Ideal Muslim Family(Quran and Sunnah)
Nouman Ali Khan – The Ideal Muslim Family
AI: Summary ©
The speakers emphasize the importance of acknowledging one's mistake and developing healthy relationships, particularly during busy periods. They also emphasize the need for parents to take responsibility and empower them through early learning, including opportunities for personal development and early learning experiences. The speakers stress the importance of early learning experiences for children and empowering parents through early learning experiences.
AI: Transcript ©
There's no such thing as ideal Muslim family. As a matter of fact, there's no such thing as an ideal family. You can even take up the word Muslim. And also, there's no such thing as a normal family.
So if you're some of you are wondering, why can't we have a normal family?
Right? Let's accept the fact that there's no such thing.
Every one of us has some kind of adventure, or some kind of problem, some kind of crazy situation. And we all think that it's my family. Oh, man, we're so weird. These weird situations in our family, you're not weird, you're actually pretty normal, because there's a whole bunch of other people that have the same exact situation as you are even worse, and are dealing with it. Our Deen does not want us to be an ideal family, it wants us to deal with our family in an ideal way, it teaches us how to manage a situation. This Buddha is a world of trials, and those trials are going to be personal trials are going to be financial trials, we're also going to have to do a lot with our families,
we're going to have family trials, and that's a part of life. You can't you have to accept that. If they accept that there's going to be trouble in family. And you just theme is beautiful, because it accepts that reality. And it teaches us how to deal with it. Somebody comes to me I get a lot of emails in subjects that I'm not qualified for. So I get you know, people listen to my talks online and watch a YouTube video or something. And then they share their personal life story by email with me a lot. I know most of it has to do with some kind of family situation, most of it. Somebody who's having a real problem with their life. Somebody's having a real problem with their husband. Somebody
seriously hates their brother or their sister, it can stand there. How do I deal with this? Hey, somebody says my parents just don't listen to me. They don't don't care about me. I can't talk to them about anything. They're always angry. Somebody says my uncle is so arrogant. I don't know what to do about that. He's just such an ego problem. I just, I don't know how to deal with it. How am I supposed to keep family relations with someone who's so arrogant. And so you know, so condescending all the time, he talks down to me all the time. There are people that you know, talk about how they've lost a family member, or there's a family member, that's sick. And so you know, when a
family member is sick, the entire family has to compensate for that and deal with that situation. It's not easy sometimes, especially people that are in terminally ill kinds of situations. And you have to you know, you're taking care of the Father. And he's taking turns taking care of the father or the mother, or things that some of you parents have a child who's got a very, you know, difficult disorder disease. And you have to turn your whole life upside down to deal with that child's situation. Sometimes with no husband or a wife become very, very sick, and it can really put a lot of pressure on the rest of the family. Then, of course, I haven't even talked about the big ones in
laws.
So I mean, all of us have situations, all of us. There's none of us that don't none of us can safely say that I have a life in which no family, no member of my family, close or distant causes me zero stress. I get no stress from family. That is just isn't true. And now how do I know that our Dean teaches us to deal with this kind of scenario? I told you somebody emails me and says I'm having trouble with my wife.
I don't know if I can trust her.
We have we don't communicate very clearly. I thought she was someone but she's someone else. I don't really know. Sometimes I don't feel like I don't know what she is like, hey, that sounds familiar.
And somebody else comes in tells me I you know, my kids give me such grief. I've done everything I can to raise them, but they give me such a hard time.
Somebody else comes and tells me you know, my husband, he's he's, you know, abusive. He's scary. I'm afraid to talk to him. I don't know what to do. Stuck in this situation. I'm like, Oh, I see.
Okay.
My uncle is a crazy guy.
He's really arrogant. He gives me such a hard time. Okay.
I mean, you give me a situation. You give me a family situation. And chances are you know, if somebody says I hate my siblings. I can't stand them. They're older than me. Those beat me up.
Brother, oppress him. even believe him when they when he gets arrested, you know, in Egypt. So Pamela, every one of these situations, there's something wrong. There's something in the soul of the prophesies. Why are these situations there because even the best people, the best people have family situation, the best of them, and it's not their fault. I would argue probably as far as parents are concerned, for example, that Yahuwah Salaam is
in my estimation, probably the the best parent or the example of parenting mentioned in the overall
When a man talks about parenting, he brings up Yahoo rallies around a lot. Okay.
And Yahoo is, you know, his other name is study, and he has how many sons
10 of whom give him a hard time, for most of his life, a very hard time.
You cannot argue that your body is a legal prophet that he is
that he was not a good parent, it was an awesome parent, he did his job as a parent, but kids didn't turn out the way he expected.
That's just reality. You can do your part. But you can only do so much, then people, you know, a lot of times people have a certain kind of email eye, or a certain kind of question. And that's really what I want to talk to you guys about is how do we think about these problems? My, my discussion with you today is really just that it's a discussion, it's
not going to teach you something, you know, something about Islamic knowledge that you didn't already know. But I want to have a conversation with you. And actually, I want to dedicate most of our time together with you asking the questions and you know, bringing up concerns, things like that.
But, you know, people ask, how do you how do you talk to someone in your family? Who's got this? This is how you talk to your parents who don't listen to you? Or how do you, you know, how do you change them?
Right, so most people that have a problem, they think the solution is if somehow we can change the person who's giving us a hard time, we can change the person who's the cause of the problem? How do we change them?
You know, that is the problem, isn't it? Like Goku was a lover, it was alone cannot change his uncle
and change him.
He cannot change no other son can change his wife. He can, she is who she is. The only one who can change the hearts is a lot younger.
Right, the one who can change the hearts, we can change people's hearts, we cannot alter them.
So we have to understand, first and foremost, that if you are expecting other people to change, and until other people change, your situation will not get any better.
That you're looking at the problem the wrong way. Because if you keep waiting for other people to change that they never happened,
that might never happen. The only thing you can do and I can do is deal with this situation in a healthy way. And I'm not just saying I'm not saying somebody is the only answer. There may be other things you can do. There may be other remedies to the problem, there will be other ways of tackling and dealing with the situation. But one thing's for sure. The primary responsibility we have like if you're unhappy with your wife, for example, and inshallah Tada, you're not. But if you're unhappy with your life, every other conversation runs into a fight, they just end up just arguing with him. Right? And she's unhappy with you, you're unhappy with her. And you feel like every time you bring
up a concern, she just doesn't care. And you tell her something's important. And she says, Yeah, whatever. And she doesn't care as much as you like, and she feels like you've never listened to her. And there's this kind of problem. And then you come to the shamans, ha, my wife, you know, she's got these issues, which I do. And she has, you know, maybe you didn't you as a chef, maybe you
should I do and you find out like a hadith about the wife. I asked about the wife and you pull out all the rights of the husband on the ahaadeeth. And you put them on the fridge.
You know precisely how to call it out and
righteous women are the ones that are subservient and obedient, and they're willing to obey. And they're, you know, you put it on the fridge for her.
Maybe if you eat Come on and realize what she's supposed to be like, you make a big poster on a local level.
You know, men are maintainers and, you know, authorities over women, you make a gigantic poster and put it in the bedroom. Because he walks into the seat.
Chances are that's not gonna work very well.
Chances are even if you quoted the deal on your face,
you ain't no Sahabi yourself, you know?
Right, it's not gonna happen. These are human situations. And the other thing we have to note is the best generation the Sahaba.
They were no exception, either they had trouble Do they have trouble in their families, and it wasn't just trouble between Muslim Sahaba and non Muslim like family members. That's obvious. There's gonna be some friction there. But even among Muslims, I mean, the fraud even talks about a divorce happening between, you know, they
didn't really want it happened in it. And they're both
they're both good people. They're not bad people. Sometimes family can't get along. It happens. These are real life situations. So the first major point I want to make for all of you is difficult situations in dealing with family is a reality of life. It is going to happen it happens already. The second point
Is that you shouldn't expect to change other people, the only thing we can do is perhaps take a good look at ourselves and say, What part of this is my fault?
What part of this? Am I doing wrong? Is there something I could be doing differently? And maybe you're not wrong. It's true. By the way, human tendency is to believe that you have done nothing wrong.
That's a human tendency. So whenever there's a problem, the hardest thing to accept is that I am part of the problem. No, no, I do everything.
And the wife says the same thing, I do everything I can. He just doesn't have any patience. He just doesn't listen, he just assumed that, like, you're convinced that you cannot be one. And the other is absolutely wrong. They're absolutely wrong. And this mentality also contributes further to the problem. If you're not willing to accept that there's something wrong with you.
Even if it's 1%, maybe 90 99%, therefore 1% your fault. But if you can even admit to that 1%, you can admit to that and you can, and you're not willing to change yourself in any way, then you are setting yourself up for a lifetime of misery.
The solution to our family problems is not to leave our families is not to cut the relations. It's not to just find a mate. Maybe if I had a different family, things would have been better.
Maybe it's different, you know, maybe if I got married to somebody else, things wouldn't be like this.
You know?
Maybe I don't know, this family's kind of messed up. This one didn't turn out that well. Let me try a different
restaurant.
I don't like this one. We try another one. Actually, chances are if you're running one family, I'm talking to the men now if you're bad at running one time, the chances are you're gonna be worse at running the next
you're gonna be worse. You know? And then some some guys start thinking some men, especially married situations, they start thinking, Oh, well, I can't really deal with this wife, she gives me a hard time getting married another one.
You know, the standards Give me the option. So this was gives me a hard time, there's always another, you know, what's
the only? I don't know?
I just well.
After all, I didn't give that option. And guess what? You You couldn't handle one?
And you're gonna really do great with to what's going to be awesome. No, it's not.
You just ended up ruining two lives.
That's what you ended up doing. These things you have to really, really, really think about. And I say the first thing we have to get out of our heads is we have to stop wishing our family was somebody else are they cutting relations are no longer talking. I just even I just even don't even talk to my wife anymore. Because I don't want to fight. I don't even talk to my dad anymore. Because I don't want to fight. I don't even talk to my brother anymore. I don't want to fight. You just kind of even if you don't cut relations, like you're not my brother anymore. You just practically don't talk to them anymore. Because you know, every time we talk, it gets into a fight, right? So you just
practically distance yourself from your family. And this is exactly the problem that most of us are worried about. And the one of the most important advice, pieces of advice in Islam, similar to keeping the family ties close time is one of the qualifications for entering genda Why is it it seems so easy, right? Keeping family ties, like why would that get us agenda it shouldn't be like some battle and some Jihad on the battlefield or some, you know, some really awesome deep, like good deed like piano labor, 40 day, 4040 years or something. Why keeping the family ties together? If you know what your family is, like, you know, this isn't easy.
If you know what your family is, like, especially the cousin you hate.
The brother You can't stand the uncle who's like super obnoxious. You know, the son or daughter who just looking at them makes you angry. There are some others in the audience. They're good to all of their kids. But there's one daughter, she can't stand. It looks at her. She gets angry. It gets upset and she says her face. Why are you here?
But she'll be smiling at everything else. And then she'll see that and like a dark cloud goes over over a base. Just can't stand it and there's something in your head. I don't know what it is. She makes me so angry. You know, he's stuck in that state. There are some people that are having a problem.
It's really straining relationship. That's what we learn about.
What are we treating poorly and why?
And how do we start fresh?
How do we do? How do we build a real family, real family religions despite all of our problems,
there's some of you because we're living in America is another interesting reality. There's a reality where people you know, the families trying to hold on to Islam. And they're trying to you know, make sure that children learn the prayer
and to learn to observe the you know, the restrictions of the * out and they commit themselves to halaal
a one of the boys
is becoming rebellious. One of the girls is becoming rebellious. And their stop, they stop praying. And you find weird stuff on their iPhone.
And they, you know, they're just headphones in the ear all the time.
The father is going to be late every night is at every slot of the budget. And the kid at home is a completely different character. The girl goes out and she doesn't, you don't even know where she goes. And then she comes back at 1011 o'clock at night, and there is this friction in the house. Because it's like these kids are practically leftist, they're practically left. But to the, to the parents, because they come from a traditional Muslim family, where they were raised with certain values, it is so traumatic, it's so difficult to deal with that reality. Like my children are just didn't care about Islam anymore. You just decide you don't want to deal with it, the elders decide
they don't want to deal with it, I'll just spend most of my time in the machine.
I'll just spend my time making, making the cut making slot. That's all I can do. I'm not going to deal with my family, this kid, let me just let them just do what they do. And every time if you do talk to them, you yell and scream, yell and scream, the kid got around to take this out, slammed the door and they walk up
and have to take it anymore. You know, and so you don't deal with it. And they they say they can talk to you. And eventually you end up losing those children then running away from home, they end up you know, in all kinds of illicit relationships, they move out of the house, you lose touch with that you lose family this way. There's so many families in the country that I've personally, where one or two or three children just left the family they just left. They left there for all practical purposes, they're not even Muslim anymore.
You know, moved in with a boyfriend or a girlfriend got a job somewhere else. And then they'll never call never talk nothing. Just let the time.
In other words be pushed our children so hard. Some of our kids on the religion, they push them so hard that they broke.
Literally they couldn't have they couldn't handle it. We didn't realize I know sometimes our neighborhoods in the United States and several times here in Minneapolis, right? There are some neighborhoods that are like little Somalia.
There's some neighborhoods that are like little Bangladesh, some neighborhoods that are like little Pakistan, like a little India, like you know, Hyderabad is also called Chicago. Nowadays. It was the same someplace.
You know, there are places in New York like that. There are places in Minneapolis like that there are pockets. And you know, everybody feels like, Oh, this is not really America. It was like
that was a question right there. All the Muslims live in the same apartment complex.
At 85 long restaurant down the street, this is almost a country right here. But you know what, as much as you want to pretend this isn't America.
The public high schools still have public high school, the movie theaters, so the movie theater, the drugs on the street are still the drugs on the street. Again, they're still in the game. You can pretend these few blocks are, you know, make it up over you. But it's not. It's not let's just pretend it's not dealing with reality. And there are people, especially elders in our community, and I don't blame them. I don't blame them. There's a language barrier, there's a culture barrier, they can actually live 3040 years of their life in America, and not feel for a minute that they're in America.
Because their life is go home, go to the grocery store, hang out with your friends, I speak the same languages, you can go to the machine and go home, machine, grocery store or restaurant and go to each other's apartments. And you didn't need every 40 years, you didn't have to learn English, you didn't have to. Because everybody around you created this mini little village, and you live in that but your kids don't live in that your kids don't live in that your kids live in America.
The Ducks is not gonna work for them, sometimes.
They're gonna start hating it, some of them, you're gonna have to make some changes. Because what work back home may not work over here. You can't just prop a culture, pick it up from one place in the world and drop it in another place in the world and expect that it's going to work exactly the same way. It doesn't. It doesn't work. Some of it does. Sure. I'm not saying we drop all of our values. Absolutely not.
And actually, like specifically, I know there's a majority of our Somali community in the audience and I want to acknowledge some things small community in particular, Mashallah one of the one of the things I love about this community is their relationship with the Quran. I don't know any other community that has that kind of relationship with that kind of emphasis on
that kind of like love for memorizing the Quran and residing abroad, whether I go to a community in Columbus, Ohio, or I go to a community over here, you know, in Minnesota, or I see our community in the small community in Dallas.
all over the country, there's pockets of you know, smaller communities and you go and you go to a little massage fudger
machine is
awesome. It's awesome. But the problem is I don't see the young people.
I see the really young kids. I see the really no kids, I think the really old people. I see the women. I don't see the teenagers.
I don't see the 13 year olds, I don't see the 15 year old see one or two good kids? Where's the majority of?
Where's the majority of them? To find them on the basketball court?
You find them somewhere a little farther away from the machine, maybe even there's a program run on the machine if the guys show up, or show up? If there's a wall correlate the question.
You know, but you know what, I'm not complaining. I'm saying those kids are still good kids, we just have to acknowledge the fact that number one, we're living in America, we're living in America. So how we're going to do that Islam is going to have to be different.
You know, it's the same Islam, but the way we did it, the way we administer, it is going to have to consider, you know, the other realities in our community. You know, so I was talking to you about family, you know, the ideal Muslim family situation.
The biggest thing, the biggest principle, in having a healthy family, I'm not going to say ideal family, because I told you, there's no such thing. Even the prophets didn't have ideal families, they had problems.
The Healthy The first principle, in my opinion, will apply them of a healthy family is you never give up on family.
You never I don't care if your kids doing drugs.
I don't care if you're you know, your father is all kinds of messed up. You don't give up on your family.
You stay in touch. If they're abusive, it's a different story. physically abusive, or emotionally abusive. Even though you don't give up on them. That doesn't mean you take the abuse either. second principle is you don't accept abuse. You don't continue along with abuse. It's not healthy. You're not helping yourself. You can't say, Oh, I'm just having some. No, no, no, that's not something
you're just damaging yourself. And human beings can only take so much we're limited container, you take so much enough abuse is given to you and you will break will snap, crazy things will happen. You have to have you have to draw the line, you will accept you will take care of your parents, for example, you will do everything you can for them. But when they when it comes, you know, when they do something that's outright wrong, you will have to stand up and say, you know, this isn't right. And you have to eat the elders in our community, you have to get involved in a lot of times to come about our traditional elders in our communities, they are so knowledgeable, and they're so well
qualified as scholars. But at the same time, they are not aware of a lot of the situations of our families. They're not just fully aware of that. So they never bring it up and
bring it up because they're not made aware.
They're not made aware. And they're good people. The community, his job is to make the leadership aware of what's happening. Because I can almost guarantee the moms of our community or our community, they're concerned people, they want good for the people, they want Islam for the people. So when they hear about the problems and concerns them, and they will try to educate the community more and more raise awareness more and more about the kinds of problems that are happening. abuse is unacceptable.
Now not abuse from parents to children, not abuse from children to parents. It's unacceptable. The second thing is three things I mentioned so far. When you don't give up on family, too. You have to draw the line somewhere. You have to draw the line. You can't just anything goes it's family, they can do whatever they want. No, are they did not get an open license. It's not.
It's not like that. We have to obey our parents. We have to we're elders. Yes, we do. But we cannot allow that obedience to turn into abuse. That can that's not right. That isn't right. So they're violating your rights or they're, they're hurting you, then you have to have that conversation and it's not allowed for you to have that conversation.
It's not wrong for you to have that conversation.
On the other side, also the children have to understand that the children or parents have to understand that our Deen and one of the biggest priorities in our Deen is respect and obedience to parents.
One of the biggest priorities in our lives,
even if they're abusive, even if they're being really bad, even that you had you cannot abandon the respect and love and consideration to your parents. It's a very hard way to think about it seems like opposites. But you don't I don't love sorry. I don't love and respect my parents, only because they're my parents. I love and respect my parents because I will let
sleeve, and let me know the priority for me. So I'm not even doing it for my parents, I'm doing it for a lot. And me not caring about my parents is actually me not caring about my lesson, I will not have to answer to my parents for that I will have to answer a lot for that.
I have to have, I have to be very clear that my relationship with my parents is not a reaction. If they're good to me, I'll be good to them. They're not good to me. You know, what do you do for me? What my dad ever do for me? Or should I be nice to him?
No, it's not a reactionary relationship. This relationship we have with our parents, especially with our parents, is a relationship that's based entirely on one's commandment will one day be
conditional, you have to have a son with your both your parents unconditionally, it's not dependent, whether they're good parents or not.
You have to do the best you can with them.
You have to do the best you possibly can with
sometimes our our elders, they do things that harm themselves.
Or elders, they do things that harm themselves. Sometimes they get stressed, they cry, they yell, they scream, and you think they're doing that you. But you know what, they're just as miserable. They're making themselves miserable. And sometimes they don't know how to get out of that, you have to help them get out of that.
You have to you cannot yell back, you have to just calm your mother down and take her for a walk and get her a flower and just work on it. And it won't happen overnight. It will take some time. It'll take some time to get the anger problem with your dad resolved. And it takes some time. But we have to work on our parents because sometimes they make their own selves miserable. Do you really do in many, many cultures in the Muslim community, because they don't know how to deal with this changing completely different family. They weren't the kind of kids you are. They'll keep telling you why I never did this to my parents. Because I never talked to my mother. Yeah, but you didn't live on this
continent either.
You know, I was a different time. It was a different culture, the values society was completely different, but didn't know how they don't necessarily understand that. And I don't expect them to understand that. So it's going to be very traumatic for them to deal with people like you guys, you guys are pretty dramatic to deal with. Understand the kids in this audience, they're not easy to deal with.
Easy to deal with by their Sunday school teachers, particularly good teachers, some of your friends forget your parents. Yeah, they're not easy to deal with
your your, you have a lot less patients who talk back a lot more. You want to do your own thing all the time.
You know that you don't ever listen. And if you do, it's not because they said once they have to say at least 100 times before you listen. And even then you complain, you're not easy to deal with. So if they're upset, they have a reason to everybody needs to do an assessment about what they're doing wrong in their relationships.
what's going wrong in our relationships? You know, this idea of how can I be a better son? How can I be a better mother? How can I be a better father?
How can I be a better husband? How can I be a better wife? You have to ask that question without asking the other one. Okay, okay. So my sister's listening to this. She goes home, she goes, Okay, I'm ready to be a better wife. But what are you gonna do?
No, no, don't say but what are you
know that you're going to be a better husband goes and says, Okay, Okay, I'm ready. But you're gonna change to right.
Do that, is he still haven't understood. You cannot expect other people to change. The only way you can change is yourself. Why? What's our motivation as Muslims, our motivation as Muslims as we can go before? I did, I did write
it. I did what I could as
I was patient, I didn't do. I didn't complain. She would sometimes that's out of protest. She would say the meanest things to me. She would say horrible things about my mother.
And I will just say how
I didn't yell back. And I didn't tell her how much I hate her mother. didn't say anything. I was quiet.
You know, sometimes she didn't she, you know, I came home and
it hurt my feelings. But I didn't say anything.
Sometimes I came home when she was already sleeping. And I didn't have dinner yet.
Then I tried to wake her up and she shooed me away. I got really upset, but I stayed quiet. I was patient. And I wasn't upset the next day either.
You know, I did my part. I did. I'm not complaining. And you don't wish bad about you or your husband and wife is the last thing I'll share with you guys don't take your question. You don't wish that upon your husband or your wife or your father or your mother or your sister.
Whether you don't wish bad upon them, you don't have things like rescue about this.
You don't say that.
You say that, you know?
The guy who is the person who gets asked even one question or judgment is destroyed.
You're not angry at your wife, you're that angry at your husband, that you wish that Allah interrogate someone judgmental.
You're not serious that is,
let me give you some idea of what you're wishing for. You have just had a fight with your wife. If the police showed up at your door, and they put handcuffs on your wife, you'd be okay with that. That's what you deserve. You're sleeping when I came for dinner, and you didn't wake up. You shouldn't be on this when this is happening to you.
Would you do that? No. You would forget the fight.
But you touch my wife.
What do you do? The fight would disappear. Wouldn't it? disappeared? You just have the, you know, there's some families do you live in the apartment next door to your brother. So you and your wife and your kids live in this apartment? their brother and his wife, his kids live in the next apartment, of course, there's gonna be drama.
The wives don't get along the kids. Young kids ate our food and whatever. They came in leave left a mess on the rug, our PlayStation controller or something? And there's a fight between the two brothers. The whole family is the guys crazy. It just went crazy. And of course, the women have nothing to do with
nothing at all. Absolutely. Okay. Now they're having this terrible fight. But there's a fire in the apartment building when
there's a fire in the apartment building.
It's two in the morning, you wake up, you get your wife and your kids you get out.
But before you get out, you look at his door. And you say,
poker PlayStation controllers?
Would you do that?
Would you wake him up? Even if you had a fight? Would you wake him up still? Yeah. Because when there's a state of emergency, you forget about all the fighting. You forget about the because all those things become a little upsetting, meaningless. You will forget about the fight. This is a big emergency right now. You understand that? Judgment Day is the biggest emergency humanity will ever see.
There's no bigger emergency than judgment.
You don't wish upon your husband, or your wife, or your children alone will ask you when you do that.
You don't do that means you don't love them at all. Means you wish the worst situation falls upon them.
That just means you don't care about them at all. You don't even wish that on non Muslims.
You live in wish on the average person walking down the street, they should burn in *, that's not the attitude of a Muslim. How can you wish that on your own family.
So don't make light of the things you say be careful about the things you say. And the things you think.
Parents, I'll give you a different way of thinking about your children that give you a hard time. Don't raise your hands. I know.
The children give you a hard time. You're like, you know, and you know, you keep yelling at them. And you know, Allah will ask you and don't you don't have to do. And you know what you have to be intelligent parents if your children are rebellious. And you know, when you do certain things, they start yelling at you.
You start young, they start yelling and you're in shock. You're like,
I'm your mother, I'm your father. You can't yell at me.
And then he says, yo, you can look me I'll do it again. Sure you can yell at you.
Do it again. And you're in shock. Because how could these kids yell at me? How could they not know what the law says?
Don't even say
don't say that?
This is another
that's a no. Don't even say that much.
And you're yelling back at them. You know what parents I'm not talking to the kids you're in trouble gets into trouble as it is talking to the parents.
Don't put your children in that situation where they will disagree. If you know that their disobedience already, don't further the disobedience, don't create the situation where the you know the argument is going to happen. Because if you create that situation where the argument is going to happen, you are digging their hole in Hellfire because there's few crimes in Islam that are bigger than yelling back at your parents. And you created the situation you parents created the situation where your parents your kids were yelling back at you and you were digging their hole in Hellfire if you hate your kids that much then do that.
Otherwise, try to find a softer approach with your kids, especially your teenage kids.
I don't think any of you parents are going to find your children having murdered one of your other children.
I don't think you're going to find that situation. But you know what your coupon is around, his teenage boys come home, and they've got a shirt full of blood of one of their own brothers. And the father knows this is all * garbage. They made this story up. So they must have killed him or something.
What is he going to do? How's he going to react?
If he yells at them, they're crazy. There's a bunch of psychos who, if he yells at them, what are they going to do?
What do you think chances are, they'll look younger.
And if you yell back at a parent who's also a prophet, you're done. You're finished. He hears that. He sees that a child is his most beloved child is missing. He's got a shirt full of blood in front of him.
Now let's let me pause the movie for a second here. And let me give you a different scenario.
How many guys here younger guys drive a car? Show hands down car.
And you guys okay? Driving parents come from the same car sharing sometimes. So you are your dad's car. And you're like, Oh, I saw it on YouTube. I saw they could do doughnuts in the parking lot.
So you tried to do a donut with your dad's car in the parking lot, except your donut looks more like a pencil.
And you end up grabbing the rearview mirror into a tree. And the rearview mirror falls off the car.
And you're trying to put it back in the superglue and nothing's working. So you take the rearview mirror and you walk into your dad's living room.
And you hand him the rearview mirror.
What happens next?
Silence.
Here's what your dad says.
I'm just going to be patient. Only a buck?
Right? That's what your dad says right?
there even find your body.
Use of the Lambs father is presented not with a rear view mirror. What is he presented?
With
a missing child? What are you expecting the year?
What do you expect to see
this level
at least punch him on the face.
At least yell at me. Come on.
You gotta do something.
So one of the strangest places in the world, I'm from a psychology point of view very hard to understand for me.
Why? Because he knows if he yells at them, they will become even worse. And he doesn't want his children and hellfire.
So he can only do this.
Because he sees not just what is happening in front of them. A parent thinks about the future.
parent doesn't just see what's happening. Now he thinks about the future.
If they become even more rebellious, now that the door to door was closed for them.
So how, like I said, kind of patients and future thinking parents have to develop. Sometimes your parents get lost so much of what your children are doing day to day to day, you have to think about
that to think about your children, and how you're going to get them to get closer to you not further away from them. Every time you yelled. Every time you yell every time you scream, they get further and further and further away from you. It's harder and harder and harder to connect with your kids anymore.
And you're doing that. And you have to learn to stop yourself and not do it anymore.
These are just a few like random things I wanted to share with you about just family and how we have to really think about one of our biggest priorities in our communities is keeping our family together. Community means nothing until the families involved in the community and families nothing until family stays together. And it takes a lot of work to keep family together. So these are just a few thoughts I wanted to share with all of you guys in Chicago. If you have any questions, that's okay. We can take questions of you know, if you guys have any questions or things you'd want to talk about, we can do that. I personally may not be able to help you with all of your questions, but at
least I can point you to certain services and resources that might be
your question
in his wisdom or in the situation where these tips are
So the best thing that you should do, but instead is when we look at our kids, there are many, many moments that we think about how to
how to show them the right way, and then we can teach them.
Right. So I have this thing, and really, this has to do with psychology more than anything else. So young kids like 12 years three
MB, develop this habit of lying to their parents.
You know, I think
that you are right.
To do that, but I want to tackle this problem.
Because I think this is such a huge thing. Yeah.
I think I think I can stop them from.
That's true.
Yeah, actually, like is one of the one of the earliest signs in psychology, perinatal psychology that your children's children become distinct from you, though, you have to understand why does a child lie? But first, we have to really ask the deeper question, why does the child lie? A child lies because they think telling the truth will get them in trouble.
Telling the truth will be embarrassing, telling the truth.
Telling the truth will be unacceptable. Like really bad things are gonna happen if they're like, because at the end of the day, between telling the truth and lying, a child thinks about what will happen if I tell the truth, what will happen if I lie, if I lie, I won't be in trouble, I'll be safe, they won't find out, etc, etc. If I tell the truth, your mom's gonna say, How could you do this? You know, I can't believe you did that. And you know, like, last time, she yelled, she's gonna yell like that. I'm just gonna be even worse, because I already did it before. I'm doing it a second time. Maybe I should just lie about it. Right, then, and what happens if it gets reinforced is that
children don't even see it as a lie anymore.
It just becomes a defense mechanism. So they so children started lying to you, and they will swear that they're telling the truth, and they will cry. And if you try to beat it out of them, they'll still cry and say, Oh, I didn't say that. Look, on video, this is what you said.
They're still gonna cry and say they didn't say, because in their world, they know there's one thing that's not possible, telling the truth to your parents, or your mother or your father, because they got really, really angry. Now, how does, how do we end up in that situation, you end up in that situation, if there's a relationship early on with the children, when there's a lot of like, the parenting is made up of a lot of getting in trouble.
Like if you know, your kids get in trouble with you a lot. And they get punished a lot or yelled at a lot or timeout a lot whether the punishment is like, you know, a little slap on the bottom. Or it's like yelling in front of the other siblings. The other thing is also, you know, we don't make a big deal out of it, you're yelling at your older daughter and the other two daughters are watching. It's actually humiliating for her not just because you're yelling at her, it's also humiliating for her because her two younger siblings are watching. And she's
just really upset that our other two siblings are not understand a lot put something inside the human being called dignity. Even for children, there's dignity. And when that dignity is put down, that they start developing, like it's very painful, it's more painful than physically, to be humiliated is more painful than physical pain. So you do everything you can to avoid humiliation. And that's actually something all human beings do. We try to avoid humiliation. The first counter to that is that parents have to understand especially in a society where we are dominated by, you know, conflict and rebellion, shamelessness, and all these things that we don't know jive with Islam,
we have to understand that our parenting cannot be a relationship of authority.
Not in this society, authority is always going to be there, but it has to take a minority role. And the majority roll is you can talk to me about anything.
It doesn't matter what it is. You can talk to me and I will not dismiss anything you're saying.
This is actually a product.
You know, you should allow told is that a dream? Right. And there's an IRA dedicated to a child telling his father a dream.
And there's a couple of hours after that dedicated to the child responding to the Father, the parent responding to the child about the dream.
And it's not the mother, it's the Father.
Now who listens better kids, mother or father.
mother or father
is better when you're a little
mother
Follow up, talk to
our secretary. Today we do it.
That's good.
That's good.
That's typically especially for younger kids. They're not good listeners, they just want to tickle you and play with you. And that leave me alone.
Ever conversation.
This boy comes to his father and tells him a dream. Now imagine a scenario where you're 678 910 years old, you go to your dad, and you tell him a dream.
Like, you know what I saw? I saw a dinosaur, and it was eating its own tail. And then it said, ouch.
Your dad's like, huh?
Very good.
Okay.
It's not really listening. Because he thinks a child's dream is absurd.
And what did the child see in his dream, I saw 11 stars and the sun and the moon, and they were all.
So but the father, listen,
the father listen. And it's not what's really amazing about that is the what we're learning about parenting psychology, that's sort of the first lesson for learning is you have to carefully listen to your children, even if they're talking about something that's not reality.
A dream isn't reality.
We're just talking about their thoughts. But you still have to pay attention. And you have to pay so much attention that the Father listens to it. And then there's a couple of other complimenting his child and engaging his child. And the other thing is, who would think which child would think I just saw a dream, here's a good idea, I should talk to dad about it.
When your kids come up to you and talk to you about anything,
they don't, they don't talk to you about your friend, their friends at school. They don't talk to you about homework. They don't talk to you about, you know, what their mother or their friends had on their mobile device. But they tried to show them, they don't talk to you, they're afraid to talk to you. But you've created that relationship. Yahoo has created a relationship when his son is so comfortable talking to him about anything, even if it's a dream, the first person he thinks about talking to his room, is that when you have that kind of open relationship,
when you have that kind of relationship, why is not going to be a problem. But
there is other kids lie to him.
They didn't they, they lied. So they know that means you can do your part as a parent to be as open and as accessible. And as kind of as clear as you can in your communication strategy you can employ, but if someone is going to have certain challenges in their personality, you know, at the age of children, we can try to address them as best we can. But once kids become teenagers, they're their own personality. You can only do so much, then it's subtle Jimmy one time.
You can't really change it, you know, then you can only ask a lot for help. Now, so the open communication, you don't have to be afraid if you tell me. Yes, it's a bad thing you did. But I love you anyway.
You know, that? It's gonna be hard, but it has to be developed, especially for us as parents, because we come from a culture, when whenever you make a mistake, what's the first response by the parents?
The first response, and that's usually even if you do something good. When you do something good, why?
advance payment for the next mistake?
You know, we come from that culture, we come from a culture we're constantly representing and correcting disciplining our kids. It's very hard for us to think differently as parents, we have to, we really, really have to otherwise children developed this habit of lying and lying and lying. So the first thing is when they lie, to not humiliate,
to not humiliate. The second thing is to pull them aside. Maybe take them on a trip with you sitting down for ice cream something and say, Look,
I know I know what happened. And I know that wasn't the truth, but I'm not. I mean, I just really am really hurt that you don't think that you can trust me.
I trust you, Mama. Nobody trusted me.
And I really feel sad that you don't trust me. Did I do something wrong? Is it my fault? You don't trust me anymore?
And I feel really bad. Maybe I'm a bad parent.
Cognitive, put yourself in that situation you make, make the love of your child for you, not the fear of your child for you, the love of your child for you should drive them to the truth, that the fear and they will it will happen, it takes a little bit of work it chipping away at this heart, and eventually you open up. But that's really what you want, especially by the time your children are teenagers. Because by the time your kids are teenagers, and they are tough, you're hard to deal with, they get hard at it, it's stubborn. So when your kids are 11, and 12, this is the most important age of their life with you be make extra time for your 10 1112 year old extra time to talk
to sit to discuss, to hang out, you have to have the you know, my oldest daughter is about to turn 12 I was scared to death.
I'm terrified. And what I've decided to do. First of all, I'm traveling a lot less This is one of the longest trip I've done this year because I'm staying an extra, like these few hours. I'm talking to you guys. But you know what i do even I take maybe one trip a month. And what I've decided to do is I take one of my girls with me on a trip.
So I can spend one on one time with each girl and just talk, just do dumb things.
Just talk just spend time. Why? Because you don't have six children. And even if I talk to each of them every day, they're all fighting for my attention, right? They're all we're all talking at the same time. We're not having a personal conversation. I'm not getting to know them as a person as much. I need time with them by themselves. Now one on one time with your children is what will save your life. And if you're not taking the time with your children, one on one, I know so many families, you got a lot of kids like we do
one on one time with each kid. I don't know what happens after you have six kids. They're like, Hey, what's your name again?
Number three,
prefer to just come here.
You know?
I'm so proud of using them.
That's what I meant.
You know,
one on one time with your kids really important. Yeah.
Growing up my mom.
Yeah.
And now I'm seeing with my sister as well, when they get upset with kids.
And I feel like, I mean,
it's just
and that's one of the things that actually leads to fear, losing parents and also having
that, you know, like having that kind of goes away, which has already shown me I'm gonna go.
Right.
That's a really good point you brought up like, there's some cultural situations when when parents get frustrated, and they make like,
for a lot of punish the children. You know, like, I know, in some Arab societies, when they do this kind of weird, oxymoron type thing. A guy gives a really good piece of poetry and he drops like a line of poetry.
To destroy your house.
What he means You're so awesome. I hope lightning strikes.
That's not a good thing. You don't really, they don't mean that. But they're just kind of like, oh, man, you just you impress me so much that I hate you. It's like a love hate thing. Right? So the first response to that would be parents. We're not needed. You say? You don't mean it, but you just say What? You know what the kids don't know that.
Mom said I should burn in *, but she doesn't mean that.
They really think you hate you hate them. Mom doesn't like me. The worst thing that can come out of a child's mouth. The worst thing that you're talking and everything is mama doesn't love me.
If she thinks that about You're the one the mother or the father, then you are a terrible, terrible, terrible parent.
You're a horrible day. If your child thinks that your child does not.
Because you've lost.
You lost that child. When they become an adult. Even a young adult they will want nothing to do with
you ruin their life. You really really have. Sisters, you have to control your anger. And I am in no position to tell you what to do. Honest to God. Some of you are housemate. homemakers, you're working like three 4am the baby starts making noise. The other kids have to be made ready for school.
You spent most of your day preparing the meals while you're preparing the meals, the kids are undoing all the cleaning you did, then you have to do the diaper changes regularly, and you have to do the laundry room, then you have the groceries or out, the milk is finished. Then while you're doing all of that, and the kids are already getting ready for breakfast, one of your sons takes the cereal and tips it over, of course, the milk on top of it on the floor. And then your husband wakes up and says where's my breakfast, and then you know,
and so this is happening every day, every added stress and stress and stress and stress. And then you finally know when your little kids or your daughter comes home or your son comes home from school, third, fourth grade, and the slap the two year old.
You've been putting up with a lot all day. I mean, they just came from school, but you already had a 1210 hour day.
And when your three third grader slaps the second grader,
colo
and just all boils over and you know, all the other children are like
one kid gets it
gets it and then your husband comes home and says Why are you always angry? You're like,
I have no idea.
How hard could it be? And then you say, oh, how hard can it be? Why don't you watch the kids for an hour? I'm going somewhere.
This husband will almost die.
What did you leave me with?
I thought you said they'll sleep the whole time. They woke up like two minutes after you left.
Oh my god. So I you know what i can respect that you have a very stressful life, I can respect that.
But there's even more expected from you and you know what you have to do, you have to start putting more and more and more responsibilities on your children, especially the older kids, you have to start helping making them help around the house, not by yelling at them. I always tell you to clean your room, but they don't clean their room, I tell you to help I don't help out, right. But take one child is coming here. I want to I want to cook with you. Um, I wanted to notice cooking.
But I wanted to watch the show that we were just watching.
Okay, you can watch our third leader, I'll put it on for you later.
Okay, you will watch it again. Just just cook with me.
Take a child and do something with them and you don't you'll see.
Can I do that?
In the beginning, just get your kids to start doing things with you.
And slowly it'll turn into them taking on responsibilities. If you start with clean the room, take out the garbage you do this, you do that.
Or even if they do, oh, I don't want to do that. You know, but you know what that'll do, it'll start taking the pressure off of you alone. And also it's really good for kids to start taking on responsibilities, to take care of chores to clean things up, to give give jobs to kids, I don't blame them for it, I don't think it's worth it. And I'm not just saying he should give kids allowance on that.
Give your kids responsibilities that they should do just because they should do them not because they're gonna get paid for it, or they're gonna get something out of it. Don't go to the capitalists at five years old. Don't do that. Okay, so one child, their responsibility is there's no shoes, shoes in the hallway. That's just their job in the hallway. So they do a sweep every hour.
No, that's not the same job. The
job is every evening they have to do all the cups the other one has to do all the plates
say this little tasks, little tasks. And then you compliment kids on the test. That's the payment You did such a good job.
I'm really proud of you. That was very very good. That makes me proud to say your urine immediate child and make you the best use you know that you have good grades in school. Good Guys, for your kids in front of them. You know what things they care about?
You know, I pray a lot makes you so awesome that the whole world is proud of you. And always proud of you and judgment day. You know, do you like basketball you know your child plays basketball or soccer or whatever. And let me show you the best basketball player in the world.
Really,
really,
those kinds of
any other questions you guys
kind of spread out
okay.
Okay, so the question is, what do we do with our kids public school assignments for homeschooling? Hard charter school?
Or go back home?
Yeah, the go back home is probably not going to work.
So, I mean, you could try it.
At the last Yeah, yeah. Well, I know people that have tried it, and they are depressed.
Kids are depressed, they're depressed because
just the kids are American nowadays, you can just put them back in that world. And also when listen is when we when people do messed up things over here, at least you can say that.
When people do messed up things over there, they're Muslim.
What are you gonna say? Nothing about a family from Sara Lee the other day, they said, We are bringing our kids to Texas. Because the
kids are up to
par, they spent three weeks in Dallas in our community. And they're like, yeah, this is a lot better for our kids. We're coming here.
So far, so much for the go back home. Things are so much better, because everybody like, you know, everybody back home. You know, as Catholics nibble on their face. The massages are always full. Everybody says the only words that come out of people's mouths?
No, that's not the case. Now, what are the options over here for schooling? Just repeat.
There is not one answer for that question. There is not one kind of Islamic school. There are some very successful Islamic schools in America. And there are some not successful Islamic schools at all in America. So you have to do your homework. Right?
The second thing is, there are some public schools that are very, very good. But if you're going to put your child in public school, you have to be aware of what happens in public school. What are the things that are on most kids mobile devices, what are the most downloaded songs, what's the most downloaded movies, one of the most visited websites for a teenage category, Google Analytics. And there, there are some Muslim counselor that already done all this research, you have to know that if even if your kid doesn't go to websites, this kid sitting next to them, goes to them and shows it to them. So your children will be exposed to things a unit of peace know what those things are. So if
you don't know who Justin Bieber is, there's a problem if you don't know, like, seriously, and if you don't know, you know, what movies are being launched, or what what Grand Theft Auto is, or if you don't know these things, then you can't be sending your child to public school, because you need to know that stuff. is a really, really no that stuff. And if you're going to tell you to send your child to public school, if that's the only option you have, you can't afford Islamic school and you're not qualified for homeschooling. And that's the only option you have, then you better make sure that they get a really strong Islamic personality education.
I added one word in Islamic education, personality, because it's not about anything. It's about personality. It doesn't matter how many dollars they've memorized, how many suitors they memorize, you know, how much they can recite, etc, etc. It matters what their personality is like.
personality is developed in a program where you have a lot of discussion. And our children, I was just mentioning this to some brothers I had lunch with yesterday, we have to make sure that about 1112 years old, we have a discussion about Islam with our children, as though we are introducing to Islam to them all over again. It's like we're making them Muslim at the age of 11 and 12. cognitively like they're coming intellectually to Islam.
They're not coming to Islam, because it's inherited. They're not coming to Islam, because they were raised a Muslim. They're not coming to Islam, because they don't know anything else. They're coming to Islam because they're convinced of Islam. So we have to have that built that personality, I believe at the age of 1112 of the foundations of hierarchy. Why do we believe what we believe? Why is everything else wrong? And this is the right to build that confidence into our kids. Because if the right mentality is there in our children, then you will find they'll be able to deal with all the time, the easier way, is still going to be tempting, but not as tempting as if they're not not
convinced. They have to be convinced, genuinely convinced Avista genuinely convinced our Eman cannot be inherited, that cannot be borrowed. It cannot be social like everybody else and Muslims. It can't be like that. And because we haven't addressed that issue of building Islam into our kids at that age, convincing is obviously our mentality. You know, the problem with that has become that our children are playing around with ideas of atheism and agnosticism. And in teenage years, I actually met a brother told me about a kid who a girl actually who's gone through the the doxy system in Minneapolis, she's gone through the system, and her parents found out you know, on Twitter and on
like Facebook, she's like, she loves this atheist lecturer, and she's like listening to all of his talks and this dimension to
be impressed with technology. And that's not a surprise. Because you know, you can't just give a stomach knowledge and not build up. The real foundation in Islam is why are we?
Why are we Muslim, and that has to be built. A lot of times the parents aren't equipped in building that I'm hoping to develop some of that for children. And that's one of my concerns is because I want to do it for my kids. But if I'm going to do it for my kids, that I might as well try to do it for other kids too. Why are the Muslim? Why is Islam superior to everything else? My goal for my kids when they are this is the last thing I'll say, my goal for my kids as teenagers is that they see Islam as far above, and far better than everything else. And anything else that contradicts Islam, outside society, they see that not not only do they don't, they're not impressed by it, they
feel that those things are pathetic, and sad and inferior.
And they're like, beneath them, because they to Allah has honored them too much by
too much. To be able to, for them to be impressed with that stuff. So I want my girls, even if they go to a public school, and they're not going to go, even if they do public school, and they see girls dress the way they dress, like I feel sorry for these girls, man. A lot of
these girls have no respect for themselves. You know, I feel bad for them. They're not gonna say, oh, man, I wish you dress like that. Everything's harmless. Well,
that's not how they're thinking, if we can fix the thinking, the behavioral become easy. The issue is we keep focusing on the behavior, we don't focus on the thinking. We have to empower the thought of our children build that Islamic thought. And if we can do that, we're gonna have a really awesome generation. And again, just as a reminder, 11 to 12 that's the year to start building that but
in my opinion, that's the time children become more inquisitive, they start asking why they start saying why am I non Muslim? non Muslim friends? Why are they gonna go to *?
I wonder which religion is right because we all have a religion. It's kind of weird. These thoughts come in their heads. You know, what's gonna happen when you're living in a pluralistic society? It's gonna happen might as well help them deal with those questions. We have to do that. We have to do that and inshallah inshallah we will. We'll do a great job of it. My time is up. Thank
you for listening. Sorry, I took extra time and oh, there's another speaker.
Thank you so much, very much.