Mirza Yawar Baig – How to raise young children
AI: Summary ©
The speakers discuss the issue of sadness and negative behavior in school, which can lead to parents' concerns about children being too busy or too busy. They suggest gradually weaning children off activities and tasks, avoiding double payment, and not paying children for work or maintenance. Additionally, they emphasize the importance of treating children with responsibility and giving them tasks, avoiding double payment, and not letting children take advantage of opportunities to create young people. They stress the need for children to achieve their goals and create successful lives, while also acknowledging the potential for negative consequences of overcoming entitlement mentality.
AI: Summary ©
As-salāmu alaykum wa-rahmatulahi wa-barakātuh.
I am sitting in home goods, in the
rock world and it is filled with stuff
for the Christmas holiday.
and I don't think I've ever seen a
larger collection of things that have no earthly
use whatsoever than I've seen here.
Almost all of them are of course sold
at a premium and then they will be
abandoned and junked as the minute the season
is over.
So I guess some, within quotes, goods come
out of the fact that people are employed
and they're making stuff but I don't see
what else.
Anyway, that's an aside.
My topic today is really looking at one
of the problems that many parents complain about,
which is children with an entitlement attitude and
especially that starts showing its teeth when the
child enters his or her teens.
And so I want to talk about why
I think, in my opinion, why this happens
and therefore how it can be avoided.
Because it is not a natural thing, it's
a manufactured thing and it's manufactured out of
something which is very nice, which is parental
concern, especially mothers.
But like all good things, there is a
potential for evil which manifests itself pretty quickly
and that parental concern is the issue.
That is, if you look at mothers, at
least I can say this about our Muslim,
Desi and Arab mothers and African mothers, they
are so, so, you know, desperately, I
don't think desperate is a good word, they
were so completely immersed in their children that
they, you know, they are with them and
they have the eye on them literally 24
-7 as long as the mother is awake
and the child is awake, the mother is
looking at the child, physically looking at the
child, connected with the child, physically, mentally and
so on.
Now, and responding to every single need of
the child, the smallest need, the child doesn't
even have to say it, but the mother
is jumping to fulfill it.
Now, you know, when the child is an
infant, very small, I suppose some of this
makes sense, not all, but some of this
makes sense.
But as the child grows and is growing,
it makes less and less and less sense.
However, the issue is that this doesn't change,
the behavior of the mother vis-a-vis
the child remains constant until the child is
now in the twins and then almost like
you turn a switch off, this attention stops
and the child is then sort of forced
to almost to say, well, you know, look
after yourself, you are old enough.
The problem is psychology doesn't work like a
electric switch, you can't turn it off and
on.
So if you have a child who is
used to constant attention and constant demand fulfillment,
indiscriminate demand fulfillment and also many times parents
succumbing to literally emotional blackmail, which is tantrums.
Sometimes it is very physical as in, you
know, screaming and so on, but otherwise it's
like getting, you know, expressing signs of disapproval,
parents or children sort of clamping up, things
like this.
The interesting thing is that the cure is
pretty simple.
The cure is to gradually wean them off,
wean them off this constant attention phenomena.
It's like detoxification in a way, because instead
of weaning them off, if you shut it
off, then you have problems.
And this is where we have the, you
know, teenager syndrome, the teenagers express their disapproval.
The problem is that when they were little,
they did the same things, but it looked
cute.
But when they grow older, it doesn't.
And that's when you notice it and you
say, well, what's wrong with this kid?
There's nothing wrong with the kid.
It is the same kid and he's behaving
the same way, except that when he was
behaving like that at age two, it looked
different from how he behaves in the same
way at age 12.
But the reason is the same, which is
that the kid is making a demand and
you, mother or father, quite rightly are saying,
no, doesn't work.
But, and so the kid shows disapproval.
Now, so what must you do is you
must wean them off.
How do you do that?
By giving them graduated tasks.
So when the child is now three years
old and wants to get, wants you to
put on their shoes, you say, no, you're
old enough to put on your shoes, put
them on yourself.
And he says, there are the shoes, go
put them in the shelf, bring them out,
put them on yourself.
If you do it, starting young, if you
do it, make it fun, make it like
a game.
Children enjoy doing that.
Little kids love doing little chores.
So they love doing, you know, bringing things,
carrying things, bringing them out, help mom in
the kitchen, all that kind of stuff.
They're very good at it.
And they get used to it.
And then you find you have more responsible
children.
Very interesting study done in NASA to say,
to show, to determine how do people become
geniuses.
And they found a very interesting thing.
They said it happens when the child is
given chores, they're given responsibility, they're given tasks
for which they are responsible.
Now, in farming communities, this happens automatically.
So if you go in, if you go
to one of the Amish farm, for example,
you quite often see little kids.
I went to one in Virginia and in
Pennsylvania.
And there was a little one who must
have been about five.
He was selling horseshoes.
So he was sitting there with his little
stall and he was selling horseshoes.
So I was chatting with him, I said,
you know, I bought a horseshoe.
He had them all painted silver.
So I said, do you have one which
doesn't have any paint on it?
So he said, just a minute, I'll get
it.
So he gets up, he runs, running barefoot.
He's got no shoes on even.
But having fun, I mean, he's running through
the dust.
He went inside a barn, he got me
an unpainted one.
I paid some $3 or something, which is
like phenomenal money for that kind of thing.
But anyway, he wanted to help the kids.
So I said, oh, fine, fantastic.
I said, this is your business.
You're the sole owner.
He said, no, I've got a partner.
I said, who's your partner?
And he points to his little brother who's
about three years old.
And this little fellow is, is pulling along
a little cart in which he's bringing stock
for the shop.
He's bringing horseshoes and a couple of other
knickknacks for his brother's shop.
So they're two of the partners.
Now this is normal.
So I asked him, I said, what else
do you do?
He said, oh, I mean, I'm also responsible
for the chickens.
So his job is to look after the
chickens, free range chickens.
They don't really need too much of looking
after.
But too much or too little, he's responsible.
So is the pen closed at night to
make sure that no foxes and stuff get
into it and stuff.
So they found, the NASA study found that
children who have, who grew up with tusks
are very intelligent.
They end up, you know, many of them
end up being geniuses because their whole life
is they used to solving problems.
They used to planning things.
They used to, you know, within courts looking
for threats and trying to protect the charges
from, from harm and so on.
So they grow up with a sense of
responsibility, which is an enormously valuable thing.
And lo and behold, they don't have the
entitlement mentality.
They don't have, they don't throw tantrums.
They're not 12, 13, 14, acting like they
are two because they have gone through the
phases, phases of growing up.
So this is very important to stop treating
your kid like a kid.
The kid is a young adult.
Even if he's three, four, five years old,
he's still preparing or getting ready to become
an adult.
And so give them graduated tasks.
No matter how small the task is, treat
it seriously.
Give it, give them the task.
Don't pay them money.
Never, never, never pay them money to do
work in the house.
The house belongs to them.
They belong to the house.
And to take care of your surrounding is
part of your responsibility as an individual, as
a human being.
And there's no reason why you should want
or be paid for it.
So never pay them.
Never pay them to take out the garbage
or to wash the car or something because
this is a family car.
You use the car.
The car is beneficial for you.
You use it.
So therefore you are responsible for taking care
of it.
So don't pay them.
But give them tasks.
That's a responsibility.
And no shortcuts.
No shortcuts.
You can't say, oh, you know, today I'm
busy.
I've got to watch this match.
No.
You finish your job.
You finish your task and then you go
watch whatever you want to watch.
I think this is the thing I want
to say to you is that the cure
for this entitlement mentality, God help us, it's
a horrible thing.
We raise children with an entitlement mentality.
They grow up into adults with an entitlement
mentality.
Everyone suffers.
And that's the cure for that is right
there in your home, in the nursery.
Final point is to train them to share.
That's very, very important.
Train them to share.
No competition with your siblings.
For example, if there is a toy and
two are fighting over it, don't ever, ever,
ever say, don't fight.
I'll get you your own.
Because fast forward that 40 years and you
have a fight between two sons over your
property, over a family business, over a house,
over, you know, children, brothers and sisters filing
suit and filing cases against each other, against
their parents in some cases.
I mean how horrible, horrible, horrible it is
that children feel no shame in filing a
suit against their own mother, own father.
I have actually seen this happening and I
say shame on you.
And that wealth which you get, if you
win that case, that wealth that you got
out of your mother is fire in your
belly from Jahannam.
May Allah have mercy on me.
Imagine the position of parents in Islam and
Muslim children.
I say children, they're not children anymore.
Just that biologically they're children in their 40s
filing suits and cases against their own parents.
How horrible, how disgraceful, how disgusting, how despicable,
how shameless is that.
Right.
I hope whoever listens to this and if
you are one of them, I hope you
feel really, really ashamed of yourself.
And the first thing you do is pick
up your phone, call your attorney and say
I'm withdrawing the case, no more case.
My father is my father, my mother is
my mother.
So please, my brother is my brother, sister
is my sister.
Have some respect for your own blood.
So it really is something to think about.
Give them graduated tasks, make them responsible, give
them chores, give them responsibilities that they can
fulfill.
They feel they get a sense of achievement,
they get a sense of responsibility and you
end up with a child who is a
responsible adult and not with a sense of
entitlement and with a problem solver, who is
intelligent, who knows how to plan, who knows
how to execute.
All the good things in life that you
need from any young child and you want
to create young adults like that.
We ask Allah to make it easy and
make it a sense of, give a sense
of fulfillment to make it possible to raise
youngsters that we can be proud of.
وَسَلَّ اللَّهُ عَنَ نَبِيِّ الْكَرِيمُ وَعَلَيْهِ وَسَحِبَتْ مَعَ
مِنْ وِرَمَّةِ كَرْمَهُ