Dealing with Difficulty #16 Adolescents
Date:
Channel: Mufti Menk
Series: Mufti Menk - Ramadan 2024 - Dealing with Difficulty
File Size: 9.23MB
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AI Generated Summary ©
The speaker advises parents to be close to their children during difficult phases, as it can lead to negative behavior. They should also give their children temporary ownership and encourage them to fulfill their duty as children. The importance of praying and fulfilling obligations is emphasized, along with the need to act responsibly. The speaker briefly mentions a woman named Jannah who was given a gift of children to help her grow up into a Muslim man and woman.AI Generated Transcript ©
Welcome to this episode of dealing with difficulty.
As our children grow up, we don't realize
that they go through changes at times
and they go through phases.
Many of us would probably become upset with
these children to say they're naughty and they
perhaps are, you know, unruly and so on
without noticing
that there is a certain time frame within
which they are growing from being a child
to an adult. And these teenage or adolescent
years are not easy to deal with.
The difficulty of having children in that time
frame or that period of time is such
that Allah Almighty wants us to be patient
with them while teaching them
that which is their duty the minute they
are
they achieve what we would know as Buluq
in the Arabic language or
maturity.
The age of maturity when
their duties unto Allah become
proper duties.
When a person is young, we teach them
to pray. If they pray or they don't
pray, it's not written for them or against
them. As they grow older, it's getting them
used to
what is going to be the obligation the
day you hit puberty.
So it's my duty.
It's my duty as a parent
to guide them from an early age. Many
of us forget
to praise
the children
as they grow older.
When they do something wrong, we're quick to
yell at them. We're quick to say things
to them. We're quick to correct them.
Correcting them is a good thing, but yelling
at them sometimes we belittle them, which is
wrong.
Belittling a child is calling them bad names,
making them feel unwanted, making them feel useless,
telling them you're useless, telling them you know
nothing and you're never going to pass, cursing
them. All these are prohibited in Islam. It
is forbidden.
This child is a gift. It's actually the
ownership of Allah, not the ownership of you.
But rather,
Allah has given you
temporary custody or temporary ownership,
Not ultimate ownership.
When a person passes away, we say,
We belong to Allah. We've never said we
belong to our fathers, we belong to our
mothers, and we're going to return to our
mothers. No.
Although we say that's my child, Allah says,
hang on. I've just given you this child
for a short period of time to test
you
and to give you an opportunity to earn
paradise by looking after the child
before we take the child away. We may
take the child away in infancy,
in the teenage years, or in adulthood before
you or after you. It's up to Allah.
So as the child grows older, learn to
correct the child with respect and kindness.
And then you find during the teenage years,
they begin to
navigate through a period that's not easy to
go through.
And during this time, it's very important for
us to be very close to them, and
to offer them good words, to offer them
appreciation.
They're being built and molded.
The best of words that you utter to
your children or the children of others.
During this stage
are those words that are filled with hope,
And giving them
the strength,
and the feeling that I can achieve, and
I will achieve, and I'm good enough, and
I am normal, and I am okay.
Rather than making them feel so negative about
everything
that they won't achieve anything at all. They
already have a negative mindset. I can't do
this. I'm not able to do this. I'm
useless. I can't That's what they've been told
all along.
So to help them through these difficult days
and difficult through this difficult phase,
we should be role models to them, and
we should always reassure them.
Some parents expect so much from their children
that if they have lost a mark or
2 at school in the examinations, it's the
end of the world.
That is not acceptable. These examinations that you
are belittling them about are not even connected
to their ultimate success in the eyes of
Allah. Perhaps Allah will grant them greater successes
as a result of that little failure that
they went through.
I know of people who've dropped out of
colleges
and become some of the wealthiest people in
the world.
SubhanAllah.
Not to say that it's everything to be
wealthy, but
worldly success, part of the equation,
looks at your wealth.
Whereas the success in the eyes of Allah
looks at your connection with Him and whether
you've reached out to the rest of the
creation of Allah Subhanahu wa ta'ala. Sometimes our
children are lovely
and so beautiful waiting for us to encourage
them to be even
more beautiful
and to be able to fulfill their duty
as
servants of Allah
in the most amazing way. So go easy
on the children. Don't be too hard on
them. When we are very hard on children
and we don't allow them to play as
children,
they grow up having lost out on a
whole
on a whole section of their
childhood.
That would reflect later on in their lives
in one way or another in most cases.
So rather let them play, let them make
their mistakes, correct them with happiness,
you know, correct them in a beautiful way.
Let them come through as they grow a
little bit older. Like I said, encourage them.
Don't belittle them. Offer them some respect.
Don't say cutting words because
at that phase,
many young men and women or boys and
girls
sometimes don't even like the way they look.
And if you're going to pick on how
you look and how you're
this and that, you know, about their features
and so on, they're helpless sometimes.
And that belittlement is something you pay a
price for. Firstly, it's sinful, so you get
a sin for it. And secondly, you may
lose the child. You may actually cause
failure without realizing that it was you who
did this. And this is why the empowerment
of these children is very, very important.
Sometimes we push religion
to the degree that they begin to hate
religion,
and this is a difficulty we face.
So like I said, lead by example. Be
exemplary.
You fulfill your salah and so on. From
a young age, we were supposed to let
them see what we do. And from the
age of 7,
we actually begin to
tell them come let's pray and we should
be smiling when we're praying and when we're
worshiping Allah so that they know mum and
dad are always happy when they pray it's
going to make me happy. When you're sad
and you show a bad face and you're
like, ah, I got to pray. The children
won't even want to go there because for
them this is something really nasty. It's something
that my mom and dad don't even like
to do. But then we're telling them, you
gotta pray. You gotta pray. Yet you as
a parent don't even enjoy the prayer.
So remember,
the expressions on your face are important.
We're going to bring them along. We're going
to start telling them to do good things
in a beautiful way.
And then we're going to guide them and
when they get a little bit older, if
they do not fulfill their duty unto Allah,
we can
we can actually reprimand them in a way
that is most effective.
So you don't just whip somebody. You don't
beat them up. No. That will have a
negative effect, especially in today's generation.
It will actually turn them away completely.
But if you cut down their hours on
their games or you cut down the hours
on the phone or you might want to
restrict something, they're very very close to their
heart.
Or in fact rather than restrict you, award
and reward them for the good that they
do
and they don't get that
reward when they haven't done it, that is
also a method. So you choose the most
effective
method, which keeps the respect of the child
intact.
But they do know this is an important
thing I need to get done. And then
as they grow older, they go into these
adolescent years in a beautiful way. They know
I have my mum to talk to, my
dad to talk to, no matter what I
tell them. They're not going to yell at
me, they're not going to, you know, say
nasty things because many times when children want
to confide, they don't confide in the parents.
They feel, my father's gonna shout at me,
my mother's gonna get cross, and this will
happen and that will happen without
us realizing that they're actually confiding in someone
else altogether who's probably giving them the wrong
advice. So if you want your child to
confide in you, you need to make sure
you react in a positive way when they've
told you something very negative.
So if the child comes and says, you
know, I broke this, I damaged this, I
I did this, I did that negative things,
we react in a positive way so that
Allah Almighty
will guide them and
make them a means of our entry into
paradise. One thing that many people don't realize
is
our children are a door to paradise.
And if we are to serve the children
in a way that Allah wants us to
serve them and help them grow up into
fine Muslim men and women, then Allah Almighty
will indeed grant us Jannah as a result
of this. And if we're not going to
take that seriously,
then we haven't understood the gift of children.
May Allah bless those who don't have children
with children and grant goodness to all those
who do have children and bless them all.
Aqolaqawlihada.
Wasallallahuasallam
Nam Muhammad. Wasallam Alaikum Warahmatullahi Barakat.
Nam Muhammad. Wasallam Alaikum Warahmatullahi Barakat.