for more, okay, he got into that bent kind of hacking posture, yelling at him more, and then that that got the kid charged up, and he really let out at him. Okay, now, at the point that we're paused at here, when you will yell at someone and you will yell at someone who you're agitated at whether you're the kid or an adult, that itself, it's operating on a stress reaction, and it acts as a temporary stress relief. Now, this doesn't mean it's a good thing to do, but it's one of the initial purposes that it serves, and result that hats. So you see, now that he's

like, let it out to the adult and yelled at him. He's actually started to relax, okay, you see his hands, his hands have gone below the waist, his his shoulders have lowered, he's standing up straight. So he's actually starting to relax. Now when I press play here, it you're gonna see the adult to the adult doesn't stop and keeps going back in him. And then the young man, he has to do something to get himself charged up to match the energy level, you don't go back at it.

terminated now, I'm

out

by now.

You're trying to bait me into an altercation? Because you want to have a lawsuit? Oh, that's your toughness.

Okay, you see that little walk around that he did? Okay, he was relaxed. Posture was straight shoulder down, Stan hands below his waist. And the teacher keeps going with it. And it goes into this talk. And this is what I'm saying to about like, you know, the kids, they don't have some sort of reason out logical end to these types of interactions. Like he's saying, you're trying to bait me into a lawsuit. I mean, it's a ridiculous thing to say, in the interaction. It's making him look weak, just like the other one. And it's so ridiculous. The kid feels disrespected, he's losing so much respect for his adult, he actually has to walk in a little circle to really get himself worked

up so he can go back at it with the adult.

asking you not to talk

loud, I do.

That I am.

i You're not.

Okay, me just keeps going and going. I've cut out the swearing. You know,

first of all, okay, first of all, look, take a look at the boy who was on the yellow ball. Okay, well, what is he doing? What's he doing?

He's not the subject of the interaction. What's he doing?

He's rubbing his face as well. Yes. CDK. Okay, this is an I show this to show like, there's something physiological to this, okay? Like the whole thing with the tear ducts acting, the exact same thing is happening to this boy, on the yellow ball in front of us doing the exact same thing, completely different place, completely different contexts, completely different kids, same thing going on.

So it's kind of it's kind of disrespectful to the other kids isn't like they, they haven't turned up for this type of extreme behavior, extreme kind of emotional stuff to be happening in front of them and yelling and all of this. So it's kind of like, unfair on them on the rest of the people. You know, it's extremely unfair to them kids who are in schools, where this is going on. And it's something that's only more and more common. Okay, the United States teenage culture kind of leads the world in disrespect for adults in this type of stuff. So it might not be as bad in schools in the UK. But you know, like, like parents who contact me who they're concerned about the LGBT stuff

in school, you know, I try to tell them, there's all kinds of even if that wasn't there in schools, what kind of other reasons to take your kids out of public schools, because, you know, as teachers aren't given the types of tools to manage these behaviors properly, and stay in their own emotional control, kids are exposed to this type of thing in the classrooms are in more and more and more and sometimes the kids who are off to the side, they can be hurt by it more than anyone. And and they're, you know, certainly their time is wasted.

But there's one more thing one more thing that I'm noticing in these is that because, you know, I've experienced different types of schools in the UK, and the best schools that I've

Sin,

you know, you know, this idea of broken windows

policy or whatever they call it, you know, where, if you take care of the little details, then, you know, the. So the best schools I've seen are ones where the kids have to wear a uniform. I know they sound like draconian things, right. But it's quite common in the UK, kids have to wear uniform.

The desks that will separate it, you know,

there's a certain order, like as soon as you walk into the classroom, you know, so I do feel that some of this like the over casualness of the Yep, all the setup as well can sometimes probably affect the attitude. You You're, you're 100% on target Sr. and, you know, that broken windows theory that comes from the police department of Mayor Rudy Giuliani in New York City, in the 1990s, where he he really reformed and New York City had very, very big problems with crime throughout the 1980s. And I was living near there in North Jersey as a child that time the 1990s He really reformed, he really reduced crime rates with that type of approach. Can you can you relate it to sorry, I just

realized I met some parents, the broken windows theory, you know, so through all through the 80s, New York City was having problems with gun violence, drug trafficking, drug trafficking, you know, people being mugged, and jumped in the streets, all this type of stuff. Late 70s. Through the 80s, Rudy Giuliani became mayor, I believe in 92, or 94, in New York City, and his Police Department took a broken windows theory approach to policing, meaning they really focused on cracking down the small things such as graffiti, such as petty vandalism, and all that type of stuff. And

vagrancy, okay, okay, homeless people soliciting on the street in this type of stuff, they crack down on all that stuff very, very hard. And they had a net a net effect of enabling the bigger stuff to not even take place. Now, both that approach to policing as well. And actually schools in America, there are schools who have explicitly taken on that approach. I worked at a school for a while where we read about this knowing this I know about or we read about, specifically what went on in New York City. And there are schools who take that approach to behavior management. But there's also been pushback against it, mostly due to complaints about racism and such an approach negatively

affecting kids in the inner city, and students of color. And African American students, this type of thing United States, so so it's so so the approach has not been fully taken on in some places, because of that, the extent to which the UK is influenced by the different trends that take place and different currents that exist in the United States schooling is still something I'm trying to, I'm constantly trying to gauge myself, as I interact with more and more people from the UK, being I mean, that, like you said, the inner cities, they do have more

certain schools that are more casual, you know, have a more casual approach. But what I'm saying is the schools that are rated as the best, so we have like a system where schools get inspected, you know, and they get a, like a

label given to them, you know, outstanding, good, satisfactory, unsatisfactory. And unsatisfactory means you legally they have to change, you know, they have to make certain changes, otherwise, they're going to be in big trouble. So

the schools that tend to be good and outstanding, are the ones who, you know, really take on this kind of, not this casual approach and have more order. uniform, expect certain things right from the beginning, I think, but, but just to just to link that to the home. I've noticed that even at home, when your house is disorderly, you know, when you're when your life is in chaos, when your routine is in chaos, when you know, the

the more things fall apart, when it comes to behavior as well, you know, and with behave with misbehavior from kids, you know, the metaphor a gift, it's like a spark in a forest in a dry forest, you know, so if you are in the middle of a dry forest, dry leaves and pine needles all over and like little flame builds up, you're gonna stomp it out right away. You wouldn't sit there and hope and say, well, it's just a small little flame. So hopefully it doesn't catch on anything and build up. It is going to catch I'll give you a very classic example. This is one of most important things in the classroom, for teachers learn. And I get even though you'll see I guarantee you it's how this

interaction began. This student started the teacher was talking and the students started talking to a student next door. Most power struggles and most things that start to Deke, like started to go downhill in a classroom begin with that the teacher is talking and the students say

I talked to the person next to him, or one of their friends and classmates, they tried to quietly under the under their breath or whatever. But that's how it begins. Now the big mistake that the teachers make, whenever kid starts doing it, they do it quietly, they do it at a whisper. And they will carry on a whole conversation like that. The biggest mistake teachers make is when one kid starts to do that, and they're talking, they notice it. But in the back of their mind, they said themselves, well, just one kid, I don't want to interrupt what I'm teaching. So hopefully, it just stops. So I'm just going to ignore it, it never just stops, it only builds up and the kids are very

tuned to one another. So if one kid notices a pair of kids, even across the side of the room aside talking and getting away with it, then they will start doing the same thing. And eventually, eventually, they get too loud or it gets to be too much. Where then you do have to stop and you have to make a whole bigger reprimand to say, hey, look, we need to stop talking to pay attention here. And meanwhile you've been talking to kids weren't paying attention. The whole key the the nonverbal thing you teach teachers to do with that is the moment you notice a kid turn their head, okay, so you set expectations, that when they're sitting and listening, they sit a certain way, their their

direction is facing a certain way. And their eyes are tuned all that type of stuff, you set those expectations. The moment you see a kid physically fall out of those expectations, especially by train to another kid, you just stop in the middle of your monologue, you pause, right and when you pause in the middle of your monologue, it's a nonverbal cue that you've noticed what's going on. And what typically happens as the kid will turn. And then they'll notice the pausing and they'll turn right back, and you can usually kill it just like that. Now there's a whole

Go ahead. I was gonna say, Would you say that's the same with parents then like, you know,

I've noticed that

with cars, some of this behavior that we're watching is quite extreme, like, to us is extreme. Because usually, for most Muslim parents, or, you know, for myself, for example, the first time my child is rude to me, I'm not gonna let that slide, you know what I mean? Like, so, because I've made them sort of sensitive to the, to the least amount of disrespect being unacceptable, right? It would never get, you know, like this, this behavior seems really extreme, it's never gonna get to that stage. Because

for them, they don't have to escalate and escalate and escalate. You know, it's like,

even the smallest behavior that is deemed disrespectful

let alone, you know, swearing, it's never gonna get to that, right. So

you're gonna have dealt with it at an early stage so that it doesn't, it doesn't give permission for it to

have to escalate.

Yeah, and when you, when you deal with it, at the early stage, it's always cheaper in terms of energy, and less complicated to deal with. So it's more efficient. And, you know, you know, to parents, they can fix things into the home structure.

That attune for this. So you know, just like having dinner every way. And I know, people might have dinner in different modes. You know, I come from a Western background. So you know, we dinner at a table that says, I think most Muslim families in the West do that. Now, I know, sometimes you sit on the floor or whatever. But you know, I have a mode, which is my kids have sit proper at the dinner table, okay, you have to sit straight up, you have to be facing, you can't slouch can't do anything like that. Once one of my kids through, since they're very young, just get out of that mode, I put my fork down or whatever, and give them a look, if something needs to be said to set proper support.

And you don't even let a little bit of a get away. And you know, just that you said, you know, just within things, even within the family structure, you set the expectation with that type of thing, you know, when you're talking to kids, is sometimes kids will try to distract themselves when you're lecturing them per se. You know, if they like start looking at like, whatever your expectations and again, I don't know different cultural expectations for what it means to listen, okay? Something that's a little coming in the eyes, something to look down or whatever, whatever your expectations are for how they listen to you. You're number one, set those expectations. And the moment they break

from it, you stop, you stop talking, see if they respond just to the nonverbal to get back into expectations. Usually they do 80% of time 8% of kids will, if they don't respond to the nonverbal, then you give just a very direct you know, it can be soft or quiet doesn't have to be like harsh, harsh or snappy, verbal reminder. And you don't let that get away. Because it because it only percolates.

Thanks. Same thing when kids start fussing with one another when they're interacting with their siblings, that type of stuff. Let's get this is the most useful thing to parents usually is the arguing stuff. There's more twists to teach. Okay, it's still negative, but we're going to watch a video of teachers and

just arguing just listen to it for a moment. And then I'm going to show myself do like an exercise that I actually do in teacher training with teachers. And this is how you teach teachers how to read how to deal with a kid who talks back. So you give a direction you tell him to do something, and they talk back to you. What do you do to not have it evolved from an ARG to into an argument? Okay? This is the negative examples of this. Listen to it.

verbose here okay.

Don't say can't say you did not into

every classroom saw.

You. This is nonsense.

I've been talking to everybody in here. Okay.

Yes, I have them. I know exactly what's going on. I know how to teach. Okay.

This is not a difficult class.

It's really not. I know it's painful. It's really because I'm building you up to the really

I think we've all we all had teachers like disrespectful.

times people want I mean, almost everyone's had some kind of type interaction. Like

we heard that one go through here.

Oops.

You could have been out of here.

Alright, right. You're talking to you.

But you can't

use the branding behind. I never talked anything

about brands. Tell me one thing.

When you're so I

told you that for you listening to

someone else what happens? I'll see what happens. That's not talking. Okay. You can see me in there. Yes. Yeah. Okay. And that's my middle daughter. Allah blesses me with three daughters. If somebody loves my middle daughter, Nora, well, I'm gonna take through a little exercise here. We all have at least one kid who's more of a push backer.

That's definitely that's definitely newer. Okay. And we're gonna have our like, this is actually what do you do with teachers, you have them do a mock arguments to get a feel for our arguments go. And then you have one teacher practice the skill that you need to know what to do and kids talk back, and I'll show it to you and then explain what the skill is. Okay? So we're gonna do I'm gonna tell you to not

to stop bossing your sister around, and then you're going to get defensive, you're going to defend yourself, and we're going to argue about it. Okay, so I'm gonna yell at you. Well, I mean, you're gonna come back to me trying to say that you either you didn't do it, or you had a reason to do it. Okay.

You're gonna do it. So, because I was yelling at Lena. Well, either. I know how to yell about that. Okay, okay. I'm gonna yell it either yelling at her not bossing her around. Okay? Three, two.

Nora, stop bossing your sister around, yelling at me. No, you you're yelling at her.

Okay, you know, I don't I don't want to hear it. I don't want to hear it.

That is not true. No, it's not. No, it's not. You know what? You're grounded.

Okay, I think she enjoyed that. Well, and that's actually a point to take it away from it, because she did enjoy it. And even sometimes when she does this with her mother, she enjoys it, there is there are some kids who will enjoy it, because they get kind of a power trip out of it. And you can see her smiling there. Now look, if we go back and we break it down what's verbal about all these interactions, both the mock one here and the actual ones that we saw with the teachers and students, what you will notice about adults arguing with kids, the only things that the kids ever really say is something that is indirect response to whatever the adult gave them. So in those teacher student

interactions, the teacher said the first one teacher says, Everyone saw you disrespected me, the girl says back Well, everyone saw you disrespecting me. Okay, the other one will if you just get out the book, The boy says, it's all about the book. The last one, you haven't done anything for 30 days, the boy says 30 days I recover. Okay, it all breaks down to some back and forth like that, or some form of Yes, you did no idea or Yes, he did. Yes. Read the whole thing to understand what's going on here. Again, the kids don't come into these things with a very reasoned out logical end.

means that they're trying to get sued. They're experimenting with the interaction itself. So in all of these situations, it's like tennis, if you don't serve something up for the student for the child to hit back, they will have nothing to hit back. So the biggest mistake in arguing with kids is really, really dumb. Okay? Do not argue with kids, please don't argue with something about anything between you and them. Don't argue with them about whether they're being good or bad. Don't argue about what happened with them between their brother or sister or this type of stuff. If you have a point that you need to get across to a kid, that talk is for later or for something separate, where

people's defense mechanisms are down, their stress levels are down, and they can actually intake something, they can never intake anything in these types of situations. It's like literally, physically, physiologically impossible for them to do it. So please don't argue with kids. That's thing number one. When you're trying to give them some direction and you need to give them some and you want compliance out of them and they talk back instead. This way you do it this way.

Okay, good. Okay, now we're gonna try it again. Okay, I'm gonna start I'm going to start calmer here. And I'm gonna start calmer. And we're gonna see how it goes. Okay, you don't know what I'm gonna do this time where I started calm. 321

Nora,

you can't boss your sister around. Well, she has yeah

looking into

Okay, what did I do their? Says lol. Yes. What did I do?

I told her to do something. She talked back to me. What did I do?

You paused, you allowed? It's like you allowed your original statement to

speak.

Yeah, I didn't say anything. Now look, one thing if this were like one of my training sessions with teachers, I gave her a very specific facial expression. Okay, which you can see from the side, okay. Like with teachers, there is a specific, serious, relaxed facial expression to teach. The Cardinal feature of it is that you do not have your teeth clenched. Okay, I can actually go up a slide where I show it. But But kids are very, very in tune to facial expression. All right. And they can sense slight agitation from adults depending on their facial expression. This has been looked at very closely by by language experts. So first of all, when she responded, I took a relaxing breath, okay,

through my nostrils to relax myself, kept the shoulders down.

I made sure my teeth are not clenched. Now when kids annoy you or kids trigger you, it's natural to tense up and the shoulders raising as part of that some of that comes with that. The clenching and grinding of the teeth is something that comes with that which also leads often to the locking of the jaw. Sometimes people when they get to old age, actually, they had issues with their jaw walking from having worn away the cartilage at the junctures of their jaw from having tensed up from their interactions with their kids so much. Really,

what now, now, when, when the teeth mean clench is very, very important, because if you were to take out your phone, I'll stop sharing here for a moment. Okay, if you look at my face closely, Inshallah, I'm the main person that people can see in the Zoom meeting right now. All right. Now, if I'm holding a facial expression like this,

it's dull, it's calm, it's relaxed, it's in control. It says to the kid, I'm not emotionally affected by what you're doing. But I'm in control myself. So I'm in control of the situation. And I'm serious about handling the situation. That usually puts kids in a place where they don't want to even find out what handling is going to mean. And 80 to 90% of time, when you tell a kid to do something, you give them a direct order, especially the expectations being clear what they're supposed to be doing. You give them a direct order, you tell them what to do, they talk back or say something back and you just sit with that face looking at them. There might be a pregnant pause in

there, but they will be induced to just go do whatever you want to do because they don't want to find out what's going to have any further and you almost saw that get induced in my in Nora there even though it's a simulation. Okay, and the other one where I reacted, she got up, you know, she got all tense and she matched my energy. With this one she curls inward and she wanted to turn away because she wants to get out of this look that I'm giving her. Okay, it actually induces that wants in her

physically, nine times out of 10, I've worked all grades I've taught every grade, but second and third of my life, five years in fourth grade, long time in high school, middle school in the inner city, you tell some kid to do something 80 to 90% of time. Now there's more you can do. Okay, you might have to repeat what you said, slowly, it might get to a point where you have to give two choices, that pausing when you're in the heat of the moment of trying to get a kid to do something, those few seconds feel like a really long time. But you want to, you want to try that and give it 56789 up to 10, even sometimes even longer, and just see and just see what the kid does. Next time,

you need to tell you can do some, and you have that happen.

The other thing with

with with with the reaction, the reaction that your body has, okay, when you get triggered by kids,

your brain is triggered to release adrenaline in your bloodstream, okay? And that's actually what causes you to do all those tensing up. Now, now, adrenaline, it takes 27 minutes on average to run through a fully the body of a fully grown adult, okay. So if you don't have a relaxing mechanism to act upon when you're when a kid triggers you, you will be operating on adrenaline hits all day with kids. And this is what teachers and parents especially mothers do.

And what teachers and mother's commonly experience is with the kids all day, they're running on adrenaline, the rent on adrenaline. And every it's actually been studied. And it's estimated an average school a teachers have an adrenaline reaction induced in them. What about once every 25 seconds or so. So you're running on adrenaline all day, and it keeps you going. And once you finally if you're the teacher, once you finally get the kids out of the classroom on the bus, and they're gone, or if you're the parent once you finally get the kids to bed, or you get them off to what school or whatever activity you have going on. And you finally get away from him.

Your final adrenaline hit lasts maybe 2025 minutes, maybe 30 minutes, you have about that much energy left to do something or whatever. And after that you feel like you just have to crash. And that's what causes parent parents commonly experienced that. And that's what causes burnout. And it has long term negative health effects on people. So when you breathe when you train yourself to breathe slow instead of

when you're triggered by kids, instead of operating on the stress reaction, it will abort this adrenaline release process, which will be good for your health, good for your self control, and good for your mind as far as where you're operating with the kids. Because you might need to formulate what to do next or what to say to the kid. If you can't operate in your own prefrontal cortex, What you won't do if you're operating on a stress reaction, even that part of it you won't think about logically with the kids. So we teach teachers to do is to train yourself at the beginning.

When a kid induces a stress reaction, you and you find yourself triggered by a kid, take your tongue and stick it to the roof of your mouth. And then breathe out of your nostrils slow. And then take an inhale very slow. It doesn't have to be deep, you actually don't want it to be deep, but slow. Okay, because this has a relaxing effect. Why do you stick your tongue to the roof of the mouth that is to literally prevent your teeth from clenching. So that face I was showing, you can do it with an open mouth like this. But you can do it with a closed mouth to where it looks like this.

And if you train yourself to you know pushing your tongue to the roof of your mouth, it gives you something to do when you recognize that you've been triggered instead of saying something instead of clenching the teeth instead of raising the shoulders or whatever. And then you breathe out slowly in and out through the nostrils to relax yourself. And it's good then to think about something relaxing or think about something kind of neutral teachers find you know, or like, you know, if you think about the grocery list or whatever, you know, if you need to hold the face in reaction to whatever the kid needs to say. Just something to relax yourself and give yourself time. Okay, the big mistake

teachers and parents make when kids first trigger them is they just react too quickly. You The first thing you want to do is you want to relax yourself. And you want to give yourself time because you have more time because time speeds up when you're operating on stress related actions. So you want to slow all that down. Now sometimes if you're in the other room, you hear the sibling start to fight or whatever. You still want to do this even though they can't see you you still want to relax yourself and you want to approach it very slowly and very calmly.

That is a whole other thing. That is a whole other mistake parents make they these do this whole stamp you know and this this I'm all huffy and puffy and worked up and you know you better start some

but you don't want to do that, okay, you want to give a slow approach. Because when you do that you find actually the kids they start if they can see you coming from the corner of the of your eye, or they hear you come in slowly to the other room with like the creeks and the wood on the floor or whatever, they actually start to self correct even before you get there. Because you're wanting, you're giving them time to do that. And they're processing that your approach is slow, which means it's under control, you're under control. So you're coming in to handle the situation. And you're able to handle the situation because you're in control. So these types of mechanisms that are things

that get the kids to self correct quickly, more than anything else, okay. And again, like, um, you know, obviously, I have things too, I have other resources, I can have my own course I have some live sessions, I'm going to be doing stuff that I can offer to people, because I have like a systematic way into training all this type of stuff into parents and teachers, that you then have a protocol that you can kind of follow and practice it with the kids. You know, it's kind of necessary to do that in a training type session, where it's going to be laid out in a certain way, you're gonna have time to practice and all that type of stuff. So I can share that with people and that

sort of stuff. But you know, aside from that, I think

we can take questions for this type of thing.

Sure, just like a heron, thank you so much for that. So brothers and sisters, if you have any questions,

you know, any particular situation that you're facing or have face that you want to ask about? Or anything else you want to ask about on this topic? Please, either you can unmute yourself and ask verbally or you can type your question in the chat

think people are typing

so can you well while we're waiting?

So calmness

because sometimes I it's counterintuitive, isn't it? Like we think

this car this kid doesn't understand that this is unacceptable to me. It's like I have to show them that it's unacceptable by you know, getting furious or whatever. You're saying.

Calmness can

assert authority? Well, yeah, I mean, the phrase we teach teachers calmness, calmness, strength, anger is weakness, or calmness, strength, agitation is weakness. That's the mantra that we teach teachers. If you look at the Prophet liaisons with slam, there's actually many examples of this. You know, there is the narration of the young man who came to him and asked him to make Zina Hello out. And then some of the companions they started berating him and the Prophet peace be upon him. He approached him slowly, he asked him to sit down, which is a calming mechanism to kids. And he put his hand on him and he entered this reflective question with him at a signal Malik, may Allah be

pleased with him, who lived in the prophets household as a servant, for 10 years, he said, living with the prophet or for 10 years, peace be upon him and not once did he say to me, Oh,

so you know, that type of relaxed behavior? You know, it is actually part of the Sunnah. Yeah, and this is what's found with it, and I've seen it with my own eyes working in schools so much, you know, the calmness and the reduction of one stress reaction, it really is the foundation to everything. Now look, sometimes

there are, you know, getting angry at the kids, okay, getting a little more frustrated, get a little louder. Okay, even punitive things such as perhaps hitting or the threat of hitting or this type of thing. There can be a place for those Okay, punitive measures and rewards, there are places and times for them. But when your reliance on them, they lose their luster. And when you're not reliant on them and your reliance on other things, and you have this kind of calm disposition that you exhibit, generally, then when you do have to go to those things, the kids sensitivity towards it is heightened. So they react to it quicker. So you don't have to go so far. Right? Like, I remember,

even just like my dad, my dad actually used silence quite a lot.

Not not like the silence treat silent treatment. But I mean,

once he'd said something,

then if we were like,

trying to argue it, he would just go quiet. And then we just go and get on with it. And when he did get angry, I think just the look in his eyes would would be enough. Do you know what I mean? Like he didn't need to

Do you

fly off the handle? Right? Because

and what I do with both my kids and my students in school, you know, you have times where their defiance is a little higher, they're a little more worked up. So sometimes you work these nonverbal processes, and it gets to a point where you have to get verbal, you know, and it gets even more and more whatever, you know, when you get to a point of agitation, like the natural thing, again, it's like to stomp the foot down, or slam the handle or get married or that type of stuff.

You know, when I start feeling myself getting to that point, and I've conditioned myself to make that point really far down, I will first say to the kids, you know, I am starting to feel angry at what you're doing. Yeah. And I'm starting to feel like if this doesn't turn around quickly, that I'm going to have to do something like, like, yell at you and get loud here, you know, and usually get that it's like, okay, okay, okay, you know, just saying, just saying that you're feeling elevated, you know, that can be a first step, you know, and the important thing for parents and teachers to undertake is to be really reflective on these incremental things concerning your own disposition,

your own nonverbal interaction, and your system of escalation with the kids. Because when you escalate too quickly, you're actually not giving the kids enough opportunity to course correct. And therefore, you're not actually getting a true level of their real level of willful defiance, because you're operating in a way, where defiance and defensiveness is going to just be intuitive to them, and you start a downward cycle. So a lot of times, you're actually conditioning the knee of the kid to be more defiant than they really want to be because you're not giving them enough chance to course correct. And being in being incremental with how you lay these things out.

We've got a couple of questions. I'll just read.

They've been sent privately to meet so I'm saying Baraka Luffy, can very helpful. Most of my altercations with the kids are when they don't listen to an instruction to do something or not to do something, how to get them to listen the first time.

And the second thing is, when they fight with each other and won't stop when told not to fight or annoy their sibling. How can we address that?

Yeah, so I put someone asked, Could we have the details of the training, please, I put two links in the Zoom chat, one goes to I have a asynchronous parenting course that you can take, you know, it's like, less than 690 minute lessons or so I do have one in there that is on sibling rivalry. And how to and I have a lesson on that. Because it's always more than that you can unpack and I will comment on it. But it's more is more you can cut back on the lesson. I also put a link, if you go to be it.li backslash manage dash kids, beginning in January, I am going to start doing live sessions, this type of stuff we're currently and you can pay per session, it's a much more, it's a lower

price. Although I realize the timing of that it's evening time in America. So it might not work out for UK people. So I can maybe work out something else and add a session for UK people too, because I have gotten feedback from people that they'd like to do this type of thing live. But the asynchronous courses available. So again, in this lesson the first time, the first thing is what I showed you, okay, when you tell them something, and they talk back, you give that look. Now if you have to hold that look for too long, you might repeat it to just repeat the command beginning with the verb that you would want them to do.

And when you repeat it, you might make it more immediate. Okay, a whole other thing that I go over in the parenting course is how kids learn, and how you make tasks concretes to their understanding, okay, whether it's things like chores or find directions, right? Right. So actually even the example

okay, let's say that you have a child, she's in her bedroom on her iPad, and you want her to come out and clean up the mess, she left in the living room, okay? And you go into the room and you say, come on here and clean the living room. And they'll be like, Okay, wait or something like that, and just keep playing on the iPad or whatever. Can you give me that look, and maybe they're and they'll still feel your look, but maybe they're not looking right at you, because she's looking at the iPad or whatever. Now look, I'm come clean, the living room is like very, very general. And the level to which it is abstract is high, relative to something like take the iPad and put it facedown on the

bed or take the iPad and put it facedown next year. Okay? When you have a kid entering a power struggle with you when it comes to find directions, and you have to like repeat the directions. And just in general, you want to make the directions as concrete and immediate as possible. So there's a little sort of there's as little room for misinterpretation or willful misinterpretation, as can

Be. And when I say immediate, I mean immediate to the thing that you want them to do physically first. So like a big mistake teachers make, for example is get back to your kids get back to your work, okay? Sometimes it's not get back to your work that you need as other kids, it's put the pencil in your hands. Okay, put the pencil in your hand, they do that now turn your turn your feet that way. Okay? Now write the write your name on the you just make it as concrete and as immediate as possible, because each little step is harder to follow. Okay? A lot of times kids struggle with directions in general as well, and they get anxiety over it, because the task has not been made

concrete enough for them. Okay, things like like putting the dishes away, just so. So again, like, something I go over in the course is how to communicate these directions to kids, how to set up visual instructions for the kids, how to take them through teach them these kinds of routine tasks that we haven't we want them to perform throughout the house, in a way where they learn it bit by bit, and it's very successful. Yeah. And when they experience with that successfully, especially at a young age, they actually will come to Linux to do those things, too, I think.

Yeah, we've got a couple of more questions. Yeah, go ahead. I'm just with that concrete thing. Just give you one little example, like, I was today saying to my daughter,

you know, can you tidy the sitting room? Can you tidy the living room inside the living room? Before you go upstairs? And then I remember there was this thing that I've always done with my kids, I said, Can you just pick up 10 things? And put them in their place? Yes. Right. Yes. And then she did it, you know, and it was like, okay, 10, I can be tempted, you just do 12345. And then it's done. You know, and but when you say tidy the living room, it just looks like this massive, endless task, yes. And they, they really can still really struggle to organize those types of tasks in their minds, right. So so the task itself feels overwhelming to them. You know, there's this thing called

scaffolding and education. So you have to figure out what level of communication and what level of task is doable for them. And you want to set them up to be able to do that first. And once that becomes that level becomes automatic to them, then you can increase the complexity of it. And first of all, I'm putting a link in the chat to a video I have on YouTube, where I talked about teaching kids how to tie shoes, and how they say that that's some puppy these and post them later. Yeah, sure. They say that some of them that our kids can only do what from age like five, six, but you can actually start to teach them it from like age two, but there's a way you you carry them through the

tasks, and the parts that are independent, independent for them. You incrementally release that, okay, or you make the independence of it release incrementally. And this is how kids learn and how they experience success with it.

So so there's a whole thing that kids struggle with, okay, or that they struggle with a lot of times the parents the way the directions are being communicated. They don't realize it but but it's overly abstract. And it's overly and it's overly complex. You know, the same thing comes with I have a whole session in my parenting course on talking to kids at the dinner table. Like one of the most common problems parents have, you know, okay, we want the kids to open up, we want them to talk to us about what's going on in the day, what's going on at school or whatever.

Most common prom parents have, they'll ask the kid so how was school today? Or what did you learn in school today? Or what happened in school today? Yeah, that type of question. It's way too general. And way too.

Yeah, really good to deal with. So you get complete silence or you get fine. Or you get? I don't know, because just think about the kid. Okay, they had six, you asked him What did you learn today? That that six different classes? Well, which class? Do they pick? First to talk about? Okay, you know, if you just say what happened at school, they now all their social interactions are tied up with that. Where do they even begin talking about? You know, there's endless choices just to answer the question. So so they experienced cognitive overload as a call me ask them that. So So you begin by asking them yes or no questions or questions that have that you give them a few different choices

on how to answer. And that starts to habituate them just to answer successfully, and it makes them more comfortable with the interactions typically. So we have a question here. Also, with regards to the aspects of having discipline with the minor things like table manners, etc. Sometimes it's feels as though we are being too strict or being too pedantic, especially if others around them I'm not having the same restrictions rules. How can we balance the discipline and then sister comments on that? I think she says with children, I believe it's important that parents pick their battles. How do we make sure we pick the right battles? I think they're related.

So now look,

you can't get overly concerned with how things look to kids relative to other people, you do have to be concerned with is tending to explaining the why to kids. Okay? And from early ages. So why do we want them to exhibit table manners?

And there's different levels to this as well. Okay. So there's the religion, there's religious reasons, there's secular reasons. There's, there's reasons of varying levels of concreteness, that they're able to grasp. You want to reflect on this deeply for yourself, for one reason, because you want to develop reasons that are authentic to you. That is one thing, you know, and actually, these things play into the entire narrative that we are developing with our kids as we move along. So I wrote my kids into a narrative that we are living in a time where a civilization and humanity is losing a hold of itself. So you know, we know that hadith, the Prophet SAW to Islam, that Islam came

as something strange, and it will come back as something strange, so give glad tidings to the strangers. So it's actually an objective for us to not do things like other people do. And when other people are doing things that can that, you know, are don't certainly, standard. In other words, you're correct. And it can even be an indicator that we're being successful with small things. The Prophet alayhi salatu salam said that the deeds most beloved to Allah, our deeds that are small bits on with consistency concretes, you know, circular things with things like the table manners, you don't want the milk to get spilled. Okay, if you're not sitting properly, it's more

likely you'll get wobbly in the chair, one little bump at the table can be a bump to the cup, which can spill the milk, things like that. Food can fall on a table. If you know if you get your hands, you keeping your hands yourself this type of thing. Okay, your messy hands getting your sister's hair that? Yeah. And also, as they get older, you don't want to be disgusted by your own kids, right? Like, you're going to be in their company. So Correct. I guess what I'm hearing here is that also that every family will have its own rules in a way, right? Like, in my family, for example, no food upstairs, right? Don't take food upstairs, don't eat food in the in your bed. You know?

You close your mouth when you're chewing, right, little things like that, like it might not be the same as for you, your family might have certain different rules, right? Because our cultures might be different as well. And it's something to you know, I mean, there are some things like that I think can be fairly consistent. But it is something to reflect on, you know, what I find? I'd say, especially with people who maybe they grew up in the back home or whatever, they grew up in a more enclosed culture where the traditions were stuck. It's probably okay, we do stuff because we do stuff. And that's it. So you know, if you're not under the habit of reflecting upon the reasons why

you need to reflect upon the reasons why. Because it is true that kids in the modern day and kids in the West, that are not going to accept we just do this because we do this thing. And they'll start to develop this whole world that your mom and dad, you're weird, and somewhat everyone else does a separate thing. We want to be able to give the kids reasons and nurture them upon those reasons, from a young age with even the small things like not having the phone at the table, right? Like, it seems like such an innocent thing. It's actually quite fun to entertain yourself while you're eating right. But then if you say to the kids, look here, people aren't connecting any more. This is the

one chance we get to actually talk to each other, look each other in the eye, you know, and all those things, I think, like you said, you have to

explain the why otherwise. And even with watching a screen while you're eating, there is a scientific thing there where your mind gets disconnected from feeling satiated. So people tend to overeat when they do that. It's more likely, properly. So as was said to me, he said to only fill two thirds of your vessel. So there's a religious connection there. But you can also make the connection to health and even young kids, they can understand these things, especially when it relates to an immediate real world context that's right in front of them. Even from young ages, like five and six and child friendly ways you can explain these things, as are explained to them. So just

tending to the why with all these types of things, is something you want to do thoroughly and you don't just do it once, okay, you repeat these things over and over and over, they get reiterated there will be times where the kids fall outside the expectations and they experience some negative consequences like doing things like spilling the milk or getting sauce on their sibling shirt and they get angry or whatever. And you know when you defuse those situations and you reflect on the see now you see why we have these rules, that type of thing. Yeah, type stuff. also help them to fix it, teach them how to fix things as well.

Yeah, and actually nurture raising kids in this way is part of the way you make your kids solution finders for others.

So there's one more question.

bark off, when kids fight and come to complain to you about their sibling? How can we deal with it fairly, non aggressively, etcetera, and not escalate it? And not make them complain for every small thing? Right? Yeah, well look, for one thing, it's not always going to be the same for every family, every kids, there are some ages where the kids simply are very emotional. They're emotionally reactive a lot. And they complain a lot, okay, especially ages like 10 to 14, kids are extremely moody in this age. And they get worked up over small things, and they're gonna have moody emotional reactions over small things, you have to do your best take to not take that personally, as little as

possible. There is no teacher who teaches middle school in England, it's probably like years, five through eight, you call it or whatever these ages 10 through 14, there's no teacher who teaches those ages and survives it, but that they learned to not take what kids do personally. Especially they're moody reactions to things. They will react, moody during those times, to everything. It's it's partly hormonal, it's actually more neurological. And it's hard with your own kids. Okay, I taught 1010 year olds for five years, I taught middle schoolers, you know, even ninth graders, the early high school is up this way. So I've dealt with this a lot, you know, my kids are at these

ages. Now. It hits you harder when it's your own kids. So it's hard to do. But you need to try to react calmly, as much as possible. Okay, that's thing number one. Thing Number two, you cannot always solve kids problems for them, especially when you did not see it. And you have to explain this to kids. It's a really, if your kids have some dispute over who gets the iPhone over or who, you know, took each other's clothes or whatever. And

child A's impression is this, this and that happened. And child B's impression is that that and that happen, which this happens all the time, they have their self centered experience, and they have different, you know, they are experiencing the events as taking place differently from one another.

If you didn't see what happens, you can't sort out for them what did actually happen, because you don't know only Allah knows. And this is a big mistake, parents try to make it try to start solving the argument like that, you can't do that. You can't do that. What you can do is you can explain to kids, that they have a tendency as young people, okay, kids go visit my parents, of course, one of the features of young people, their awareness of others, their awareness of the environment around them, and their ability to see things from the perspective of others isn't constant development. And it's really not fully developed what you consider an adult level until like your mid 20s. So so even

young adults struggle with this. So kids, you can't make them see things from their siblings expect

point of view, but you can at least tell them and reinforce upon them that the way you're seeing this is limited. And the way your your sibling has seen this is limited as well. Now with most disputes, what you can tell them is okay, you guys are disputing over this, you're disputing over that, I can't solve it for you, I can tell you that you need that the more you can try to be relaxed with one another, the farther you'll get with that, and they won't take to that messaging for very long, okay, when their ages 10 to 14, they're not going to like take that messaging, but you still want to give them the messaging, because they'll start implementing it sooner, once they once they

get to be like 1516 If you give that message. And the only thing you can say is, I can't solve this problem for you guys. But what I will tell you whatever dispute you are having the person who can be unselfish, that is the person who can solve it. And you have to make some sort of appeal to those altruistic attributes to those teachings of the religion and prompt them to be tough to create, maybe not necessarily a competition, but just make it real to them. Whoever can act on that, on those attributes on those unsalted attributes. They are the one who can solve the problem. Sometimes when you do that, and that's a specific line I will use with both my both my kids and kids at

school, whoever can be unselfish is the one who can solve this dispute. Certain kids it will trigger in them to actually then they will start competing to be the one who gives it up in this type of thing. Sometimes you will see that that is my general advice and that like I said, I go into a deeper on my parenting course. But but but those are the most immediate things.

Your webinar that's coming up I believe in January. Is that going to be recorded as well, but it'll be recorded. You could get a copy of the recording. If they don't, they'll get the recording just in case people can't attend.

Live and I think I might attend that as well. It sounds really interesting just local affair and thank you so much for this session. I'm sure

I'm really benefited

I do have a YouTube channel too I put one of the videos yes they look if they look up Abraham education sure and I'm sure I'm going to be sending all the links that you've got I've I've copied them so Charla, I'm going to post them on the WhatsApp group.

Thank you so much for joining us all the way in Minnesota.

And you really made it visual for us as well by showing us those examples. Give us a chance to your daughter as well for being actually sister if you don't mind. Um, another thing I say and I think I do. I do trainings for the teachers have masajid like if and weaken school teachers. That's everything. Yeah, and Islam and Islam at private schools as well. He said, So if anyone knows a school in the UK, and they'd like me to do a virtual session with them, or even like weekend, Madras with teachers and this type of stuff, I love doing that type of stuff. So you can refer them to a Abraham education.com or info at Abraham

and try to afford your details to our head teacher. My kids go to

Yusuf Islam set up some schools in London. We did that like years ago, so

yeah, so those schools that have good head teachers mashallah really was trying to find

best practice and stuff like that, so shall I'll put it forward to them maybe if any other parents know, any educational settings that might benefit them they can pass on your details to so but just want to thank you does that Ferran and brothers and sisters thank you for joining us and giving us your time.

In sha Allah with that we will bid everyone farewell Subhanak Allah homophobia handig. A shadow Allah ilaha illa Anta esta Furukawa to be like, Salam alaykum Warahmatullahi Wabarakatuh