 Thank you for coming on this Saturday morning. So just a little bit of background about how this article came about. My eldest son, I have three boys, and my eldest son was born back in 1997. And at that time, I was unable to find any parenting books written by Muslims, or Muslims, about how to raise Muslim children in the West at the end of the 20th century. And I was desperate. I loved reading books. And I could find books about how to feed your kids healthy food, and how to toilet train them, and get them in a good sleep habit. But I couldn't find books about Islamic Derbya. So I decided to start interviewing families who really, really impressed me. Families who seemed to have a wonderful relationship with their children, and then children who I felt had a really good grasp on the Dean. And just some examples of the kinds of families who impressed me. I had this young boy come spend the night at our house. He was like 10 years old. It was his first time spending the night at our house. And his mother had told me that he's going to be waking up for fudger. And my boys were still young. They weren't getting up for fudger at that time. And she said, don't worry about it. He has his own alarm, but I just wanted you to know. So when Zeeshan and I got up, I said, let me go check on this boy. He's on his own. It's his first time coming to a sleepover. He may be nervous. Let me just go make sure he's OK. He knows where Kebla is and everything. And so when I went to my son, Zeeshan, in Amin's bedroom, I saw that there was a light coming out from underneath the door. And when I went in, I saw that this 10-year-old boy had not only already gotten up, and he had prayed the hajjud, and he had prayed fudger, but then he was sitting there and he was reciting Quran. And my boys were up watching him. And so immediately I had to ask the mom, how did you get your son into this kind of routine where he wants to start his day this way willingly, when there are so many adults who don't even begin their days this way. Then there was another mom who I used to pick her up to go to a weekly park date. She didn't drive, and she lived with her parents, and she had children, her husband also. They lived in a joint family system. But she was a UC Berkeley graduate, very intelligent. There was a time when she had worked before she had kids. And when I picked her up, we were down at the end of the street, when she realized, oh, I forgot to say salams to my mother when we were leaving the house. So would you mind turning the car around and taking me back so I can just run in and say salams to my mother? And that really impressed me because she lives with her mother, it's not like she's not gonna see her again, and she could easily have called her on the cell phone and said, I'm sorry, I forgot to say salams. But that was the level of adab that she had. And I always thought when it came to raising children with Dean and Dunya, that it was either or. That either you had children who were very, very pious, very practicing, prayed five times a day, read their Quran, but weren't necessarily doing that well in their studies or going to the top schools or doing well in sports, or maybe they were a little socially awkward. Or I thought it was the other way that the kids were doing really well in high school, getting all the awards, going to the top universities, but Dean was something that was on the back burner. Dean was kind of hit or miss. Pray sometimes, don't pray, pray for Eid prayer, but the rest of the year, don't, because those were some examples I had seen in my life. And so I thought that it had to be that binary. And but with these families, I saw a really good, healthy balance between practice of the Dean and then also participation in the Dunya. So these are the types of families that I was interviewing. So what I noticed was over time, as I interviewed these families, there were basically 10 pieces of advice, 10 basic tips that these families started giving me. There was a pattern that was starting to emerge. And I started chronicling it in my head, like wanting to keep track of all the advice I was getting from these different people. And then at one point, this auntie who's the editor-in-chief of a newsletter for the Islamic Center of San Gabriel Valley, she asked me if I would be willing to write a parenting article because she knows that I had a homeschooling cooperative up north and I work with a lot of children and families. So she said, can you write a parenting article? And I thought, you know, this is a perfect opportunity. I've been wanting to write down all these tips for so many years. Let me write this article. It took me around six months to chronicle the 10 tips and it ended up being like, I think, an 11, 12-page article. And Sheikh Faraz Rabani saw the article and he asked if he could post it onto his Seekers Hub blog. And of course I gave permission, I was so flattered. And alhamdulillah, that article went viral. It was back in 2010, and they told me that 34,000 people viewed it in two days. And masha'Allah, even now, every month, I get two to three pieces of fan mail from somewhere in the world. Last time I got an email from somebody in the Maldives. Two days ago, I got an email from somebody in the Netherlands. So masha'Allah, I feel like Alas Panathala has given this article, Taufiq. And I feel comfortable saying that because honestly, it's not from me. It's from these successful parents and what they've had to offer. And I hope that if it can benefit even one person out there, insha'Allah, then it's done its job. So I'll just go right into it, about the 10 tips that these parents gave me, the number one, the order of the tips, by the way, isn't in order of what they told me was important. The tips, I've chronicled them in order of how often it came up. And so the number one thing that came up that these parents told me about is, they said dua, dua, dua. None of these parents took credit for the way their kids had turned out. If there was anything positive that we saw in them, they didn't say, oh yeah, we did this, X, Y, and Z. They gave credit first and foremost to Allah, SubhanAllah. And then I used to usually have to dig a little deeper to get them to share more because usually they weren't willing to do that. They just wanted to say, no, it's Allah, it's got nothing to do with us and it can be taken away at any moment. But when I started prodding them a little bit more for giving me details, they told me that anytime they had to make any difficult decisions about their kids' lives, they did salat al-as-saqada, the prayer of guidance. Anytime there was anything they really needed for their children, really wanted, whether it was a clear health report after being to the doctors or whether it was admission into a college, they would do salat al-Hajjah, the prayer of need. When they got what they wanted or when they saw blessings in their children's lives, they would do salat al-Shukr, the prayer of gratitude. They told me that they were all, they would get up in the last third of the night during tahajjud and they would pray for husnal khatima, a beautiful ending for themselves and for their children because they knew that there's no success, there's no safety in life until you actually leave this world with the shahada and you're not only on your lips but in your heart as well. They prayed for their children to have halal incomes. Recently, my son, my eldest son, Sean, was looking to take a part-time job and somebody reminded me, you should be praying for him to have a halal income always because he's now just starting this phase of his life where he's gonna be earning money. And so I reminded him of that as well, that you need to pray that whatever you do is noble and it's pleasing to Allah and that you can help people in some way and that also you get a halal income. So, and it was really interesting because as he was looking for work, he said to me, hasn't made that many things haram but the few things he's made haram really do limit you. Like there was somebody who said they could get him a job at our local Sprouts grocery store but over there he found out that he would have to bag alcohol in the grocery line. So that was out of the question. And then another friend offered to get him a job as a pizza delivery boy and then he consulted with the shea who said that, no, you can't be, it's a conservative opinion and he wanted to play it safe that you can't be delivering pork, like pepperoni to people. And then somebody else offered him a job in a bank and then he was questioning like, well, do I wanna be dealing with charging people interest? So it was like, you know, it was reaching the point like, wow, what is he gonna be able to do? So he actually ended up getting a job at Baskin Robbins or serving ice cream. And you know, Allah is really happy there and it took some searching and praying but Alhamdulillah, he's comfortable with what he's doing for right now. It's just a part time job. But in Shella with every job he takes we're gonna be praying that he always has a halal income. Then some, the parents also told me that from a young age, they prayed for their children to have pious spouses when they grew up that they would get married to people who would help them be good Muslims. And as one sheikh said that you wanna marry somebody will drag you to Jannah. And they also prayed for protection. One mom told me that she recited surah Maryam every single day of her pregnancy. This is not anywhere in the sunnah. This is something she chose to do. And she said that the reason she recited surah Maryam is because she really loved the descriptions of the pious believers and the prophets like Prophet Zakaria, alaihi salam, Maryam alaihi salam, Prophet Isa alaihi salam because there's specific descriptions about how they were with their parents. And so this mom wanted her children to be like that. So she recited surah Maryam in her pregnancy. Okay, so the second tip these parents gave me is they said that your sohbah, your companionship will make you or break you. And so they prayed also for their children to have good friends and good company in life. And I know that my mom always told us you don't assume that you're better than your friends. You are who your friends are. And Sheikh Hamza Yusuf says that on the day of judgment you'll be standing with those whom you love the most in this dunya. So choose your friends wisely. And Sheikh Nuhameem Keller says that there's nothing worse than a stingy Muslim. But the one thing you should be stingy with is your time. You shouldn't be giving it to just everybody. You should be giving it to people who remind you of Allah's Panathala and his prophets. So it was interesting because when we think about sohbah we automatically assume that it's about keeping a close eye on who our children's friends are. But actually this also goes to who our friends are. We as parents who we choose to socialize with and spend a lot of our time with. And it was interesting because back when I first got married my husband didn't have, and I moved up north to the Bay Area my husband didn't have any Muslim friends. He only had his friends from college and work. And so it took a long time to find a few Muslim friends that we enjoyed spending time with. And these friends unfortunately were not practicing at all. And if anything they were the type who would make fun of religion and make fun of people who are religious. And there were the type that it was fun to socialize with or party with. But my brother came to visit me after I had children. He stayed with me for four months. He was doing his med school rotations up north. And so I was really excited to have him meet my friends that I had finally made after so many years. And so I asked him after he got to meet them. So what do you think? Are they so cool? Are they so, you know, so much fun? And he was kind of quiet. And he's like, yeah, I can tell that they really like you a lot. And I can tell that you really like them and you guys have fun together. Then he was quiet and he said, but you need to change your friends. And I was really, really offended when he said that to me because I was like, who is he to come and be here with me for a few days and then tell me that my friends aren't good enough. And I felt like he was being judgmental and I was really irritated. But then later when I just, I calmed down and I thought about it. I knew at the core of my being, I knew that he was right because I knew that with these friends, yeah, we had day to day fun, but there was no growth happening at all, especially spiritually. And if anything, we were maybe even going backwards. And so finally I said to him, okay, you think I need these religious pious friends who are gonna be a good influence on me? Where am I supposed to find them? It took so long just to make these few Muslim friends. Where am I now supposed to find good pious Muslim friends? And he said, do the law. He was like, pray for them. Pray for Allah to send you good friends and rely on him. So I remember sitting on the Masala on the Janama that's the prayer rug. And I remember sitting there and praying to Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala that send me friends, people whom you love and people who will make me love you and people who will draw me closer to you. And may Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala forgive me, but after making that dua, I remember thinking, okay, fine, I've made this dua now, but where are these friends gonna materialize from? Are they just gonna drop down out of the sky? Because it just, it felt so impossible at that point. Felt like I was asking to part the Red Sea. I mean, I didn't know where these friends were suddenly gonna materialize in my life. And alhamdulillah, I'm not kidding. Like around two months after I made that prayer through a really random series of events, I met the person who became my best friend and through whom, honestly, the entire trajectory of my life changed. Like everything good that's happened in my life, my children's lives, my husband's friendships, everything came through this friend. Even the fact that my son Amin now goes to Institute of Knowledge was through this friend who convinced me to allow him to come when we had decided we weren't gonna send him away at the age of 13. So alhamdulillah, it takes me back to the first tip. It's dua, dua is everything and nothing comes from us or from our power. So keeping a close eye on who your kid's friends are and who your friends are is key. But along with keeping a close eye on friendship, one thing that I noticed after writing this article, this point is not in my article because I didn't realize it at the time, but this is something I have seen over and over again with many families that impressed me is one other thing that a lot of them have in common is that they have grandparents either in the home or their children have close relationships with their grandparents. Their grandparents are nearby. There's something about worrying about somebody else's needs and realizing that life that doesn't just revolve around you that is really, really beneficial for our children's character development. And I've seen that in my own life. My brother and I and my two brothers and I and my sister grew up in America at a time when we didn't have much family here. And now, masha'Allah, we have many cousins and many aunts and uncles, but there was a time when we were on our own here with just one uncle nearby. And we see a big difference between the way we are with elders and the way our cousins who grew up with grandparents, how they are. They just, there's this solicitousness for other people's comfort and this adab that they have with elders that we didn't, even though our parents obviously would have taught us that, but we didn't get that opportunity the way they did day in, day out, masha'Allah. So having grandparents around has definitely been something beneficial. A book that I really, really recommend, I think every parent should read it. It changed the way I parented. Many people I've recommended this book to have said it changed the way they parented their kids is a book called Hold On To Your Kids, Why Parents Need To Matter More Than Peers. It's an excellent book and I'll just say the title of it, Hold On To Your Kids, Why Parents Need To Matter More Than Peers. Basically the bottom line is peers should not be raising peers. And that brings me to the next point under Sohbah, which is that people should not underestimate the importance of mentorship. Mentorship has a lot of benefit. People of different ages socializing with one another. A lot, my husband and I give a lot of credit for the few good things that we see in our children, not to anything necessarily that we did, but to some of the, I call them young uncles, young uncles in our community who've taken them under their wings and are guiding them and mentoring them. And these are people in the community, whether they're young aunties or young uncles or older brother or older sister type people, you'll just see that they have a good track record. They do well in school. They have beautiful other manners with their own parents. They have good character. They're not, your own kids tell you that they're not hypocritical. They're not doing or behaving one way in front of adults and then another way in privacy with their friends. These are people that when you see them you need to grab them. And there are people that I don't necessarily think I would ever have socialized with. They're not adults that I necessarily click with, but I'm really impressed with how their kids are and who are older than my own children. And so I will encourage friendships between our families just so our kids can have an opportunity to be around that kind of personality and that kind of attitude. And so mentorship, I know Amin goes here to Institute of Knowledge and I'll check in with him and ask him like, who are your best friends? Who are the ones you're closest to? And oh, by the way, I have three boys. I didn't make that clear in the beginning. I have an 18-year-old son who's about to start college and then a 16-year-old son who's finishing up here at IOK, inshallah, in the next few months. And then my youngest son is a sixth grader, Rahim, who is still part of our homeschooling co-op, Elm Tree of North. He'll have two more years with us there because we go up to eighth grade. And so I ask Amin, you know, who are your best friends? And oftentimes when he mentions who he feels closest to, he'll mention the shuyukh here, who are really their uncles. They're young dads or newlywed young men, but masha'Allah, they're people that Amin gets along with. He has fun with. They joke around, but at the same time, they have good character. They're able to give him advice for life, so how to live life. So definitely kids don't need to be only hanging out with kids their ages. All right, so the third tip these parents gave me, and this goes right in line with sohbah, who could be the best sohbah for us or our children? Which brings me to the third tip. The prophet, sallallahu alayhi wa sallam, was a living, breathing reality in these family's lives. He wasn't somebody who was relegated to the history books or to the ancients. He wasn't somebody that seemed distant and far away. He was relevant and he was real. His name was mentioned often. His advice was shared with the children on a constant basis. Little kids, they would say things like, if a child was having a tantrum, oh, you're feeling angry right now, you're really upset. Well, you know what? The prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam, he told us that if we're upset, we should sit down. You're still upset? Okay, well then he said, if you're sitting, you should lie down. And why don't you drink some water? The prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam said, when you're upset, drink water, doodoo. So, you know, getting the prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam's voice into the kid's heads. And they would talk about him the way you would talk about maybe a grandparent who passed away before your children were born, but you love that grandparent and you mention him or her often. So like, I never met my mother's father, never met my Nana. But my mom, anytime we got a good grade or did well in school, my mom would tell us, you know, if Nana was here, he would be so proud of you. He loved children who did well in school. And so we would feel happy, you know, thinking that my Nana, you know, I'm doing something that would have pleased my Nana. But this is how they were about the prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam. They made him real in these kids' lives. They would do things like on Friday, telling the kids, you know, it's Friday. Let's wear our green clothes to Juma because, you know, the green was the prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam's favorite color. Or they would say, you know, the prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam, he loved squash. So how about we bake pumpkins, pumpkin muffins today and we'll have that as our treat after our Juma prayer. So just bringing him into the kids' lives. They didn't minimize any sunnah. I know one father who said that he put cards up around the house, you know, and the card would have the dua for entering the house and leaving the house at the door or the dua for entering the bathroom, leaving the bathroom and all around the house. So I followed his example and in my boy's bathroom, I put up the dua written in English, transliterated into English, not the Arabic, because we don't want Arabic to be disrespected in the bathrooms. In English, writing the dua for looking at yourself in the mirror, for doing wudu, for going in and out of the bathroom. And so I remember I would quiz them every now and then. I would test them to see if they knew the duas. And what I realized was I wouldn't know if they were saying the dua properly unless I followed along in my book because I hadn't put those cards up on my own mirror. And so I didn't see it on a daily basis. And so I hadn't necessarily memorized the dua, whereas they did know them. So having it in front of your eyes and having it accessible helps. One time I was visiting my sister when she lived in her apartment in Pasadena and I saw that next to her son's bed. Her son is now 13 years old and at the time he was, I think, six. And I saw next to his bed was a book that titled the Shama'il, which means characteristics by Imam Thirmidhi. And it was written like in the eighth century, eighth or ninth century. And I asked Nadia, what is this? Sitting next to Mustafa's book and she said, oh, that's just, that's the Shama'il. It's a collection of a hadith that described the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam. And every night before Mustafa goes to bed, Masud, her husband, every night before Mustafa goes to bed, Masud just reads him one hadith. One hadith, that's it. No long lectures, no long stories necessarily. Just one hadith before Mustafa goes to sleep. And so she said that recently her son learned that the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam liked to eat cucumbers and dates together. So she said knowing an intimate detail like that makes her son feel like he actually knows the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam. So when our children were little, we asked Imam Zaid Shaker, what should we be teaching them? And he immediately said, teach them Sida, the biography of the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam, and teach them Nashid's, which are songs written in praise of him. And when my kids were little, we had basically the Awad Warns Biali and we had Yusuf Islam. But over time, Masha'Allah, there are many, many Muslim artists now who flooded the market. And there are a lot more options out there for the kids to listen to. One artist who I like to recommend that many people don't know about is his name is Talib al-Habib. And he has his videos on YouTube so you can listen to his songs there. And there's one song that he wrote called Songs of Innocence. And it's basically all the du'as that a father could have for his children. It's a really beautiful song to like listen to and even play to your children. It's like a lullaby. And another song that he set basically are Articles of Faith to, he doesn't play music. All his songs are done with the du'af. And it's called Aman Tubellahi. And it was interesting because I was once teaching my children when I used to homeschool them at home, I was teaching them the Articles of Faith in Arabic. And then when I wanted to test them, they actually broke out into song and started reciting all the Articles of Faith. And I realized that they had actually ended up learning the Articles of Faith by following Talib al-Habib song Aman Tubellahi. They had learned it by heart. So I know about this one eight-year-old boy. He, his mother got up a little late for fudger. It was, she only had a few minutes left to pray fudger. And so she decided not to wake him up because she just wanted to take care of her own prayer and not have to spend time getting him out of bed. So she ended up praying. And then later when her eight-year-old woke up and he realized that he had missed fudger prayer, he burst into tears. He just started sobbing that why didn't he wake me up for fudger prayer? And there were, the grandparents were visiting at that time and they were in the home and they were horrified. They were like, why is this eight-year-old crying like this about missing fudger? Does he think he's gonna burn in hell? What have you taught him? How have you scared him? That he's sobbing at the idea of having missed fudger? So when they started questioning him and asking him why he was upset, it turned out that he was upset because he knew that the last thing the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam spoke about before he passed away was the prayer. That his last words were the prayer, the prayer, hold on to the prayer. And this boy knew that. And so he felt like he had let the Prophet down, Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam. And he knew the weight of prayer because of that incident from the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam's life. So that is what love can do. If you love somebody like the ultimate teacher that we've ever had, the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam, then that is what brings you to Allah, Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam as well. And the Shuyukh tell us that we have to teach children to love Allah and to fear him. We have to teach them both. But in the early years, you only teach them about love of Allah. You don't teach them about the fear. Later, when they start hitting puberty, they need to know about the fear and the awe and the majesty and the consequences. But in the early years, it's all a position of love. And there's no one who loved Allah Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam more than the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam. So that's the best way to teach them. My son is the president of his MSA in his high school. And when he started, he became president in 10th grade and they kept him as president in 11th grade and now in 12th grade. When he started, there were only three Muslim students who were coming to the weekly MSA. Now, ma'sha'Allah, they have 70 members. On average, they 30 show up every Friday, but they have 70 members of this MSA. He told me that he noticed that of all the students who come to MSA, the ones who come across as the most sincere and the most interested in learning more and doing more in the Deen are the ones who've been taught the most about the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam. They're the ones who, the others are more like, they've just been taught halal haram and they've been taught, you need to do this because we're Muslims, so you have to pray. Or you can't drink alcohol because we're Muslim, we don't drink alcohol. That's how they were taught. But the kids who were taught about the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam and his example and the mercy he brought to the world, they seem, he tells me, seemed to have more enthusiasm for the Deen. Okay. By the way, the Shamail book, if you're interested in getting that, there's one available, the copy that we have, which I think is most user friendly because there's lots of versions out there. It's called The Life of Perfection. It's a yellow cover, you'll find it on Amazon. And it's been done by Iqra Books and May Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala reward the Ghazi family, they're out of Chicago. They've been producing books, Islamic literature in English since the early 1980s. Some of their books have typos and grammatical errors, the typical things, unfortunately, that we find in a lot of our Islamic curriculum, but their books are, it's good material and there's wonderful information in the books they produce. And so The Life of Perfection is one that's worth, I don't know if it's out of print now, but if you can find a copy, I'm pretty sure it's available on Kindle, if not as an actual book, it's worth getting. All right, the fourth tip these parents told me is they said that having fun wasn't haram in our home, but we kept the home environment as halal as possible. That's how I wrote up the tip. Another way I would write that tip is these parents were aware of the dangers of don't, constantly telling your children don't. They were aware of the dangers of that. They told me, don't let your children grow up hearing no, no, no, no, no, their whole life. No, you can't do this, we're Muslim. No, you can't do that, it's haram. No, you can't do that, Allah doesn't like it. Instead, their kids grew up hearing yes, yes, yes, yes. Yes, yes, we can do this, of course, but they would guide their children in more towards the halal alternatives. And so what this means is you have to be really creative in the early years. So I personally, I'm not passing any judgment. I have no opinions one way or the other about celebrating birthdays. That's all everybody's personal decisions, but I know one family, for example, they don't celebrate birthdays, and that's fine, that's their decision. But instead of telling their kids, we're not gonna have a birthday party, they would go the extra mile and throw really elaborate parties for things like when their children memorize 12 surahs or when their children memorize juzammah. Or when, I remember one mom, she has twins, both of her twins memorize juzammah, and she threw the most fabulous party in a park near our home that my children still to this day remember. She had two separate cakes. The party favors were bookmarkers that had a line, I don't know if it's a hadith or an ayah that talked about the benefits of memorizing Quran. There were games, there were treats, there was entertainment. Anyone who was observing the party would have thought it's a birthday party, but it wasn't. It was a party celebrating the memorization of juzammah. So one of the best pieces of advice I ever received was from a female scholar named Hedaya Hartford. And she told us that for every hadam that you stop your children from, you have to give them two halal's that they can enjoy. So that requires creativity. And I had one grandfather tell me that you can't control everything that's going on outside in the world, but what that means is that your home needs to be an oasis. Your home needs to be a place where the children can be unapologetic and unashamed of being Muslim, where Islam is beautiful. They need to see that Islam worked. Sheikh Nuhameem Keller says that children need to grow up seeing that Islam worked in the home. You can give them all the lectures and take them to all the classes you want, but if they don't see that Islam actually brings benefit to their family's lives, then they may not hold on to it. So they should see that Islam is the reason that the parents, even though they're frustrated with certain relatives and there's family politics, they still treat each other with adab and respect. They should see that Islam is the reason they eat healthy, healthful food. They should see Islam is the reason the house is clean and tidy. Islam is the reason the parents always smell nice and are clean. Islam is the reason the parents talk to each other with respect. So once they see Islam works, they'll hold on to it. Now coming back to the point of having fun wasn't haram in our home, but we kept the home environment as halal as possible. I want to discuss a little bit of a tangent, but it's got to do with this tip. And this is what I talked to the kids about yesterday here at IOK, sixth graders through 10th graders. And that is a subject that many Muslim communities don't feel comfortable talking about, but it's really, really important that we're open about it and we discuss it and we're not afraid of educating our children about it as well. These families told me that they had a very tight control on the media in the home. Their internet was always used in a public space. It was never in the privacy of the kids' bedrooms. They played the video games that their children bought into the home with their children, so they knew exactly what kind of video games their kids were playing and enjoyed it with them. They didn't watch TV day in, day out. The television set, sometimes you go to people's homes and the television set is always on, right? Whether it's Bollywood or whether it's Pakistani dramas or whether it's the American news, whatever. The TV is always on as background noise. With these families, there was a whole spectrum. I know families who didn't have a television in the set in the house and I knew a family who had a movie theater in the house, like an actual movie theater with three or four rows of seats and a big screen and dark walls. But the thing they all had in common was that media was used very mindfully. So instead of having TV on, day in, day out, they would have something like a family movie night where the entire family would get together and watch a movie that they had selected and that was wholesome and that was clean and that they could all enjoy together and laugh and learn good lessons from. And so the kids had positive associations around media. One incident that always comes to my mind is we used to do family movie night with my children. Once a week, all of us would get together and we would sit and we would watch a movie together and laugh and enjoy. But what happened was, and the other thing we used to do is this is back when borders was still around. Remember borders bookstore? They used to be open until like 11 o'clock midnight. We would take our kids to borders on like Saturday night sometimes and we would get hot chocolate and cookies and we would get really nice picture books and we would sit and read to our kids. So we did family movie night and then we would also go to borders. And so what happened was over time, my husband and I started using the opportunity of our kids watching a movie that they enjoyed to have them watch their movie upstairs in the loft on the TV there, cause we have two TVs in our house. And downstairs, my husband and I would watch the movie we wanted to see. So we were watching our movies separately. And I remember one weekend when we had selected our movies, my son, Sean said to me, mama, do you think that this weekend, instead of doing family movie night, we can go to borders instead? And I said, yeah, we can, we can go to borders, but then you won't get your movie night. Like, don't you want to watch your movie that you've been looking forward to all week? And he said, yeah. He said, but the whole point of family movie night was that we used to watch it together as a family. So if we're not going to do that, then let's just go to borders and spend the time there. Which that really had left an impression on me because what that told me was, what he was really enjoying was that family bonding time. He wasn't interested in just being sat down in front of a TV by himself or with his brother. And Shechem Zayusov said something that really resonated with me when our kids were little. He said that if Shetan was to ring your doorbell and you answered the door and Shetan was standing there. And he said, hi, I'm here to babysit your kids. What would you do? He said you would slam the door in his face and then you would run to go protect your children. But he said, what's happened now is that we literally, he said you let Shetan babysit your children when you leave children alone to watch movies or TV shows that you have no idea what messages they're being given, what confusing messages they're being given. And so it's really important to be able to filter the messages for the kids. Like, I know a dad who watched Frozen, the movie Frozen with his kids and they enjoyed it. But the dad got his kids to think critically about the movie Frozen. He said, well, what is the meaning of the song? Let it go. What does it mean that the female character is saying just let it go, let it go. These rules don't matter. Cause there's lyrics that say, don't worry about the rules, right? And in the movie Frozen, if you've seen it, it shows that she's very, very concerned about her younger sister. She takes really good care of her. But the whole time she's taking care of her sister, they show her life as if it's very constricted and she's unhappy and miserable. But as soon as she lets it go and stops caring about her sister and abandons her, then she's living in a castle and she's wearing like this sleeveless dress. And, you know, so what is the deeper message that's been given? So this was a way for, but the dad didn't say to his kids, no, I'm not gonna let you watch a Disney movie. He watched it with them and then they talked about it. Like, well, what does that mean? And why did she look miserable helping her sister? How would you feel if you had to take care of your sister? You know, looking at it at a deeper level. But the thing I wanted to talk about that I mentioned that I feel most of the communities aren't addressing and I'm not exaggerating. I really am not when I say that this is now an epidemic. It's an epidemic not only in the greater society now, but it's an epidemic amongst our Muslim communities. And that is the addiction to pornography. It's like a wildfire that's going through our communities. And just because you may not know about it or you may not have heard about it, doesn't mean it's not happening. It is happening. And every talk that I go to, it breaks my heart. Afterwards, I have grandparents, I have parents coming to me, crying, telling me stories about their children or their siblings or their spouses who are addicted to pornography. And so I gave this talk yesterday and I had a parent ask me, oh, well, my sixth grade daughter's gonna be there at your talk. Is it appropriate for her? Should she be there listening to this talk? And I said, is she ever on the internet? Because if she's ever on the internet, then yes, she needs to be there at this talk. So we need to give our kids the tools to survive the world that's around them now. Ignoring it or pretending it's not out there isn't gonna help us. So the first thing I wanna tell you about the internet is that you have to treat the internet in your home like it's a loaded weapon. Literally, that's the best analogy I can give you. You have to treat the internet like it's a loaded weapon. And how do we treat a loaded weapon or a loaded gun? We don't ever leave children alone with it. We keep it under lock and key. We know where it is at all times. We don't just give it to anybody to handle. So you have to be hyper aware of the internet. The other thing you have to do, the second tip about pornography is that you have to talk to your kids about it. You have to say that it exists and what it is. And the way we defined it for our kids is we just said it's movies that are out there of naked people doing weird things. That's it, we don't go into much more detail than that. But we say that it's movies about naked people doing weird things and it's an industry and they like to trap children into watching it and becoming addicted to it. And my youngest son, Rahim, we talked to him about it when he was nine years old and we would discuss it at the dinner table and give him the tools for how to deal with it. It's not a matter of if they ever come across pornography. It's a matter of when. It's just a matter of time before something's gonna pop up on their screen or they're gonna click on something by accident. And like I said, after every talk I learned something new. I just had a mom recently tell me that she was on Amazon looking for boys' briefs for her son. And she typed up boys' briefs and kinky images came up of all sorts of other haram things and she said that the pictures were really obscene and the private parts were just kind of blurred, but you could still see what it was. And that was on Amazon. And Sheikh Rami Ansour, who is my son's Quran teacher up north, he warned the kids that there have been incidents where there are videos that say surah mulk on YouTube and kids will click on it or people will click on it to listen to surah mulk or watch surah mulk and it'll actually be pornography. Once it's discovered and it's reported, YouTube takes it down, but if you happen to be or your child, God forbid, happens to be the first one to click on it, then it's a problem. So you have to talk to your kids about what to do if they ever come across it. And the third thing I wanna tell people about pornography is that there is no utopia. There is no perfect community or perfect country or perfect neighborhood or perfect place or environment where you can escape this. Nowhere. I had a cousin visiting me and we were talking about it because her children all had these internet gadgets that they were using and we were talking about the dangers of the internet. And she said, oh, henna bhaji, thank God, I live in such and such Islamic country. Over there, the government is so strict. And I didn't even have to say anything. Her husband just started shaking his head and he was like, no, honey. The top 10 countries that download porn out of those top 10 countries, the top three countries are all Muslim countries, all Muslim countries that download the most porn. I know of a student of mine who went overseas to study and he went to memorize Quran. And he went, I won't mention the country, but he went to this small country in Africa. And in this country, he had to go to this tiny village where all this village does, the village has 200 people in it and they live in tents. They don't even live in homes. The only permanent building there is this one small building in which foreigners who are visiting get to spend the night. Otherwise, everybody sleeps outside under the stars or they sleep in tents. It takes 16 hours to get to this village, literally this little tent city of 200 people, 16 hours where you have to go in these big SUVs and you go over these huge rocks. When you get to this little town, I feel weird even calling it a town. It's not a town, but you get the idea. When they get there, when people get out of the cars, the first thing the villagers do who've come to greet the people is they step back because they know the second people get out of the car they're gonna throw up because the drive is so difficult getting there. This is a kind of village. It's completely off the map. It's in the middle of nowhere. There are no towns around it. So this child went there to memorize Quran. All night, they say it's like bees humming. You just hear people reciting Quran throughout the night because in the daytime, it's so hot. So people do their memorizing at night. It takes, there's no electricity there. People walk around with gas lanterns. There's one generator and there's one outlet. It takes three days to power up a phone. There's one person in this community who's in charge of taking your phone. He will power your phone for three days and then he will give it back to you. This boy told me that in that environment, boys who were memorizing Quran would take their cell phones. They would go up into the mountains. They would go like this. They would find a signal and they would watch pornography. So there's literally nowhere to escape it. It's really heartbreaking. So we have to, just like we teach our kids how to swim or when our kids learn how to drive, we teach them how to be safe with seat belts. It's our job just to give them the tools how to deal. And then at some point they need to know the right thing to do if they come across something that's harmful to them. We pray for a less protection first and foremost, but we give them the tools as well. So when my son Amin came here to Southern California, you know, we had pretty tight media rules in our home. And Alhamdulillah, my siblings and I are on the same page. And so he was living with my brother. And my brother told me, you know, Hina, I can watch over Amin all I want. And we can have all the rules in the house that we have. But at some point he needs to know the right thing to do because IOK's high school program was online. So he would be on his laptop doing his homework. And there were times my brother Faraz had to go to bed. And so he said, he needs to know what to do because I go to sleep. I don't know what could be popping up on his computer. So at that time we came up with this drill. Just like we have safety drills at school or at work where, you know, if there's a fire, God forbid, stop, drop, and roll. Or if there's an earthquake, what is the protocol you use? You know, which exit do you go out of? How do you behave? Same way, we have to have drills in place about how to deal if pornography ever pops up on your computer or your phone or whatever. So what we told our kids was the first thing you do if pornography is ever to pop up in front of you. And we told them that something may pop up that looks weird to you. Just something that you're like, wait, I wasn't looking for that. That wasn't the website I was going for. That's not the image I was searching. You'll just know, you'll have this voice in your head and that voice is coming to you from Allah, it's coming from the angels warning you that that feels weird. The first thing you do is you lower your gaze. You close the laptop or you turn off the computer or you unplug whatever. You basically, you get it out of your vision. And it's interesting because at Elm Tree, my homeschooling co-op, one of the moms there is a marriage and family therapist. And she told us that they worked with sex offenders at one time in her training who were in prison. And she said, they were taught as therapists to teach these sex offenders that if anything was ever to pop up or come in their site, the first thing they have to do is look away. The first thing they have to do is to get it out of their site of vision, which is really it shows you the wisdom of Allah, because what does Allah tell us to say? He tells us to lower the gaze, right? So lowering the gaze, there's real benefit in that. It's not just like, oh, we're so nervous, we can't look at anything. There's actually a protection of the heart and the soul of getting something out of your vision. That is haram. And we told our kids that the first glance that is by mistake is a freebie. But after that, if you look again, that's when the angels start recording. So you have to be really mindful of like not going back to something that felt weird or uncomfortable. So the first thing is look away. The second thing we teach our kids is to immediately say audubilam in a sheytan regime. And we tell them that these are words of power. These are not magic words. It's not mumbo jumbo. You have to know that when pornography or something like that pops up in front of you, you are in a sheytani environment. You're in the presence of sheytan and you need protection. And the only one who can protect you is Allah Subhanahu wa ta'ala. We ourselves have no power. So you immediately call on Allah for His help. So audubilam in a sheytan regime. And it was very, very validating to me because I gave this talk at a Zaituna College event up North. And there were, after I was done giving my talk, Sheikh Hamza Yusuf gave his talk, his presentation, which was on the danger of the current media that's out there in the world. And he was not there when I gave my presentation. He arrived later for his talk. So he didn't hear anything I said. But when he got up on stage and he had a whole PowerPoint presentation and he went through all the different things that are out there in the world and how we need to deal, all of a sudden in his PowerPoint, he came to a black screen and in the middle of the black screen in white letters, it said audubilam in a sheytan regime. And he talked about the exact same thing. He said, you need to rely on this and you need to use these words often. And so that was very validating to hear from the friend who's a therapist that even in non-Muslim studies, this is what they're teaching is to lower the gaze and look away. And then to learn from the Shuyuh that we have to rely on audubilam in a sheytan regime. The third thing we told our kids after lowering the gaze and saying audubilam in a sheytan regime is you need to immediately go and tell an adult. No matter what time of day it is, you need to go get help. You need to go let an adult know what's going on. Because many times what will happen is children will assume that the parents have no idea about pornography and they'll think this is something I just discovered and I actually need to protect my parents. And so you need to let them know that I know what's going on and you need to come tell me. And so they need to, and they need to know that you're not going to freak out, that you're not going to blame them, that you're actually on their side and you're going to help them. And so sure enough, one day, Amin was doing his work at my brother's home and something popped up on his screen. And it was something he had not been looking for. He didn't know what it was. He immediately realized that this is the thing that we've been warned about. He turned off the computer, said audubilam in a sheytan regime and then went and told my brother. My brother came and looked at the computer, realized that there was a virus on it and told him, okay, don't touch it. We'll get somebody to clean it up and then took the computer away for a couple of days and then gave it back to him once it was clear. If we hadn't had that drill in place, I shudder to think about what might have happened. Like that curiosity that, oh, what is that? And then clicking on it and then the thing becoming bigger, taking over his screen. And so many times, that's how it happens. Kids stumble across pornography. They don't know what it is. They click on it and then the way it works is first it's curiosity. Then it becomes a pattern where a kid keeps returning to it to just kind of check it out. Then it becomes a habit where they have to do it on a regular basis and then it becomes a compulsion where they can't leave it even if they want to. And I know the story of this 10 year old boy who was on the hips track. He was memorizing Quran and his mother was thrilled. That's all she ever wanted was for one of her children to memorize Quran. And her son was started memorizing surah after surah after surah and he was totally like, yes, I want to be a hafiz. The Hiv school, the program that he was a part of, all of the Hiv students were given iPods to help them memorize Quran. So he used the iPod all the time while walking outside, while in the car, while in his bedroom or around the house, memorizing his surahs and the mom was thrilled. All of a sudden this son just lost, it seemed like it was all of a sudden, but it was gradual, the son lost interest in memorizing Quran. And he just told his mom, I can't do it anymore. I don't want to memorize Quran. And the mom was heartbroken. She was like, what happened? You know, she felt like maybe he got nuzard or eyed, you know, the evil eye. And so, but she told him, okay, just keep working at it. But he was like, no, I'm not interested in memorizing Quran. One day she walked into his bedroom and she saw that he was on his iPod and his back was to her. And she saw that on his iPod, he was watching pornography. So when she and her husband, she and her husband investigated, they found out that this boy had been watching pornography every single day for two years, every single day from the ages of 10 to 12, this boy had been watching pornography. He is hopelessly addicted. It is one of the most tragic stories because I've been involved with the family, you know, trying to help and just be there. And this boy is much older now and he's still addicted. It's, the parents were really smart. They immediately got him into therapy. They got him into, and there's actually therapy, a program now for Muslims called Purify Your Gaze. So if there's anyone struggling with it, Purify Your Gaze is a program. And when she first approached them, when he was 12 years old, they said, no, we only work with adults. And in Chela, your son will be fine, you know, whatever. And so years went by, he's not fine. And all sorts of problems come about from it. This boy has been suicidal because there's so many times he's tried to quit pornography and he has not been able to and he keeps going back to it and so he despairs and he starts to feel like Allah can never forgive him. So they have him in therapy, but not only do they have him in therapy for his pornography addiction, but they also have him in spiritual therapy. They have him in therapy with the sheikh who's there to help him and remind him of Allah's mercy, remind him why he can't despair, remind him that Allah's Panathala is using this addiction just to break you. Allah's showing you that he's the master and you're the slave and you have to just turn to Allah completely, just helping him that way. But the thing about pornography addiction which people don't realize is studies show first and foremost that most addiction happens between ages of 10 and 12. The other thing is they've actually done brain scans, actual brain scans on children who are addicted to pornography and they have found that the hard wiring of the brain, the actual shape of the brain changes. It actually changes. There's a physical effect of pornography addiction. And they said that the high that people get from watching pornography is the same high that people get from using cocaine and heroin. So it's like being addicted to cocaine and heroin. So his parents are treating it like an addiction now that they don't judge their son anymore. And recently the mom told me that after years of trying to deal with this and they have a very open relationship with their son. The son will come to them and say, mom, dad, it's been a month. I haven't watched pornography. And they'll be like, wonderful, alhamdulillah. Then he'll come and say, it's been two months. I haven't watched any pornography and they'll be really happy for him. And then he'll come and say, I watched pornography. I couldn't help it. I'm sorry. And he'll cry and they'll hug him. And, you know, so this is their life right now. And the mom told me recently after years of dealing with this, her husband is this big, you know, strong person. He doesn't show much emotion. She said the other day he just hugged her son and just broke down sobbing. Just cried and cried and cried and told her, their son, I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry that this happened to you. And she said that it happened, you know, with Allah's will. But she said the lesson they took from it is she said we broke the number one rule. The number one rule, which is that you don't have internet in your bedrooms. She said the fact that our son had an internet device in his bedroom was our biggest mistake. And so pray for him, inshallah. It's a long journey. And, you know, they're trying to get him help. They've gotten him help, but, you know, and it's incredible. She paid $1,000 for somebody to come into the home and wire all the computers and put all the wifi code in her house changes every day. He actually tells the parents, don't go to sleep before me. He's a grown like kid now. And he will tell his parents, don't go to bed before me because if you do, I'll watch pornography. Like that's how bad it is. The three things about pornography. It's the AAA engine. It's affordability. Pornography is free. And if it's not free, it's very cheap. Accessibility, you can access it anywhere. In the old days, you used to have to go to a video store. Now I could be watching it on my phone in front of you at the dining table and you would have no idea. Affordability, accessibility and anonymity. The fact that nobody knows you're doing it. So what we as parents need to do is we can't do anything about the affordability. So we need to take away the accessibility and the anonymity. My sons did not have smartphones. They did not have cell phones until age 13. And then my son in high school got a flip phone and the kids would take pictures of his flip phone because they'd be like, what is that? Do these things actually exist? But he did not get a smartphone until now, until age 18. My son Amin, we prayed about it quite a bit before letting him get an iPhone because he's driving here in Southern California now and he needs GPS and whatnot. But my husband has a thing set up on his phone that anything he looks at or any text he gets or sends out my husband gets a copy of it. So we trust him. We, inshallah, he won't do anything wrong but it's still, it's, we need to, they need to be aware at this age while they're still developing. For some kids, you can tell them Allah sees you. You're not alone, Allah sees you. Some kids, that'll be enough. But for other kids, you're gonna have to tell them about the medical effects, the physical effects, what happens with addiction, how marriages get affected. And somebody asked my son in high school, why don't, no, I asked my son, why don't you watch pornography? My 18 year old, like why, you could, you could get away with it at anyone's home. Why do you choose not to? And he said that he was once an adhars and he heard the sheikh say something that had a real effect on him. And he said it was, the sheikh said, Iman gets pulled out of your eyes. Iman gets pulled out of your eyes. And he said that freaked him out. For him, that was enough. Alhamdulillah, may he stay that way. For other kids, you're gonna need to give them some of the hard facts. Okay. And along with warning about pornography addiction, you have to also teach your kids how to do Toba. They need to know how they can turn to Allah's Panathala if they mess up so that they don't despair. And also for anyone who thinks I don't wanna talk about it because my kid may then wanna go look it up. If you don't talk to your kids about it, somebody else will. I know of a kid who heard the word pornography used in a khutbah at a Juma prayer and nobody would tell him what it was. So he went and looked it up himself. I know a kid who went to a non-Muslim summer camp and a boy came up to him and said, do you know what porn is? And he went parm. He didn't even say the word correctly. He went parm and he typed up PARM and he found pornography, even with the wrong spelling. Okay, the fifth tip, and I'm gonna go through these quickly now because I've spent a lot of time. The fifth tip these parents gave me is they said, our parents didn't just talk the talk, they walk the walk, which means that they practiced what they preached. They were their kid's primary example about how to be. One person told me that he remembers his father crying, actually crying when he realized he had missed a prayer by mistake. And he said that had more of an effect on him about the importance of prayer than all the lectures in the world about why we need to pray. Ansit Tamara Gray, who's a scholar who recently moved back to America from Syria, she told us that the Islamic principle in doing good deeds and doing charity, the Islamic principle is that you give with your right hand and you give with your right hand in such a way that your left hand doesn't find out about it. But she said when it comes to childrearing, she said you give with your right hand and with your left hand, you grab your child and you bring him or her forward and you say, look at this, look at what I'm doing so that they can learn from your example because we are their ultimate teachers. Children, they're like sponges, garbage in, garbage out, whatever they see around them on a daily basis, when they're squeezed, that exactly is what comes out of them. These parents told me that they were willing to acknowledge their own mistakes. They didn't assume that they were perfect, nor did they assume that their children didn't notice their mistakes. They didn't talk about their sins. So they didn't say, oh, back in college, I had a boyfriend or girlfriend or back in college, I used to drink, that's not what they used to talk about with their kids. But if they ran through a red light when they shouldn't have and the kids in the back seat, they would say, that was wrong, what I did, we need to obey the laws, a love forgive me and pray that I don't ever do that again, that kind of thing, like assuming that their kids are seeing when they're doing something that's dishonest or unethical or not correct. Okay, the sixth tip these parents told me is they said, I wasn't afraid to be the bad guy, but I didn't behave badly. And that means that these parents, while they were friendly with their children, they didn't try really hard to be their children's best friends. Your best friend cannot tell you to eat your vegetables. Your best friend cannot tell you you need to go to bed. Your best friend will not tell you that movie is not right for you, but a parent can do those things. So we can be friendly with our children, but we don't have to always be really popular. There's three kinds of parenting. There's authoritarian parenting, which is my way or the highway, if you don't do what I say, you're gonna get the back of my hand. There's permissive parent, and authoritarian parenting is also known as brick wall parenting, you know, where you don't budge. Then there's permissive parenting, which is also called the jellyfish parenting, where it's like, honey, don't do that, that's not right. And then when the kid does it, oh, what am I gonna do with you? I've told you you shouldn't do that. You know, just whining all the time and not having any control over your kids. And the third parenting, which is considered to be the best form of parenting, is authoritative parenting, which is called backbone parenting. It's where parents say what they mean, and they mean what they say, and the kids respect their rules. And there are many, many books out there that will teach you how to be an authoritative parent. I had a student that I was really impressed with how she was with her parents, how she was with her in her studies, everything. Mashallah, and so I asked her, I said, so what happens at home if you disobey your parents? And she looked at me very solemnly, and she said, oh, well, then there would be consequences. So when I told her mom, her mom laughed and said, my poor kid has no idea that there's such a thing as good consequences as well. But right now she thinks all consequences are negative. These parents taught Fiqh as well as spirituality. Sharia was honored in their home. None of these parents, all of these parents told me, none of them hit, none of them beat their kids. The only thing they said they ever did do when spanking would be applicable is if their kids were doing something really dangerous. That was, so one mom gave me the example that her daughter, a three-year-old daughter, every time she would wash her on the toilet, afterwards, the daughter would just run off in her dress without putting her underwear on. So the mom would hold her once, hold her twice. The third time the daughter did it, she gave her daughter really good spanking. And then after that, the daughter never forgot her underwear and learned her lesson. So, but they never, at Elm Tree, we have a system called pink slips where if a kid breaks a certain number of rules in class, they get a pink slip and then they're sent to me. And they have to meet with me and it's a big deal. The kids are really scared of coming to me with their pink slips. And so one of my students told me that for every pink slip he gets, his dad gives him one whack on his hand. So when he got his fourth pink slip in the year, he was like, oh, today I'm gonna go and my dad's gonna give me four whacks on my hand because this is my fourth pink slip. So the dad didn't lose his temper, he wasn't enraged, the kid knew what was coming. And there's studies that show that a whack on the hand actually sends a signal to the brain and teach it. That's why traditionally, even in Islamic schools, whacks on hands were caught. Even here, even in the West, it was common to get a whack on the hand. Okay, so the seventh tip, these, oh, and also the not being afraid to be the bad guy but I didn't behave badly. These parents also said that you have to be willing to push your kids out of their comfort zones. I remember a little girl who every time, she was like 10 years old, every time the prayer time came in, she would just sit there while all her friends got up to pray. This girl would just sit there. And I used to notice that and wonder about it. But finally, one day I just asked the mom, I said, I noticed so-and-so never gets up to pray when all her friends are praying. And she said, you know, I don't wanna force my daughter to pray. She's only 10 years old, so I don't wanna force religion on her. She sees that I pray, so when the time comes, she'll pray. So I was like, oh, okay, I didn't know if that was right or wrong. I myself was still trying to figure out how to teach my kids prayer to be regular with prayer. But then a couple of days later, the mom called me and she said, you know, Hina, it's interesting, after our conversation, that kinda sparked something in me. And I sat my daughter down and I said, honey, you're coming of age now. Prayer needs to be a priority for you. So I really think now that you're 10 years old, you need to take on one prayer, decide which prayer you wanna do, and then keep it from now on, do that prayer. And after six months, you should take on a second prayer. And then after you've done two prayers for one year, then you should take on a third prayer. So that basically by the end of age 11, you're doing all five prayers regularly. So they had this conversation. She said, you won't believe it. The next day at Fajr, she said, my daughter was the one who came and woke me up. She said the whole time I'd been talking to her, she'd been listening really attentively. She said, my daughter was the one who came and woke me up, gave me the Janamaaz, gave me my Thesbih. And she said, what I realized is that she was just waiting for me to talk to her about it. Just assuming that she's gonna get the message wasn't enough. I had to actually tell her what my expectations are of her. So that's really important to remember that you have to be willing to push your kids out of their comfort zone. The seventh tip these parents gave me, as they said, I always kept them close by. And that doesn't mean that they only homeschooled them. These kids went to private school, public school, Islamic school. They were homeschooled, all of it. But what this did mean, what all of these parents told me, and I always feel bad saying these in my presentations because it's not a judgment on anybody. I know everyone has their own different situations. But what these families did tell me is that none of their kids were in daycare. They got babysitting help from people they trusted. They had extended family help them. Sometimes they had a grandparent in the home who would watch the kids. Some of them even had nannies. But even if they had a nanny, the actual day-to-day therbia raising of the kids was done by a parent or a grandparent. So they did not put their kids in daycare where the kids were with people of another religion, another way of life from seven o'clock in the morning till five in the evening. So most of them told me that they didn't do sleepovers. And when these parents would talk to me, the kids would always make it very clear that this is an unpopular rule. But the ones who would allow their daughters to go to sleepovers, they would only let their daughters go to sleepovers if they knew that the father and the brothers were not in the home. If that was arranged, that there were gonna be no men in the home, then the daughters would be allowed to go to sleepovers. Siblings were really close to each other and had the same way of living their life, like they prayed the five prayers, they ate halal food, they were mindful of what was being watched on television. Those siblings, the cousins would have sleepovers amongst each other. And I know some families would let their kids go to sleepovers, but then would show at midnight, the arrangement was at midnight, they would come get their kids and take them home, let their kids have all the fun they wanted. But at night, they slept in their own beds. So this was the whole spectrum, or they would sleepover with their kids. They would do family sleepovers. There was one single mom who told me that she put her son in a daycare and she noticed he was always crying, always crying. So she finally took him out of the daycare, quit the job she was doing and actually opened a daycare in her own home. And then that way she had her son with her and was able to earn money as well. And she was a single mother. Imam Tahir Anwar said up north, he said that this, for him, this applies even in college, at least the first two years of college. He said, even if my sons were to get a full ride to Yale and Harvard, the first two years, when they're still 18, 19, 20, I still would want them close to home then. But this all depends on your relationship with your children. There are some kids who can go away at age 18 and they'll be fine. You have to know what your kid, I have a friend who has seven children. Her eldest son went to public high school after being homeschooled at Omtree, went to public high school, played football all four years, totally fine, practiced as dean, unashamed. Her second son, no way. There's no way she would send him to high school because she knows he's the type who's very affected by his peers. He doesn't have the confidence of what it means to be a Muslim. And he's a follower, not a leader. So she knew the difference between her kids and made those decisions accordingly. Okay, the eighth tip was we didn't spoil our kids nor did we praise them too much. And what that means is that these parents were very, very aware of their kids' nufus, their kids' egos. I had a student who, she won a national poetry competition. All across America, there was a poetry competition on writing a poem in praise of the Prophet, sallallahu alayhi sallam. She won first place. We were all really proud of her. And I asked her mother, because we were doing an event at our local masjid and I asked her mother, can your daughter come recite that poem at our mosque event? And her mom stopped and said, you know, she's been getting a lot of praise for that poem this week. And she also just happened to be interviewed for a science program that's gonna be aired on PBS, on television. And she said, I just don't think it's good for her nuffs, for her ego. I don't think it's good for her nuffs, for her to be in the spotlight so much. So if you don't mind, we're gonna have to say no. And that was really, that gave me pause that really made, took me back because I'm the type who brag about every little thing that my kid does, you know? But the fact that she really was mindful about how her daughter's ego was developing. I have one friend who told me, somebody who told me that when she and her husband were younger financially, they really struggled. Their parents both were not financially that well off. But now Mashallah, they're doing really well. They have a lot of money. And they don't want their sons to ever do without. And she said her son wanted some football shirt that was, you know, $50. And she, and he was in elementary school. And she's like, I'm not buying you a $50 shirt. And they went to Walmart and got him the same shirt, exact same shirt for like $10. Somehow the kids in his school figured out that he was wearing a $10 shirt and they teased him. So when she realized that she was really upset, she immediately took him, bought him like two $50 shirts to make up for that. Cause she had her own memories from her childhood. But she told me recently that her son's clothing budget, he's in college now is $800 a month because his expectations are really high on what he should get and what he deserves. And they have a very, very expensive, very fancy car in the family and they have another car that isn't that nice, it's kind of shabby. He refuses to drive the shabby car. He refuses to do any errands for them in that car. He will only drive the really super expensive car. So he's very conscious of brand names and how people perceive him. So we have to be mindful of that when raising our kids. I know Sheikh Nuhameem Keller, we asked him, is it okay? You know, is it okay for us to buy these expensive, fancy name brand things? And he said, yeah, sure, you can buy them, but cut off the labels and see if you still want them. If you still want them after cutting off the labels and then take it, get it. Okay, the ninth tip these parents told me is talk to your kids with love. So instead of nagging and lecturing and judging and criticizing, they would teach their kids how to look at the world around them with a critical eye, construct, and they would have these really deep conversations at the dinner table, kind of like the example I gave of the dad who watched Frozen with his kids. They taught their kids to look at everything around them through the eye of discernment, to look at what some of the hidden meanings might be. There's a difference between being judgmental and being perceptive, and so they would guide their kids to, they would get their voices in their kids' heads and kind of try to guide them to come to the conclusions they wanted them to come to. One example I give is when my brother was visiting me those days, I remember it was raining and both my boys were little, and you know, with the boys, with my kids I started singing that song, rain, rain, go away, come again another day, Sean and Amin want to play, rain, rain, go away. And my brother was like, don't teach them that, don't teach them to reject Alasubhanathala's blessings just because they wanna have fun, that their nuffs wants fun, so they're gonna reject rain. And I was like, oh, I didn't think of it that way. I mean, I didn't think of it at such a deep level, but I was like, okay, so then we played around with the lyrics and we came up with rain, rain, come on down, come and fall upon the ground, rain, rain, come down fast, come and make some green grass, rain, rain, pour, pour, pour, you're a mercy from our Lord, rain, rain, fall on me, I turn to Allah, gratefully. So that's what we would sing with our kids. And so I remember one day we had a picnic planned and it rained and our picnic had to get canceled. And I remember Sean and Amin were at the window looking out, disappointed that they're not gonna get to go to the park. And I heard Sean turn to Amin, they were like five and three years old. And I heard Sean turn to Amin and say, it's okay Amin, a lesbian kind to us, California needs the rain, we'll go another day. And I remember thinking that that attitude came from that song. If he had been taught rain, rain, go away, we wanna play, then the attitude would be like, why? Why is this happening? Why is my day getting ruined? But instead to turn and look at it from more of a spiritual perspective. So all these messages come through to our kids. So we have to teach them with love. One female scholar, Umsehel said that children are, they have little hearts, they have little nufus, they do need to be honored and respected. But at the same time, beware of the trap of over-respecting and over-talking to your children. You don't need to ask for permission for everything. That honey, once I do this, we can do that. And once I do that, then we can go there. It's okay to say because I said so. But no, we can't do this right now because I said so. And the kids should be okay with that. I have a friend from a specific Arab culture. She said that it was very common in her culture for mothers to curse their children when they were upset with them. And she said that she has seen it in her culture that when kids do something wrong, the mothers would curse in Arabic. May Allah shorten your life. May Allah burn down your home. It's very common. And it's something that they say we don't take seriously. It's what mothers do. But she said her mother, when she was upset with them when they were little, she would scream du'az at them. And she would scream things like, may Allah guide you, may Allah make you good Muslims, may Allah have mercy on us. So when my friend grew up, she had twins who would drive her crazy. And she said that she would find that when she was angry with them, she would stand up and yell, may Allah give us all jannat al-fardos, you know. So it's because she heard those words of love from her mother growing up, but that's what came out of her. Okay, the last tip, the 10th tip. I used to say that I don't have any science to back me up on this. And, but now I do. I just recently found out there's all this science backing up this point. And this point actually is, I'll be honest, it's kind of surprised me. All of these parents told me that they, their children had a pious father who engaged them. And that was the key part. Being pious wasn't enough. Engaging your children was the key part. I have seen families where the fathers are very pious. Outwardly, they look like the best mutmins, masha'Allah, and inshallah they are. But because they didn't engage with their children and didn't have a close relationship with them, the kids didn't necessarily follow the father's path. I've seen other fathers who did the bare minimum in the deen, but they had respect for it and they were close to their children and loving with their children and engaged and the kids grew up to follow the deen. And I used to say this is just something I found from interviewing people, but actually a man named Vern Bengston did a 30 year study that came out. He studied over 2,000 families from 1972 to 2004. And he published his findings in a book. He studied Christian and Jewish families. And he published his findings in a book called Families and Faith, How Religion is Passed Down Across the Generations. And what he found out was that those families, those kids that had close relationships with their fathers who also practiced the faith, they held on to the religion. But those adults who did not have close relationships with their fathers, even if the father practiced the religion, they didn't necessarily follow it. And we've seen that even in our own lives that the mother can be nagging and teaching and taking the kids to Sunday school and doing everything while the dad's home, watching football or whatever. And the kids often will grow up and it'll be hit or miss. Some of them will follow the mother's path, some will not. And, but then we'll see dads who are really involved in the kids' lives. You know, I know one person told me that our dad used to take us to Disneyland, but we saw that when the time for prayer came, he didn't care if he was in the middle of Disneyland, he would find a spot and he would do his prayer. They have positive memories of having fun with their dad but also seeing him practicing what he preached. And I know one of my friends actually witnessed this and this made me really sad. I won't mention the name of the person, but this is somebody who's really famous. And I won't say he's a scholar necessarily, but he's very famous in the American Muslim community. He's given a lot to the community. He's been very active, done a lot, been very busy throughout the years. And he was at one of these ISNA, IKNA type conferences. He was up on stage and he's a legend. And somebody in the audience asked a parenting question, asked him for some advice. And he was up on stage and he started to give the advice when a man stood up in the audience and said, who are you to give advice? You were never around when we were growing up and it was the man's son. And so that's something to be really mindful of. I know one boy who, we had some boys staying with us while their parents were on HUDGE and they stayed with different families for like three days at a time and they were with us for three days. And so I was talking to them at the dinner table and I said, it must be interesting going and staying with different families and seeing how they practice their Dean, how they run their families. We all have the same goals to raise our kids to be Motmans but we all have different ways of doing it. And so the boy said, yeah, it's interesting. You know, in Rahim's home, our home, he said, I see Rahim prays with his dad, like he'll get up and he'll pray and jamat with his dad. But in Ali's home, he said, Ali's dad, he just walks into the room at Fajr time and he says, Ali, Fajr, and Ali just jumps out of bed. And I was like, and then they go to the masjid. And I was like, oh, wow, that's really impressive that, you know, it's not easy to jump out of bed for Fajr and that too, to go to a masjid. And he's like, yeah, but you know, Ali's dad, after Fajr, he takes him to Starbucks and they have breakfast together, like every day. And so that made me, and the kid totally looked envious as he was telling me the story that this is what Ali does with this father. And that made me think that really, what is it that's making this kid jump out of bed for Fajr? Is it that he wants to go pray in a mosque or is it that he's looking forward to that bonding time with his father at Starbucks afterwards? You know, we'll never know, but he's associating sweet memories with it. Okay, and in conclusion, I just wanna say that after listing all these 10 tips, I have always been somebody who's loved parenting books, who's loved to-do lists, who loves checklists, but I know that parenting is not like following a recipe, or you know, like where you just follow a set of instructions and you end up getting the results that you want. We know that all of this is the mercy of Allah, Subh'anaHu Wa Ta'ala. We know that the prophets were tested with their children, prophet Nuh, alaihi salam, Adam, alaihi salam, Yaqub, alaihi salam, they were all tested by their children. And these were people who were guided by Allah, Subh'anaHu Wa Ta'ala himself. So, and Allah, Subh'anaHu Wa Ta'ala tells us in the Quran that I will guide, I will test you with many things, one of them being your children. So, we pray that Allah, Subh'anaHu Wa Ta'ala protects us from those tests. The main thing that we can do is we can learn from the successes and the failures, the mistakes from people who came before us. We can learn from their warnings and from their advice. And we pray to Allah, Subh'anaHu Wa Ta'ala for his guidance and his protection and his mercy. And in the end, we know that, you know, on the day of judgment, insha'Allah, insha'Allah, we can stand in front of Allah and say, I did what was required of me. And, you know, the end result is up to Allah, Subh'anaHu Wa Ta'ala. And I know of a mom, and I've had people come up to me and say, I didn't do any of the things that you listed in your article, and my kids turned out just fine. Alhamdulillah, that is completely from the mercy of Allah. There's no one right way to do it. And I know of one mom who, she could have written this article. She did everything that I just mentioned. Everything was done in her home. And a few years ago, she called me and her son was in college. And she said, you know, my son just called me and he told me he's not praying anymore. He told me he's not feeling the deen. And she said it really calmly. And I said to her, why aren't you panicking? Why aren't you freaking out? How can you tell me that he's not practicing the deen or praying anymore so calmly? And she said, because I have a high opinion of my Lord. She said from day one, I have been praying for my children's Akhira, for my children's deen. And I know that those du'as didn't just disappear into thin air. I know that they've reached Allah. And I know that those du'as will be answered in his time, not my time. But I know, I can insha'Allah face Allah and say I did what was required of me. Now he has his journey. My child has his own journey. We all have our own journeys. And we're not responsible for the end result. And the first time I told this story, the first few times I told this story, I cried because it was just so heart wrenching, you know. But I'm happy to report now that her son is back and he's practicing the deen again and he's praying. And what she did was she kept an open door. She kept relations with him. She was loving to him. But she kept doing and her husband kept doing and the other children kept doing everything that they believed was correct in the deen. And the kid saw that. He saw that they were willing to leave him behind. Fine, you don't wanna pray? Don't pray. We're still moving forward towards our Lord. And he came back, Alhamdulillah. So I'm gonna end with this du'a. It's from the Holy Quran, Surah 14, ayah 40. And I'm gonna read it in English. Bismillahirrahmanirrahim. Oh my Lord, make me one who establishes regular prayer and also raised such among my offspring. O our Lord, and accept thou my prayer. O our Lord, cover us with thy forgiveness, me, my parents and all believers on the day that the reckoning will be established. Amen. Thank you very much.