Yasir Qadhi – There Are NO Rules to Raising Children
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Rule number one, there are no rules. Anybody who tells you that he or she knows the secret of raising children, anybody who tells you that if you follow this rule you will become or you will begin to have a great child, that person clearly has no children of his own or her own. And this is the reality that every parent knows about. I remember when I first started studying at Islamic and assumed Medina, when I used to come back in the summers to give him a buzz, and just give lectures and whatnot. The first summer I came back and had just finished the Arabic program. And I was asked to give good buzz around Houston, and people come up to me, and they would say, you know, give us
some talks about how to raise children or at the time, I wasn't even married, much less have kids of my own. And so they would say give us talks about how to raise children. And I thought to myself, That's a good topic. Let me go back to Medina, this was the summer let me go back. And let me study the filth of raising children. You know, I'm sure the books are filled, have entire sections about what you should do? What are the manual techniques about raising children. And of course, when you actually start studying filters, every person knows that there are more rules in the books of filter about will do and what breaks, we'll do that about children and how to raise children, or how to
make sure that they're there upon good manners and whatnot. The books, in fact, don't discuss children rearing. And in fact, even to be brutally honest, you're not going to find detailed rules in any of the books of Hadith or even adapt or anything of this nature. Yes, you do find anecdotes? Yes, you do find generic guidelines, you do find beautiful, a hadith about the seer of the Prophet system, how he would interact with Hassan and Hussein and others, but you don't find a long list of rules. And of course, at the time, I was single and unmarried at the time, I'm struggling, how come there are no rules? You know, well, how do we know you know how to raise children. And of course,
you realize as you grow older, and as you have your own children, that it is of the Mercy of Allah subhanho wa taala, that he did not give us a manual, there is no manual for a parent, there is no handbook, that every single Muslim child or a couple or whatnot needs to be given that this is how you raise children, rule number 27, you know, subsection five, Do this, don't do that. No, it is an on the job experiential training, you learn as you're going along, you're not going to be following it's not a science, it is really an art. And so anybody who tells you that there are foolproof rules that you need to use to raise your children, that person really does not know what they are talking
about. And there's a famous book by some, you know, Harvard psychiatrist, or something about raising children. And the introduction, he writes is that, you know, while I was doing my PhD, you know, I wasn't a father, a parent, or whatnot. And I developed in my mind, six theories, or six, you know, paradigms of raising children. And then over the course of my life, I was blessed with six children. So when I was single, and without children, I had six theories. Now that I have six children, I have zero theories, okay, this is the reality of every single parent, the art of raising a child is an art that cannot be taught. It's not science, it's not mathematics. It's not something that you
memorize. And that is why. And I remember when I had my firstborn as well, I felt so unprepared, I felt overwhelmed, I didn't know what to do. And you realize that you don't know what to do, but you're going to have to learn and you're going to have to, you know, you might make some mistakes. And then you realize that other thing when you're blessed with a second child, and then the third and the fourth, when you're blessed with other children, you realize that what might have worked for the first child is not going to work for the second, what worked for the first and second will not work for the third, what didn't work for other first three will work for the fourth. And so the art
of raising a child is specific, not just to the child, but also to the culture and to the times and to the environment. It really is an ongoing experience, you cannot have a hard and fast rule. And we thank Allah subhanho wa Taala that no such manual, explicit, you know, canon of laws was revealed when it comes to the art of raising children. And that is why again, let me be very frank here. This is something that every person of knowledge knows that just because you have some knowledge of Islam, it doesn't necessarily make you a good parent. So you see knowledge of fifth knowledge of our pay the knowledge of a clock knowledge of Tobia knowledge of Tafseer. That's not at all related to
being a good parent, you can be an ally Malama you can be a half you can be everything and still are with a biller fail miserably of being a parent and you can be a complete ignoramus when it comes to all of those sciences, and be one of the best parents in the world. So Islamic knowledge will make you in shallow tell a good person inshallah if you follow it, but parenting and the techniques of parenting are not things that Allah revealed. So this is not a revealed knowledge and that's something that again, we need to appreciate and realize, I mean, frankly, and may Allah protect
myself in all of my colleagues and friends, but sometimes, you know, the children of people of knowledge are not the best role models and examples and it doesn't it doesn't reflect on the knowledge of the parent or the father and it doesn't reflect on the child as well as the reality nor how they hustle up his son, you know, ended up rejecting Islam his son literally rejected being saved in the ship that Allah subhanho wa Taala gifted Noah and his people can anybody blame Nora for this, it is what it is, and you have the exact opposite as well but in the household of frown, you know, his wife becomes the greatest of the great so no doubt parents and society have a huge role to
play but in the end, it is not decisive and you can have the perfect environment you can have great people as parents and for whatever reason and you can even have great parents and for whatever reason the child does not benefit from that it's like expecting the child to benefit if they go to the best high school where the best university in the end of the day there's only so much that can be done so the first rule there are no rules is just generic advice. So scrap this concept of there being a foolproof mechanism and rule.
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