The Art of Parenting

Once you have no doubt in the Quran, gives us a description in Surah Furqan at the end of Surah Furqan of the qualities of the true servants of Allah, He Babu Rama and for monks, the qualities that he lists with the true servants of Allah is that they are constantly making dua for their families. Allah subhanaw taala says that they are those who say constantly on a regular basis are ogbonna habla mean as wodgina was Juliet you know, Guru Raja ion, which Allah Linwood Akina Imam, which means Oh our Lord, grant us such spouses and children, that will be the coolness of our eyes. Granted spouses and children that will be the coolness of our eyes, and make us the leaders of the

righteous.

Parenting is a topic that we get asked about a lot.

People want to know, why aren't they more books about parenting? Why don't we have like a to do list of things that parents need to do? Why aren't they detailed chapters

on how to pay for it.

And the reality is that parenting isn't a science. Parenting isn't something that you can give someone a to do list. And people can follow that to do this to our time, and everyone's going to get it right.

Raising children is more of an art than a science. It is more of a a system which has broad principles that work. But the details will change from time to time, place to place, family, to family, and even child to child. Because no two families are the same. No two children are the same. No two circumstances are the same. And parenting what may work with one child may not work with another child. And this is why when you study the Quran and the Hadith, you will find that anything in the Quran or hadith is to do with parenting, it is usually very broad and generalized principles. It doesn't very often get into the specifics. And sometimes even when the Hadith gets into the

specifics, it's not as an advice to be applied to all times but sometimes it's culturally specific or specific to a time or place or specific occasion. So what I want to share with you today, as some of these broad principles that work,

however, we need to add a disclaimer that when it comes to parenting, there is no guarantee.

Only Allah knows for each individual, what they get is and once somebody attains puberty and they become an adult in the sight of Allah subhanho wa Taala the decisions they make after that are between them and Allah.

But as parents, we have to do our job, to choose the best possible principles to raise our children by and after that, whether they choose to follow those principles or not in their adult life, it between them and Allah, but we have to do our job. So what I want to share with you today are some of these principles, some principles that you will find in the Quran, in the Sunnah in the lives of the early Muslims that work. These are principles that are consistently from almost every story where you have a child who grows up in a righteous woman grows up to be a righteous person, by the way, some people say what's the point of China? And this is a question we have very often that if

everyone's guidance is decided the other what's the point of trying? And they'll give you examples. They say, Oh, I know a certain child from a pious home who industry and I know children who grew up in, you know, homes, which are completely corrupt and all children grow up pious. So they say what's the point of parenting? The point of parenting is number one, to tell Allah that you did your job.

Parenting is an Amana. It's a trust from Allah. You can't make excuses, that person's child went to sleep, so I'm not going to try. That's like saying somebody else's business fields. I'm not gonna open a business. That's not how it works. You have to make your effort. So when Allah asked you, how did you raise your child, you can show that this is why I did and I tried my best. Secondly, when you study history, you will find that many of the most extraordinary people in our history were the results of generation upon generation of righteous parenting.

Even just didn't just pop out of the net. People like Omar Abdul Aziz, who was only bin Abdulaziz. His mother was the granddaughter of Omar Abdullah photogra Jelani, this is four generations of righteous purity that led to the great Khalifa Amara, monopolizes even amongst the Sahaba when you look at Ayesha radula one ha who were her parents, her parents were amongst the first to convert to Islam, and she grew up in that environment, righteous parenting,

where Allah accepts

from us, can produce not just good Muslim children, but extraordinarily useful children. And the first principle of righteous parenting is to make dua for your children. And that's why we started with that Quranic verse, because that is the DUA and this is something you find consistently throughout the Quran. Whenever Allah mentions parents in the Quran, he doesn't talk about the specifics of how they raise your children. He talks about the to us, they do either we brought him on Instagram for his children, they do I have young children, they do ask of all of these people, for the children. So when you ask for the guidance of your children, don't say, Well, I make my

child a decent Muslim, okay, Muslim, a good Muslim, no, make us the leaders of the righteous, you ask for the best of the best. And they say to our we should make everything. This is a job we should be making. And our hygiene in our version, after salah is a dog that should be on the lips of every believer every single day.

The second core principle of effective parenting is to have a good relationship with your children.

And in most of the cases that I've dealt with, where children have gone astray, despite coming from practicing Muslim homes, very often, it begins with the fact that their relationship with their parent is fractured, that the parents will not talk to the child, or they raise the child, you know, with with anger and hostility, that they only ever spoke to the child when you were angry with them or needed to punish them. They didn't have communication. They weren't on the open communication channel, the child can come to the parent and say, I have a problem. I have a doubt I have a question, can you help me, he never opened these doors of communication. And so the children go

elsewhere. And they form the relationship that is supposed to form with the parents with somebody else. Now, when you look at the stories in the Quran, you notice that the children have very close relationships with their parents, when Yusuf Alayhi Salaam has a dream about the 11th planets and the Sun and the Moon crosstraining. Who does he go to in history? Who does he go to? to confide in about this very crucial and, and delicate piece of information? His father, he goes straight to his father.

My question to all of us, are we the kind of fathers that if our child has a dream, he'll tell us about it. Do we have this kind of relationship with our son, if he has a dream, be the first person to talk to without relationship so hostile and so negative? That be the last person in

that relationship with your child is so important. And not only that Uber is gonna go to his grandfather, Ibrahim Ali Salam, same story. He has a dream that he has a knife and he's holding his son, he smiled. And he's about to slotting. What does he do? How's his child? He talks to his child, he asked his child for his opinion, look at the father son relationship. He asked his child, what do you think about history, how many of us have that kind of relationship with our children, that we asked them for their opinion, that we value the input, that we show them that we respect the opinions and we want the mind to think we want the mind to grow. But this is the relationship that

the Gambia had with their children.

A third principle of righteous parenting that generally works is to be their own boss.

Because at the end of the day, your children will do what you do, not what you say.

But if you are a father, who does not pray five times a day, it doesn't matter how many times you tell your child to pray five times a day, he's not going to take you seriously.

You need to model the behavior you want your child to see. And this is one of the benefits of parenting. You see, when you have your first child, it forces you to grow up. It forces you to mature, it forces you to transform, it forces you to become a better Muslim. Good, you are now suddenly overnight, somebody.

And this is why Islam encourages us to have children young you will notice that when people have children young and they embrace parenting and young age, they mature much faster. Because now from the age of 20, or 21, you are somebody's role model. You can't behave like a child. You can't be a better rebellious teenager, you are now an adult you on our parent. So one of the benefits of having children young is it forces you to grow up.

Understand that we are our children's role models. Very often, children mirror the practices of the parents. If the parents were abusive, very often they grew up to be abusive. If the parents use vulgar language in the household to show them proper use.

If the parents are smoking and taking drugs, that's when the children are going to learn by if the parents are involved in community service to children grow up to serve the community. If the parents frequent the masjid to show

prompt frequent question if those parents are involved in studying the dino children property study to be why, because even if they don't realize it, children mirror the practices that they most closely associated with their parents. And so we want to be good parents, let us be good listeners, because our children will be what they see not what they do. Let us be the role model that they deserve.

The fourth principle of good parenting is

to play an active role in the education.

This is very important. The Sahaba would personally teach their own children.

And we see this even with the latest generations that every famous wisdom that we know of in history, either the parents taught them directly, or the parents sought out for them the best of teachers to teach them going back again to the story of Omar Abdulaziz, his father was appointed as the governor of Egypt. So his parents had to move from Medina to Egypt. So his mother made the conscious decision to leave her son behind in Medina, under the care of Abdullah even Omar Abdullah who so he could learn from the Sahaba the last few Sahaba were still alive. So she made a conscious decision to be away from her son to a son could have the best education.

We see with Imam Shafi or him when his father died, his mother moved from Gaza to Makkah, and before Maka to Medina, so her son to have access to the best of teachers.

So my question to all of us is, what role are we playing in the education of our children? Are we just dumping them at the madressa in school and leaving the education entirely to someone else? Are we actively involved? Do we have family holocausts? Do we sit around the table and talk about what we learned today? Do we have like a family madressa at home? Do we have a bookshelf, with books that your children are reading? Do we have YouTube videos or Islamic lectures that we watch together, play an important role in your children education, don't just outsource it. Because at the end of the day, this is your job as a parent, the data and the education of a child is the duty of the

piano, you can't outsource the community, you have to play a role. This is something that is crucial.

So we mentioned about four things that we would consider the primary goals of Islamic parenting. And these four things are number one to make you out for your children. Number two, to

model the behavior that you want them to follow number three, to play an active role in their education.

So these are some of the principles that we can follow and there are many many others as well. We don't have time to go to all of them. We ask Allah to grant us righteous children who will be the coolness of our eyes are up and help them in as wodgina was already out in the cold water are you watch our mama superhydrophobicity Amaya seafood was salam ala mousseline with 111.

hamdulillah salat wa salam ala

DC tabula or Phaedra, Haji Haji Muhammad sallallahu alayhi wa sallam was sugar ammonium of desire to be.

One of the areas that most parents struggle with when it comes to parenting is not realizing that your parenting methods have to evolve as your child grows. Just as you master the parenting of a two to five year old, your child is suddenly to the 69 year old category. And just when you get used to parenting a six to nine year old, your child is now a preteen. And just said you suddenly trying to figure out the preteens is now a teenager.

And so this makes parenting a bit difficult and and the earlier than most of us struggle with these days are the preteen and teenage areas. So just some advice on this from an Islamic perspective. And some people don't like it when we say this, but this is what Islam says. Right? In Islam, there really is no such thing as a teenager. When you attain puberty, you are Islamically a man or a woman. And this is something everyone needs to understand. Children need to understand this parents need to understand this. One of the biggest problems of modern society is that in the 1950s this term teenager was coined to create a new market that people could advertise products to. Right it

was all about business. It was all about making money to come up with

A new category. So they said, Okay, people between the ages of 1318 No, they're not adults, but they're not children. There's something else. They call them teenagers. And then they came up with this idea of the rebellious teen. And it's pushing all these movies and TV series with a teen is rebellious, and people begin to expect over my child gets get to an age is going to be rebellious. And the child begins saying, Oh, when I get to the age, I'm going to be rebellious. In reality, this doesn't exist for the bulk of human history. Go back to the time of the Sahaba even rebellious teenagers, Abdullah, even Abbas was out there studying Heidi's by the age of 13.

Osama bin Zayed was leading the army by the age of 18. Go hundreds of years later, Sudan Mehmed, the Conqueror leading armies by the age of 13, or 14.

So what happened? What happened is we abandoned that Islamic paradigm and we embrace the manmade paradigm. Let me ask you a question. Right? What makes an 18 year old adult, what does an 18 year old have the 17 year old doesn't that makes him an adult? Nothing. Biologically, you become an adult when you're able to produce children. And that is when you hit puberty Islamically you become an adult when you hit puberty. And so if you want to have a better relationship with your children, or teenagers, here's the secret. Here's the trick. Treat them as adults, treat them as young adults, treat them as people who are now young men and women. And that means giving them more

responsibility. It means listening to the opinions on things and hearing them out. It means talking to them as adults when they have doubts about the religion. When they have questions about this world questions about careers questions about what's going on in the world, it means having more adult conversations with them. It means giving them a bit more leeway in certain areas, and a bit more responsibilities in other areas. It means teaching them about financial responsibilities. It means having honest discussions about marriage, about Xena about all of these things, you cannot treat your 15 and 16 year old as a baby. One of the reasons today we have the manchild phenomena, we

have this problem of 20 and 30 year old men who refuse to grow up because their mothers treated them as babies right to the 20 or 30 years old. And they see no reason to ever mature for what

you want your child to grow up, start treating them as a young man or lady around the time when they're getting close to puberty. And you will see you will have a better relationship with them. They will mature faster, they will grow into better people. And I know of many, many families that have applied this. And when I spoke to those parents and asked them to do children ever have a rebellious teenage phase, say no, it wasn't a rebellious teenage phase, because they were no teenagers. They were children, they were adults. And once your child is an adult, treat them, treat them as an adult. So this is something really important. And there are many other topics related to

that as well, that we need to go into. But we don't have time. But really, this is the key. This is the key to parenting teenagers treating them as young adults, because teenagers are facing very confusing messages out there. Think about how many of us do this. You know, when your teenager does something wrong? You know, you tell them you're a young man now why are you behaving like this? Right? The same teacher tells you cannot you okay, I take the call to go Jay Z Oh, you just a child. What do you need a couple. So one moment you telling him you just a child? Next moment you're telling him you're young man, and then again, just a child, young man? He's confused. He doesn't

know what he is. You don't know what is. So let's settle on something. He's hit puberty. He's a young man. Now you draw out your list what's expected of a young man that lives in my house. These are the rules of my house. You are a young man living in my house until you have your own income and live in your own house. These are the rules you should follow. Make him sign the contract. I guarantee you this will be far more effective in screaming and shouting and treating him like a small child.

So understand just as parenting changes from child to child and culture to culture and age to age. It also changes from how you treat children and how you treat young adults. You ask Allah to grant us wisdom you ask Allah to grant us guidance to grant us righteous children. In Allahu Allah. Allah be your au 100 denomination to Allah He was telling me to sliema for up and coming as watching I was reacting in which

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