Raising Resilient Children

Alhamdulillah now Madhu and I you know that stuff a funeral, we will be here to work alone or they will not only be la Himanshu Ruri and fusina Woman See ya Dr. Molina Mejia the healer who was moody Lala, will me you did over la ha de la ma.

One of the most important things that any parent can teach their child is about how to handle the test of life.

And one of the problems that we see in our community today is a too often, instead of preparing the next generation, to face the test of life, we tend to overpay on them to a level where they never grow up. And they never develop the skills they need to handle the challenges of the real world.

And today, I want to focus specifically on one skill that we need to develop in the next generation, a skill that will help them to deal with the challenges of life. And this is one of the many meanings of the word solver. It is the skill of resiliency of being able to be tough during difficult times. So what is resiliency? Resiliency is defined in English as toughness, grit, or inner strength.

It is the capacity to recover quickly from difficulties. It is the ability to grow stronger when you face difficulties. So this concept of resiliency, the ability to face the challenges of life, to work through them to grow through them to come out stronger through them. This is a very important quality that our religion considers fundamental. It considers it to be amongst the most important qualities that we develop. And the parenting method of a Muslim family should revolve around building a next generation that is tough, a generation that can handle anything that life throws at them. Unfortunately, nowadays, instead of building this generation, to handle the test of life, we

want to shelter them from the test of life. And as recent events proved, it's not always possible to shelter a child from the test of life. When a pandemic happens, when a lockdown happens when there's a death in the family, when there's riots, you can't really shelter a child from that. And none of us know what the future holds. We don't know what the world will be like in 10 years time in 20 years time in 30 years time. So are we preparing our children to handle anything that can happen? Are we preparing them only for the good times?

So why is it important to raise children who are resilient? Well, number one, is because life is a test of our super Hannah what Allah tells us in Surah Al Baqarah, in a very important verse, he says with a double one knuckle I will definitely definitely test you while NW Wanda, this verb is a very powerful verb in the Quran. It begins with the lamb of emphasis definitely. And it ends with the noon of emphasis definitely. So you translate as we will definitely, definitely test you. We will definitely definitely test you would what would loss of wealth, loss of life feel hunger? Allah is Seeing every single human being will definitely faced trials in their life. So how do you deal with

these trials? It's mentioned in the same verse For Bashi restore ability, give good news to those who have sober and today we're going to go through the different meanings of sober and how resiliency is a type of sober. It is a meaning of the word sober. But in this verse, Allah tells us life's a test, everyone's going to be tested.

You are going to face tests, your children will face tests, and the future generations of your family will face tests, are you preparing them for the test of life by teaching them how to live with sober how to have sober during difficult times. The reality is no parent can shield their child 100%. From the test of life, eventually, something goes wrong, and your child needs to know how to deal with it.

And really, resiliency is the only way to get through a trial. If you are facing a difficult time in your life, and you are too weak, too emotionally weak to handle it, then it's going to break you down, and it's going to destroy you. And the only way to get through a trial is to be tough, and to learn how to be tough. And we see that Allah subhanho wa Taala in the training of the prophets, he always trained him to be resilient. This is one of the main messages behind the story of Prophet Yusuf alayhi salam, that his whole life was basically just resiliency training.

He has to go through trials, the likes of which that we can't even imagine, right being being thrown in a well been sold into slavery, going up in a completely different country, from his from his family, going to jail, you know, on unjust accusations and, or based on slander, all of these things, but they built him into the man he became.

And this is the purpose of the child's of our life, where we believe that Allah tests us, because our tests bring out the best in us, they help us to become the best versions of ourselves, that if we are not tested, we will never know what we are truly capable of. If you never go to hardship, you will never know just who you really are.

For the younger kids who don't understand, you know, how how hardships build you up, think about it, like a video game. Right? The harder the game is, the more you have to level up to win. That's how life is that the harder life gets, the more you need to level up and learn new skills to win. But every time you level up and you when you feel good about yourself, because you reach the level you didn't think was possible, you unlock skills within yourself, you didn't even know were there. And this is the purpose of the test. So some of the things that we do wrong that gets in the way of our children, building resiliency. Number one is over parenting, over parenting, particularly helicopter

parenting, where you are basically never giving your kid space to grow or make mistakes, or to even live life, it becomes so bad in the modern world, that now when 25 year olds go for job interviews, the moms go with them. Right? Because they don't want the child's feelings to get hurt in a job interview. In fact, some companies actually sent out a circular saying that if you see someone's mother coming with him for a job interview, don't give them the job. Right? Because he's become that common, it's become that bad. You know, it's become so bad that give you a personal example, once I was marking an exam, university level exam, second year university, and I gave a student 60%. And

the mother sends me an email saying I hurt her child's feelings by giving him such a low mark. And I must change them up to an 80% because she doesn't want her child's feelings to get hurt the child, a 23 year old man in university, this is overparenting. At some point, you've got to let go. At some point, you've got to let the child experience life, make mistakes, learn from the mistakes of experience, failure, experience sadness and grow through it. You can't be there being a shield for the rest of their life. overparenting is bad for you. And it's bad for the child. It is bad for everybody. And it's bad for society as a whole.

The other thing we do that messes up our children's resiliency is we don't we're not honest with them about life. Right? Some parents, for example, don't teach their children about debt. Just tell them that you know, grandma's gone overseas, you won't see anymore, right? You have to be honest about that we were born we die, we don't know when you're going to die. And in between, we have to live a life that's pleasing to Allah. And you need to explain to them as soon as they are able to understand it, because you had to pass away suddenly, and your child doesn't even know what that is. How do you think they're going to process that. So it's not, it's not good to be lying to your

children about these things.

A third thing that parents do wrong is not giving them the Islamic upbringing. So we don't teach him about life being a test about the purpose of life, about sober patients about sugar gratitude. Instead, we just leave them, you know, the problem today is that we all need to raise our children for two things, right? This is a major problem. We need our children with two things, getting good grades, and getting a good job. Well, we don't teach them to be good servants of Allah. We don't teach them to be good husbands and wives, we don't teach them to be good parents for the next generation. We don't teach them to be good citizens. As long as you got all A's in as long as you're

going to get a good job. Parents are happy. But we need to be holistic. We need to be about every aspect of life, not just focused on one. So we need to be more holistic in our thinking as parents. So one of the most important things that we can teach our children that can help them to overcome the test of life and to grow with resiliency, is from a very young age to teach them the concept of sober now what is sober even as adults, many of us we misunderstand the word sober. When we think of sober we think of patients, and we think that you just sit quietly and and wait for Allah to help you. In reality, the word solver if you open the dictionary, it has many meanings. And we'll focus

on four meanings, four dimensions of solver that you can apply in your lives and that you must teach your children. Number one is patience with things beyond your control.

To accept your fate, when something's beyond your control, somebody passed away. Nothing you can do about it. You have to have somebody right somebody's got a crew

Chronic Illness, nothing you can do about it, you have to have sub. For the things that have passed, you just have to be patient, you just have to accept that this was my fate and I have to move forward. This is one meaning of sober. It's not the only meaning. A second meaning of sober, persistence, persistence, that no matter how tough life gets, or how easy life gets, you're not going to give up on your good deeds, that you persist in righteousness no matter what. So waking up every morning for, for Salah to budget on time that requires trouble. That requires persistence. No matter how comfortable your bed gets, no matter how tired you get, no matter how wealthy you get, no

matter how good life gets, you still remain consistent in your ibadah. This is solid. This is persistence. Persistence also flows into the work life, that if your child has goals, they're going to face obstacles on the way to those goals. Can you raise them to be people who persist in pursuing their goals to all obstacles. The third meaning of sober is self control, self control, we must raise children into men and women who have self control. What does self control me when something you want to do is right there in front of you. Something Haram is right there in front of you and you want it. But you still don't do it. This is sober. When Yusuf alayhi salam was alone with a

woman trying to seduce him, and he refused. That was the height of summer. That was self control, the greatest demonstration of self control in human history. And that's why the model of beautiful Islam is the model everyone looks up to. Because that's the level of self control we must aim for. What are we doing to teach our children self control? Are we teaching them to lower their gaze? Are we teaching them to avoid bad websites and bad videos? Are we teaching them how to how to control your nerves when you when you when you get these urges, you know, when your child gets close to puberty, or you having to talk with them about the urges that are going to enter their body soon and

how to deal with it. It's very important that you teach your children self control. In a very interesting psychological experiment that was done on self control. It's called the marshmallow test. If you don't know about it, Google it, but simply put, they put some marshmallows in front of some babies and told them if you don't eat it, I'll give you a second one. And every child who ate it, they monitor them over a few years, they grew up to be people without self control. And every child who waited an hour to get a second Marshmallow, they grew up to be very successful people because they had self control from a young age. So a very interesting psychological experiment

called the marshmallow test. The fourth meaning of Strava the one directly related to our topic is resiliency. Cyber means no matter how tough life gets, you never give up. This is the meaning of sober, that you never give up. When Rasulullah salAllahu alayhi wa sallam was going through the year of sorrow. His wife Khadija had passed away, his uncle Abu Talib had passed away, the people of Makkah, were trying to kick him out or kill him, the people of quality of headstone him and chased him out of the city. He never gave up on his mission. He never gave up on his mission. That is resiliency. No matter how tough life gets, you never give up on pleasing Allah and living a life

that is pleasing to Allah. And the reality is that for every single one of us and every single one of our children, at some point, life is going to get tough. Everyone's going to face difficulties. You know, you may give your child the best of upbringing, but when they are 2030 4050, eventually they're going to face some trial in their life. Are they prepared for it? Have they have you given them the tools to prepare to face those trials? So we must teach our children a holistic meaning of survival, right? That we teach them to be patient with things beyond your control. We teach them to persist in good deeds, no matter what they do. We teach them to have self control in the face of, of

their desires and temptations, and we teach them to be resilient with the challenges of life. All four dimensions of suburbia are equally important for success.

Remember, when it comes to attitudes in life, there are two attitudes of life to the Quran and Sunnah emphasize and most important, suburb and sugar,

right suburb and sugar. So today's focus is on sober maybe another we'll talk about sugar. But the prophets will allow the Some said that for every believer, you know, whatever happened to them is good for them. Because if it's good and they are, they have sugar they are they are grateful that of course it good for them. And if it is something difficult, but they have sober, that that's also good for them. So living a life of sober is very important. And that means learning to be resilient. I want to end up with some tips on how we can build resiliency in our children. Number one is to be honest with you. Be honest with them about the nature of life, mortality, debt, the fact that there

are things in life beyond our control, but about the fact that difficult things are going to

happen, bad things will happen one day, and we have to be able to deal with them. Number two is to educate him on the topic of cyber from a very young age. Number three is to have a healthy attitude towards failure. This is a big mistake we make. We don't want our kids to fail. Because we don't want their feelings to get hurt. You want to the biggest mistakes we made in the past 20 years, we started giving our participation trophies for coming out last night by doing so we are teaching children that you never ever experienced failure, that no matter how bad you do, you're always gonna get a trophy. And that's not how it works. When you finish school, that's not how it works, you're

gonna go into the real world, your job is not giving you a party participation trophy for being the worst employee, right? They're going to fire you. We're not preparing them for the real world will be too scared to hurt their feelings. No, you have to give children space to fail. And you have to teach them how to work through failure. And more importantly, we need to change our attitude towards failure. You see, failure is not the end of the world failures, how you grow failures, how you learn failures, how you gain experience, it's how you gain wisdom. When your child messes up, and they make a mistake, and they learn from their mistake. They grow through that experience. But if you

never let them make the mistake and learn from their mistake, then they're never going to grow. So we need to have a healthy attitude towards failure instead of losing our temper. Every time our child makes the silliest of mistakes, rather, have an honest conversation with them and tell them what did we learn from this, I let them embrace failure as a means of success. You're not going to succeed in any field unless you fail many, many times. And every time you fail and learn from your mistakes, you get one step closer to success. That is the attitude you must have.

Number four, as they grow older, give them more responsibilities. As they grow older, give them more responsibilities, but also give them more space. So give them space, you know, to have their own private lives and to make mistakes. And don't pry too deeply into that. But also give them more responsibilities. don't oversell them, let them have responsibilities in the home. So they grow up to be responsible individuals and not spoiled.

And finally, know when it's time to let go. This is what many parents don't understand. Many parents want to keep their child the baby right till he's 30. At some point, you have to let go. And I say you let go while they're teenagers. Don't wait till they're 18 or 20 Islamically. When they hit puberty, they are adults. That's when you start treating them like adults. That's when you start shifting into a mentor type of role. You start shifting into a or advisor type of role. You now allow them to become adults, and they only going to become adults, when they learn from their mistakes when they have space to go out there and live lives when they are able to face the world

and face challenges on their own and grow through those challenges. And they're not going to do that if you never let go. So you ask Allah to guide us to parenthood wisdom and to raise a generation that could benefit this ummah and be righteous servants of Allah Subhana rahbek Robin is at Yama, Yossi foon wa salam ala mousseline Al hamdu, lillahi rabbil, Alameen.

Hamdulillah, he was Salatu was Salam ala mon Lana BIA bada bada inner circle honeystick a tabula rasa you had you had the Muhammad sallallahu alayhi wa sallam, mashallah morning what I said to her

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life of Rasulullah sallallahu alayhi wa sallam, you see many examples of him teaching these concepts to young people. And one of the best examples of this is his relationship with his younger cousin, Abdullah ibn Abbas. So, Abdullah ibn Abbas was 13 years old when the Prophet salallahu Alaihe Salam passed away.

So the conversation that we're going to mention now took place when he was maybe 11, or 12 years old. So when he was a young man, the Prophet salallahu Salam had a heart to heart with him about the fact that life is a test. And the way to deal with the test of life is to have a strong connection with Allah subhanho wa taala, understanding the concept of destiny, and having trouble being resilient in the face of your challenges. And this is a very beautiful Hadith found the unknown is 40 Hadith. And there's two versions of it. But I'm just going to go through some of the points from it to most relevant to today's topic. So Abdullah ibn Abbas and the rates that he was writing with

the Prophet sallallahu de semana capital, and the Prophet was having a conversation with him and he told him that I'm going to teach you something, I will benefit you for life. Right? He told him, remember Allah, Allah will be there for you. He says, Remember Allah in good times. He will be there for you during the difficult times. No, didn't tell Abdullah ibn Abbas is not going to be any difficult times said no, there will be difficult times but if you remember, Allah and Good times, you'll be there for you in the difficult times. He told him if you need anything, ask Allah. He said if you need to ask

ask ask Allah if you need to seek help seek help from Allah, developing his relationship with Allah subhanho wa taala. Then he tells him a very beautiful aspect of God and understanding the way the world works. He says, If all of humanity wants to harm you, and Allah is protecting you, they won't be able to harm you. And if all of humanity wants to benefit you, but Allah doesn't want that to reach you, it will not reach you, because everything is in Allah's hands. So teaching him about destiny.

And then he tells him a very beautiful and powerful thing about destiny. He tells him that whatever has hit you was never meant to miss you. And whatever missed you was never meant to hit you.

Now we raising our children with these concepts, that will never happen to you. It was meant to happen, wherever doesn't happen, what was meant never to happen. Are we teaching them these aspects of destiny that help them to build a attitude of resiliency. And then finally he told him understand that success comes with suburb, success comes with suburb relief comes after affliction and hardship comes with ease.

So he ends the advice by telling him that if you want to be successful, you have to develop a attitude of solver to be patient, to be persistent, to be to have self control, and to be resilient. And he told him difficulty is going to come. But after difficulty comes ease, but you have to have somewhere to get there. You have to have struggled to get to the point of ease. And so in the advice of the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam to Abdullah ibn Abbas radula juan hua, we have a model of how to teach our children these concepts to have one on one heart to heart conversations with them about our relationship with Allah subhanho wa Taala about the concept of destiny, about the workload

about Saba about the tests of life, just like the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam had with Abdullah ibn Abbas Rajala on Houma on that day, we ask Allah to make our children Rightly Guided Leaders of the next generation and we ask Allah to allow us to parent with justice and wisdom Robina Artina dunya Hasina Bofill Akira de hacer una walk in either but na Robina habla mean as wodgina was will react in a Kurata Are you Kenai mama Subhana rahbek. Robin is that the Ummah yes the phone was salam ala mousseline. Well hamdulillahi rabbil Alameen