 I'm just starting out a little bit of background about myself. I am a San Ramon resident, and as Brother Ashur was saying, I've been living here since 2002. That's my husband sitting up in front. And I have three boys, and we have three boys. My eldest is 20 years old. He used to work here at San Ramon Valley Islamic Center. You might have seen him helping with the parking on Fridays. And his name is Sean. And then I have a middle son, Amin, who's 18 years old, who a couple of years ago had the honor of helping with the Barabi prayers after the Khatam two years ago here at service. And then my youngest is Rahim, and he is finishing up a grade this year with our homeschooling co-op. And my eldest, who are overseas right now, studying Arabic, and my youngest is still with us. So that's a little bit of our background. I teach English at Home Tree, the homeschooling co-op in Lafayette. And just by a show of hands, just out of curiosity, how many people here have actually read the article, Raising Children with Being in the New York? So we've got a couple of people. I love it when people say they haven't read it because then it's all fresh. But Alhamdulillah, I'm happy to see that there are a few people who have had a chance to look at it. So just the background of this article is, back in 2010, I had an auntie approach me who asked if I could write an article about some parenting tips for the Masjid Newsletter in Southern California where she was the editor-in-chief. And so I thought this is a great opportunity to take all the advice and Naseehah that I've gotten over the years since my eldest was born from parents who I really respected and admired, from kids who I was really impressed with, whom I would stop and interview and tell me, what did your parents do with you? I want my kids to turn out like you. Give me some tips. And what I noticed was over the years of grilling these people and asking them for their advice, I noticed that pretty much the same 10 tips kept coming up in different forms. And I thought, OK, this is interesting. All these scholars, all these parents, all these kids are kind of in a roundabout way. There's the whole spectrum of advice, but 10 basic tips kept coming up. And that article was an opportunity for me to finally get it all down on paper. And Masjid ended up taking, actually, like six months to write. And then Chair Faraz Rabani from Seekers Guidance saw it and he asked for permission to post it on his blog. And Alhamdulillah from there, the article went viral. Hundreds of thousands of people have read it. It's been translated into Arabic and it's been translated into Dutch. And even now, every month, I get at least two emails from somewhere in the world from somebody who's read it. Last time I got an email from someone in the Maldives. Another time I got an email from someone in Algeria, someone in Denmark. So Alhamdulillah, I'm very, very grateful to Alas Panathala that he put those feet in this article. And it's a sign of how important this topic is. And I just want to make it clear from the get-go that I am not a parenting expert. I am not a family counselor. I am not a scholar. I'm just a storyteller. And I'm somebody who, one of my talents is that I'm able to kind of see patterns and put it down in writing and then kind of share what I've learned with other people. So what were some of the things that were really impressive about these families that I noticed? When I say that it's raising children with Dean and Lumia, I don't mean to suggest that somehow the two are equal. They're not. Absolutely not. One is definitely higher than the other. But when I was younger, I used to always think that it was very binary. That people were either super religious and super conservative and very simple and didn't really have much success in the world necessarily. Or they were the other extreme where they were making tons of money and going to the best colleges and doing really well in life in the world. But Dean was kind of on the back burner. They weren't, you know, identifiable as Muslims. They weren't, you know, prayers or kind of hit or miss. And so I thought you had to kind of choose between the two. And with these people, what I saw is that there was a very impressive balance where people were going to good schools, getting good jobs and in sports and at the same time had incredible of them. And we're doing more than just the five basic prayers a day. And so in the article, I do recommend afterwards that if you get a chance to read the article, it's called Raising Children with Dean of the Lumniats around 10, 11 pages long. And it's on the Seekers guidance blog. And because in the article, I actually expand on a lot of the points that I'm going to be making today. And I'm not going to be repeating a lot of the points that are in the article. And Marshall, in the eight years that have passed since the article was written, I've actually learned a lot more. And my own kids have grown up in that time. And so I've been learning lots of new lessons. And we were all on this journey together every day as a new opportunity. So the first thing that when I would talk to the parents and I would ask them, tell me, how do I get kids the way your kids have turned out? Is they would tell me, do I, do I, do I? That was the every single family that I spoke to. It said, this is not from us. This is from Allah swt. We have just prayed for it. We don't even deserve this. We didn't do anything to deserve it. This is just a gift from Allah. And it's easy to think that that's just like a shortcut answer. It's like false humility. But the truth is these parents are very, very sincere. And they completely recognized that no power lay with them, power lay completely with Allah swt. And it was really easy to be like, OK, OK, fine. But what after that? But it's really important to realize that that actually is the number one tip on how to raise children who, inshallah, will be pleasing to their Lord and also be pleasing to the creation around them. And so these parents told me that when they wanted something for their children and they weren't sure what was right, they would do Salaf al-Tahara, the prayer of guidance. And to help them make the decision, if there was something they felt was really, really important and they knew they wanted it, like a clear health report, for example, if they're waiting to find out the results on a medical test, then they would do Salaf al-Hajjab, the prayer of need. Any time a blessing came in their life that they were grateful for, they would do Salaf al-Shukr, the prayer of gratitude. So a lot of turning to Allah swt and a lot of communication with Him. I have, Imam Bahir actually, he and I had a lot of discussions on this topic and he had said that it's really important to visualize, like what you want your children to grow up to be. So along with Dua, there's also like you have to sit and visualize. What do I want my children to eventually, or who do I want them eventually to grow up to be? What kind of Muslim, what kind of human being do I want my children to grow up to be? And then think about what you need to do to get there. And he told us that his goal for his son is that he visualizes that one day his son will be working for a great company inshallah and he'll be going on business trips and he'll be successful and he'll go to a town where nobody knows him and he doesn't know anybody. And he'll be in his hotel room on this business trip. And when the time for Fajr comes in, his son will get up inshallah and pray Fajr when nobody sees him. It's just between him and his Lord. He said to me, that's the ultimate success. After that, everything else is just extra. And so it's really important to get a clear vision in your mind that this is the end goal where I want to get to inshallah and with the last $100 help we'll get there, but what do I need to do on the way? OK, so the second tip that these parents gave me, this was said by pretty much everybody. They said your sahbah, your companionship, will make you or break you. And it's really easy to think that when parents are talking about sahbah, companionship, that they're talking about the kids' friends, that the kids have to have really good friends. And that's obviously very, very true. The kids do need to have good friends because as they say, my mom used to say to us, don't think that you're better than your friends. You are who your friends are. So that's absolutely true. But what I've realized over the years is that it's not just who your kids' friends are. It's also who your friends are. That has a very, very big impact on who your children grow up to be because these are the role models and the people that they're around. It's haal that they're absorbing and who they're learning from, whether you realize it or not. And I know of people who've told me that they used to have a very different crowd of friends and they actually consciously decided to change their friends because they realized that even though they enjoyed their company and they have a lot of haalag and laz, we say in the basic culture, they had a good time with them, they realized this wasn't necessarily how they wanted their kids to turn out to be. And so they consciously decided to seek out other kinds of friends who they thought embodied what they were looking for. And another thing that a lot of the scholars told me is that you don't need tons of friends. It's really easy to start to think that you need to be kind of in the mix of everything. The whole community needs to know you. You need to be friends with everybody and the more friends you have, the more successful you are. Actually, you only need one or two or three really, really good friends with whom you share similar values. And if you can find families where the dads get along, the moms get along and the kids get along and you all have similar values, hold on to those friends. Those friends are kind of stressful. And so they're really, really, they're like diamonds that hit in gens. So pray for those friends, like everything starts with God, pray for those friends to show up in your life and then seek them out. If you see people that you admire in the community, invite them over. And I'll be honest, there are people that I necessarily wouldn't have on my own thought to be really like people I would necessarily get along with one on one. But I really, really like the family and I like the way the kids were turning out. And so we sought out those friendships and encouraged them. And those friendships have been very beneficial over time. Now, at the time when I wrote the article, I talked about who your kids friends are and who your friends are. But over the past eight years, what I've realized is there's some other really key ingredients when it comes to so about your companionship. I've noticed a really big difference in those families where there are grandparents in the house. When there are grandparents in the house, those children really do stand out heads and shoulders above other children their age. I think there's just something about the fact that you have to worry about somebody else's needs instead of your own. You know, the little bit of time that we spent with my grandmother, just noticing that my kids don't have to jump up and help her and help her walk, help her get to the restroom and making sure that we didn't eat until the grandparent was sitting at the table with us. Because we're living in a time where it's me, me, me, right? Everybody worries about themselves first and foremost. But when you have grandparents in the home, kids learn adab and they learn achla. And they learn to put somebody else's needs ahead of their own. The other thing that they see with grandparents is that many of us, the parents, are just caught up in the dunya. We're caught up in our work, we're caught up in our education, we're not hugging the home, but grandparents are the ones who are like really preparing for their achla and they're sitting and reading Quran and they're praying and achla. It's, you know, a good, healthy home environment. And obviously we don't want the kids to think that being is only for old age, but at the same time, there is something that they take from the grandparents here about them. The other thing that I realized that at the time I didn't put in my article is the importance of mentorship. That cannot be underestimated. You can find, like if your kids are coming to the ages of 10, 11, 12, if you can find young people in the community who are a few years older than them, who you admire and you want your kids to be like, encourage them to be mentors to your children. And you can find these people like in holocaust, you can find them at your local musty, you can find them in your social circles. And, you know, there are young people out there who are willing to take young kids under their hats. I know my kids have been really influenced by some people a few years older than them. And I know now that my two older sons are gone, Ron have really benefits from his older brother's friends who still look out for him, even though his brothers aren't here right now. The other thing that's really important is for our children, especially as they get older, to develop relationships with scholars in the community, both male and female. If your children who are in middle school and high school have a phone number of a local sheikh or an alema in their phone, that is a really good sign. Somebody that they can call if they're having a problem and they don't feel that they can communicate it with you. It's, that's a huge gift. And so if you can reach out to scholars, I know a lot of people are really, really busy, but even, you know, there's like usplads in the community, there's students of knowledge or learning. They're not full scholars yet, but they're on the path. If those are people that your kids can turn to for help when they're struggling with something, that will come to help you later. And it's really important, like I said, to invest in friendships. Like one story I want to tell you is about this young hafiz that I know who, he told me this story. He said when he was 18 years old, he was leading the prayers out of mosque and he had also been giving the hookahs occasionally. And he said, one day a gentleman came up to him and he said, I want you to be friends with my son. And he was like, okay. And so he brought his son over and his son was actually like 22 years old. And he said, I want you, he said to the hafiz, he said, I want you to take his phone number. And so the hafiz said, okay, and put his number in his phone. And then he told his son, I want you to take his number. And so he said, okay, he took his number. And he's like, all right, now both of you, sit here and talk and I'll be back in 40 minutes. And the dad left and the 22 year old turned to the 18 year old hafiz and he said, my dad's crazy and he got up and he left. That was the last that young hafiz saw him. But my point in telling that story is that, it's a funny story but it's a sad story at the same time because you see that the dad was sincere and he was obviously trying to solve some issues in that he was recognizing. But I never like to say it's too late, but what I do wanna emphasize is that friendships need to be cultivated over time. And they take investment and they take trust and they take a willingness to be vulnerable and honest with one another. They don't happen with you take his number, you take his number and I'll both of you talk and I'll be back. It doesn't work that way. So don't, yeah, so if you see people that you respect and admire, seek them out and encourage relationships. Okay, apparently one of the scholars told us that I believe somebody told me that this is a hafiz of the prophet. Somebody told me in my article, I said that a scholar said it, but somebody corrected me. So it's on the day of judgment, you'll be standing with the ones you love the most in the dunya. So choose your friends wisely. So we'll end with that. And then moving on to the third tip. So who could be the best soba for our children? These parents told me the prophet, Sallallahu alayhi wasallam, was a living, breathing reality in their lives, which means that the prophet Sallallahu alayhi wasallam was not somebody just relegated to the history books. He wasn't somebody just discussed during Sunday school. He was not somebody from the time of the ancients. He was somebody that the parents talked about on a regular basis, the way you might talk to your children about a grandfather whom they never met, right? Like I know I personally never got to meet my Nana, my mother's father, he died before my mom even got married, but my mom always talked about him when I was little. And whenever we got good grades in school, she would say, oh, you know, papa was alive, if your Nana was alive, he'd be so proud of you. He loved children who used to study and who used to get good grades. And I remember feeling a lot of pride and thinking that, oh, if my grandfather was alive, he would be proud of me. So talking about the prophet Sallallahu alayhi wasallam in the same way as if he was just someone that the kids hadn't met yet, but they would eventually. So there were different ways that these parents did that. One dad told me that he put up Sallallahu alayhi throughout the house. So on index cards. So the du'a for entering the house, the du'a for leaving the house, the du'a for entering the restrooms, the du'a for leaving the restrooms, the du'a for starting your meal, the du'a for ending your meal. Everything that throughout the day so that the kids would be connected to the prophets and notice on them. I've seen young children at the age of three as they were getting strapped into their car seats, reciting the du'a for traveling. And I know of a little boy right now who's not, he just turned two years old, and his parents have only had him listen to Nishid's. He's never heard any other kind of music. And he will get in the car and he'll be like, mama, huram Allahumma salli ala, you know? And he'll like do these long Sallahu alayhi and he'll like sing these Nishid's and what's coming out of his mouth on a regular basis, the Sallahu alayhi and he doesn't even realize it. When I was visiting my sister at her home when her son was seven years old, her son is now 15 years old, I saw this book sitting next to his bed and it was called the Shamail Nishid's Characteristics. It's a book written, I believe in the ninth century by Imam Girmidhi. And it is a collection of hadiths that just covers characteristics of the prophets and love is on them. So when I saw that book sitting there, I asked my sister, what is this? Book sitting next to Mustafa's bed and she told me that every night before Mustafa goes to sleep, his father reads him one hadith, just one hadith, something about the prophets and love is on them. And she said that for her son at that time who was seven years old, she said for him to know that the prophets and love is on them like to eat dates and cucumbers together, that made him feel like he knew the prophets and love is on them. And the truth is you can't love somebody until you know them. So it's really important that our children grow up knowing the prophets and love is on them so that they can love him. And because nobody loved Allah's upon them more than the prophets and love is on them. So in that sense, the children then end up having the best Mustafa, and just the prophets and love is on them. And that book, by the way, is available on Amazon for anyone who wants to get it. It's been translated that the children's version has been translated by somebody named Abdulla Ghazi, G-H-A-Z-I. It's a yellow cover. If you look for it on Amazon, it comes in Kindle. It's hard to find in paperback now. So if you do find it, get it. It's a thin book, and you can just read one of these every night to your children and discuss what it means. It's called Shama'il, S-H-A-M-A-I-L. It's called Shama'il, the life of perfection. So look up the life of perfection. And the last name would be Lazi, G-H-A-Z-I. Also, when kids were little, I remember seeing some parents doing things like, they would say things like, oh, it's Friday. You know what the prophets and love is on favorite color was? Green. Let's wear our green clothes today. Or do you know the prophets and love is on them? We used to love to eat squash. Let's speak pumpkin muffins today after Juma. And so without lecturing, without nagging, without telling our kids, oh, you're gonna sit down and you're gonna learn about the prophets and all this on them right now, just kind of gently bringing them into their daily lives. Okay, the fourth tip, these parents told me, beware of the dangers of don't. And the way I wrote it up in the article was, having fun wasn't haram in our home, but we kept the home environment as halal as possible. So what that means is that kids should not be growing up hearing no, no, no, no, no, all the time. It's very easy to fall into that. No, we don't celebrate Christmas. No, we don't celebrate Halloween. No, we don't go to the prom or no, we don't do this. So the kids are just constantly feeling like, my religion's just a religion of no. My religion's just a religion of don't. So I had a female scholar, she's a family counselor, a Saba Hidayah Hartford tell me that, for every haram that you stop your children from, you have to give them two halals that they can enjoy. That's just the nature of raising children in the West. You have to give them two halals they can enjoy and that's especially true in the early years. So then the kids grow up with a feeling of joy and a feeling of openness and a feeling of that Islam enables them to do things instead of restricting them from doing things. So an example that I can give you is in my community, in my homeschooling community that we have formed out in Lafayette called Ilm Tree, we're like 37 families. We've agreed that we don't celebrate Halloween and our kids don't celebrate Halloween. But instead of telling our children, no, we don't celebrate Halloween, it's Hanam or Maku or whatever the opinion is for people, we tell them we're gonna have a lot of fun on October 31st and we have what's called a fall party and we do it on a ranch and we have a bonfire and we have treats for the kids and we have a professional storyteller come in the past and we sing the sheaves around the bonfire and we have a dad who gives the kids hay rides, we do fun face painting, the kids have these little light up glow, glow in the dark sticks that they run around with, it's just an environment of fun. And when my son was in high school, he went to, we homeschooled him up until eighth grade but then he went to Cal High here at Santa Mom and I asked him that, do you ever feel like you missed out? Like, do you feel like, you know, all your friends who now you know in high school, they got to go trick-or-treating, they got to the festival right Halloween but you never got to experience it. And he said, you know, if I hadn't had the fall festival, if I hadn't had that growing up, then yeah, I probably would have felt that way. But because I was always able to tell my friends or in our neighbors or whoever, oh yeah, I'm going somewhere too, I'm not gonna be home, I'm going to festivals as well. Then, you know, he didn't have to feel apologetic about it or feel like he was missing out. Now as an adult, obviously he understands why we didn't but as a kid, you didn't focus on the nose. Okay, the other thing that the parents told me under the dangers of don't, a lot of what I wrote up in the article in this section is about how careful these parents were about how much media their kids took in. And especially, especially about internet use. They were very, very careful about how much internet their children were exposed to. The computer was always in a public area of the home. My kids, I can tell you right now, my son's 20 years old and the cell phone stays outside of his room. And it's for different reasons. I mean, it's also for medical reasons, like because of all the, you know, whatever, rays are coming out of the phone. But also, you know, he has an electric alarm clock that wakes him up in the morning. One time the electricity went out and he, yeah, the alarm clock didn't go off and he was late for his college class in the morning. But the cell phones stay outside of the bedroom. There are horror stories I can tell you about what happens in the privacy of children's bedrooms when it comes to the cell phone and the iPod and the iPad. And so it's really, really important that people are aware of the dangers of the internet. And I have a whole other talk that I give about that, but there's an article online that you can read that I wrote on this topic called Helping Your Children or Protecting Your Children from the P word. And so if you just rule out my name and you look up P word, that article will come up about how to try to keep your children safe around the internet. Chef Hamza said that if Chef Ban were to ring our doorbell and ask if he could come in and babysit our children, we would say absolutely not and we would slam the door in his face. But he said what many people don't realize is that exactly who's babysitting our children when we leave our kids alone with the television and leave them for hours on end at people's homes, watching TV in bedrooms or watching people's phones without any kind of oversight. So again, really important to keep an eye on that. Let's see what else I wanted to tell you. Okay, so keeping the home environment as well as possible. I met a young lady who grew up in a small town in Arizona where there weren't many Muslims, but her father was a very pious man, a very involved with the kids. Every time he ever lived in, he built a nested there. Masha'Allah. And I asked her, how was it that you and your brothers and sisters turned out so amazing, considering that you didn't have much with some community around you? And how did you resist the siren call of the culture around you? And she told me, I love this quote. She said, when you feel love in the home, you don't look for it anywhere else. So it's very important that the kids grow up seeing that Islam worked. So be aware of the dangers of don't. The kids need to see that Islam worked in their home. They need to see that Islam is the reason that my parents talk to each other with respect. Islam is the reason my parents care about the environment. Islam is the reason our house is so clean and tidy. Islam is the reason we smell good. Islam is the reason we treat our teachers with respect and civility. All the adab and the akhla that we're taught, it's because of Islam. When kids see that Islam works and that Islam makes their lives better, they will stick with it, inshallah. So that brings me to the fifth point, which is our parents didn't just talk the talk, they walked the walk. A line that I never forgot that Saldar Raniya said, Sheikh Amir's wife, as she said, children listen with their eyes. Children listen with their eyes. Meaning you can give all the lectures that you want, but if you're not doing what you're talking about, if you're not practicing what you preach, no one sniffs out hypocrisy with birth and children. They are the first to jump on it. And so one mom told me, it's not enough to teach your children to pray. It's also important how you pray. Like, do you rush through your prayers? Do you take your time with your prostrations? One young man told me that he remembers his father weeping one time when he missed a prayer. And that taught him more about the importance of prayer than all the lectures in the world. He said he remembers his father's reaction to the fact that he had missed a prayer and that told him how important it was. I remember one time I was working on a project with a friend of mine and I really admired the way she raised her kids. And we were working on a project and longer prayer time came. And I said, without thinking, I just said, oh, you know what? I need to go get prayer out of the way. And she just looked kind of startled and she looked at me and she said, oh, that's interesting. In our home, we say we need to get prayer in the way. And I said, what a difference one word makes. What a difference, get prayer out of the way, get prayer in the way, right? And so that was the attitude that her children were growing up seeing about prayer. I had one chef tell me that children are like sponges. They soak in everything around them, garbage in, garbage out. So keep that in mind. Okay, the next tip these parents told me. I wasn't afraid to be the bad guy, but I didn't behave badly. So what does that mean? That means that there are three types of parenting out there in the world. There is authoritarian parenting, which is also known as brick wall parenting, which means that my way or the highway, you don't do what I'm saying, you're gonna see the back of my hand. My rules are the only rules that count. Kids don't have any say whatsoever. Then there's permissive parenting, which is also known as jellyfish parenting, which means you don't have a spine, which is you'll often hear parents being like, honey, don't do that, how many times do I have to tell you? Telling other parents, my kid never listens to me. You do that one more time, you do that one more time, we're leaving, we're gonna leave, we're gonna leave. I'm telling you, we're gonna leave. And then the kid does it and it's like, I don't know what to do with him, not getting up and leaving. So that's called permissive parenting. And then the third parenting, which is considered to be the best parenting, is called authoritative parenting, which is called backbone parenting. And a book I would like to recommend, if parents want to read it, is called The Collapse of Parenting. And this book by Dr. Leonard Sats is a book that will teach you how to be an authoritative parent. It's called The Collapse of Parenting, how we hurt our kids when we treat them like grownups. He is a psychologist who works with children and he went to Harvard and MIT and he has a great writing style. And so his books are really easy to read. I recommend all of them. If you have sons, I really recommend you read his book called Boys Adrift. And if you have daughters, he has a book that's pretty scary. It's called Girls on the Edge. But all of his books are really well researched. Okay, so when we talk about, I wasn't afraid to be the bad guy, but I didn't behave badly. So that means knowing how to be an authoritative parent. So an example I'll give you is one time when my boys were younger, they're also friends with a bunch of girls and I noticed that a lot of the girls, the 10 year old girls, when it was time for prayer, everybody would get up and pray and I noticed one girl would never join the prayer, ever. And all of her friends would get up and go pray and she would just go sit on the sofa and wait till everyone was done or she would read a book or play with her toys or whatever. So one day I asked the mom, I just said, you know, I've noticed that so-and-so never times in prayer when everybody gets up in Jama'at, like I was just wondering why, why she doesn't join everyone. Because the mom prayed, the mom was a full-on practicing Muslim and that was the environment the daughter was around. I was just kind of curious. And the mom said, you know what? I've never told her that she needs to pray. I assume that eventually she's gonna get it. It's not far down her right now and when the time comes, she's gonna see that prayer is important in our home and eventually she'll start praying. I was like, oh, okay. I mean, I was a young mom too. I didn't know what was the right way to teach kids prayer at that time. So I was like, oh, all right. And later the mom called me and she said, you know, that's interesting. After we had that conversation, I was just thinking about it. And I told my daughter, I sat her down and I said, you know, honey, you're reaching an age where prayer really needs to start to become a priority for you. And I think it would be a good idea if you chose one prayer that you did it every single day so that you get in the habit because prayer is something that you have to really discipline yourself in. It's not gonna just come naturally overnight. And so it's important to start training your nuts right now. And she said the next day, she said her daughter listened to her so attentively and she said the next day, her daughter was the one who actually came and woke her up for pleasure. And her daughter set out her daughter when I was her prayer mat next to her mother and was really excited to pray with her. And the mom told me, you know what I realized? The mom's a single mom, there was no dad in the house. And the mom said to me, you know what I realized? She was waiting for me to tell her that she had to pray. She wasn't going to start just doing it on her own. She needed to be told. And yeah, and that's the truth. That's the truth because Islam is work. It's gonna require something of us and our children. And it's not this easy, loosey, loosey religion. It requires something from us. And so the kids are going to be told. One thing all of these parents told me is that they did not hit their children. I was kind of surprised by that. Like all the parents told me we don't hit our children. Even though we grew up being hit, we don't hit our children. One mom told me that there is a place for spanking, for sure. Actually a couple of parents told me that there is a place for spanking, but it's not like this uncontrollable where the parents are losing their temper and are just beating their kids like and blue. The example she gave me is she said her daughter when she was two or three years old, after she would use the toilet, the restroom, she would always run out without putting her underwear on. And so the mom would tell her every time that this is not safe. You cannot just run out in the street. And you know, your siblings with no underwear on, you have to put on your underwear. Her daughter wouldn't listen. She said finally the third or fourth time she gave her daughter a really good spanking and told her, this is, I'm doing this for your safety so that you will remember. And she said her daughter never forgot her underwear. So sometimes for our kids' safety, yeah, you will have to lay down the law with your hands. But it will have to be in a way where you are not in rage, you're not out of control, you're not yelling and screaming and turning red in the face. And you have to realize that the end goal is really to correct a certain behavior. Okay, let's see if there's anything else I wanted to tell you. Okay, the next tip. I always kept them close by. Now many people assume that because we chose to homeschool our kids, that that's what I'm talking about and that's not what I'm talking about. Homeschooling is not the solution for just raising, inshallah, good kids. It's one of the ways, inshallah, but there are many ways. The kids that I'm talking about that I was impressed with went to public school, private school, Islamic school, homeschool, boarding schools, all sorts of schools. But with these parents, actually the boarding school example I gave was one where the parent was a teacher there. So the parent was actually there. So they did, they kept their children close by. What did surprise me, however, is that many of them told me they didn't sleepovers, that their kids did not go to sleepovers. The parents hosted sleepovers. The parents had their children's friends come over and spend the night and made sure it was a lot of fun, but their children didn't go and sleep in anyone's home without them being there. I had one parent tell me that I saw too many weird things in other people's homes when my parents weren't there when I was younger, and I wasn't going to expose my children to that. Some people make the exception with, for example, they'll let their daughters go to a sleepover as long as it is guaranteed that there will be no men in the house. So the host family will make sure that the dad and the brothers are all gone for the night. There'll be no men in the home. Then the girls can have a sleepover. So like that, they would make certain exceptions. Okay, one thing that every single family told me, and I always, I feel a little bad sharing this point with families because I know everyone has different situations, and this is not a judgment on anyone. This is just data that I collected over the years and I'm sharing it with you, and you can do with it what you will. But one thing every single family told me is that they did not do day cares. Their kids were not in day cares. They were not in another institution from like seven in the morning to six in the evening. Some of them had nannies who helped take care of their children. Some of them had aunties, really trusted aunties in the neighborhood who took care of their kids or a grandmother who agreed to help over the children while their parents worked, but they did not put their kids in actual day care institutions for the entire day. All right, the next tip. We didn't spoil our kids, nor did we praise them too much. That means that these parents were really, really careful about the impact of their words on their children, and they really cared about their children's nufus, their children's egos. And one incident that really stands out in my mind is we had North Star does that competition every year in praise of the prophet, where they encourage children from all over the country to write poems based on a certain theme that they've selected about the prophet, it's a lot of Islam, and everyone submits it, and then the winners are announced. And one year, a young lady from our elementary homeschooling co-op won first place for her poem. We were really proud of her and really excited for her. And at the same time of there was an event here at service that was being done for Rabi'ul-Nauwut, and I was helping with the planning of it. So I asked the mom of this girl. I said, oh, can so-and-so come and recite her poem at the service event that we're having in Rabi'ul-Nauwut. And the mom paused and she thought about it, and she said, you know, my daughter's been getting a lot of praise for that poem. A lot of people have been congratulating her and telling her what a good writer she is. It was a big deal at the North Star fundraiser. It was announced on the stage and a lot of people were there. And she's part of the science program at a ranch in Toulton Park. And she said, this week, KQED News or some science program happened to be there and they interviewed her for the science program that's gonna be on TV. She's like, I just, I don't think it's good for her nuts. I don't think it's good for her nuts to be in the spotlight so much that if you don't mind, we're gonna say no. And I remember being so shocked because I was like, this is a poem about the prophets and their wisdom she wrote. How many parents, how many of us would be proud of that would want our children to recite it for the community to see what a good job they did. But instead, this mother was like, no, it's not good for my daughter's nuts to be constantly praised, to be constantly told how great she is. And so she was looking long-term. She was looking at who she wanted her daughter to become eventually. And that means making certain hard choices along the way. And the same mom, when I talked to her about it, she told me, I love this quote of hers. She said, what's the point in telling a child who always gets A's, you're so smart? Or telling a pretty child, you're so beautiful. Telling a child who struggled through an assignment, I'm proud of how hard he worked on that difficult worksheet is so much more meaningful. And that's true, talking about praising a child's effort rather than their actual ability, or the way they look, which is something that a lot of us cannot validate, and they don't have any control over that. All right, the next step. Talk to your kids, but with love, which means that we don't miss out on teaching opportunities. Any chance we get, we talk to our kids to get them to see the bigger picture, to think outside the box, to look at things through the eye of discernment, right? So, but there's a fine line. You don't wanna nag your kids, you don't wanna constantly lecture your kids, but you wanna have conversations with them to get them to hopefully see the world through the frame that you want them to see the world through. So for an example I'll give is the movie Frozen, right? That movie was very popular, the Disney movie. All the blue girls are singing the songs from Frozen. It was one of the most popular movies that Disney came out with. So, one dad told me that he didn't like the movie. He didn't like the messaging in the movie that kids were getting, but he did not prohibit his kids from watching Frozen. He watched the movie with them, and then he discussed it with his kids. So in the movie, for example, those of you who may not have seen it, there's a famous song called Let It Go, right? And in the movie what they show is that the sister, as long as the main character, as long as she's taking care of her younger sister and worrying about her, she's very uptight and she's very rigid, and they show that she's like very conservatively dressed and she looks like she has a miserable life, right? Then one day she decides to let it go. She's gonna stop worrying about her sister, stop taking care of her, and all of a sudden she's like in the sleeveless gown and she's living in this big ice castle and she's singing the song called Let It Go. Basically the rules don't matter. We can make up our own rules. So the dad talked to his kids, well, what does that mean? What does it mean to let it go? What does it mean to follow rules? Why do we have to follow rules? And why does she look miserable when she's taking care of her sister? She was doing something good. She was being responsible. Why does she look happy when she's free? Where does true happiness come from? Does it come from chidna? Does it come from serving others? Or does it come from just worrying about what we want? So he turned it into a really positive discussion and hopefully the kids will remember that they enjoyed the movie, but hey, they don't necessarily agree with the messages that were being given to the public. I remember one time when my boys were little, they were like five and three years old, I was, the rain was coming down and I was singing, I started singing to them, rain, rain, go away, come again, another day, shine into me, want to play, rain, rain, go away. And which is a very typical song, everybody knows that. And my brother was visiting and my brother just went, don't teach them that. Don't teach them to reject the alas panathala's blessings, rain is a mercy, it's a gift from alas panathala. What does that song teach them? It teaches kids that I don't want alas blessings, I want to have fun, so make it stop, make alas mercy stop so that I can do what I want to do. So I was like, oh wow, I never really thought of it that way, but okay, that's a good point. So then we played around with the lyrics and we changed it and we came up with, to 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 turned to Allah, gratefully. So that's what we would sing, right? Anytime the rain came down. So I saw, I got to witness the results of that because later, like a year later, or maybe two years later, we had planned to go on a picnic and the kids had been really, really excited about it and looking forward to it and it started to rain. We got rained out and our plans got canceled. And I remember seeing my older one turning to his younger brother and putting his arm around him and saying, it's okay, I mean, Allah's being kind to us, California needs the rain, it's okay, we'll go another day. And I realized that that message was in his head because of that song. It wasn't because I sat and lectured him or because of anything that he knew from himself. It was something that he learned through the song that we had been singing. So yeah, I mean, if I had been teaching him rain rain, go away, come again another day, we want to play, then what would their response have been to that disappointment? Okay, so that's just one example. I had one mom say, I want to get my voice into my kids' heads while they're young. There are so many forces competing for our kids' minds. I want to get it while I can. There will come a time when we will all have to let go, but I'm hopeful that my children will always remember their root values once they're out on their own. I have one other friend. She told me that in her culture, she's from a very specific Arab culture. And she told me that it was very common in their culture that when your parents were upset with you, that they would curse you. And she said it was common, nobody took it seriously, but mothers would yell in Arabic, things like, you know, may I love her down your home? And may I love to destroy you, and all sorts of things that our kids understood that this is just my mom, she's angry right now, right? But she said her mother would always yell duas at them. So when her mother was angry, she would scream things like, may I guide you? May I give you a genital for those? May I love making good people? And this is while the mom's tearing her hair out, right? And so she said that when she had children who drove her crazy, that's what she would do. She would, that's what could come out of her mouth, right? Because we end up becoming our parents, if you notice, right? We end up saying the same things that our parents did. I, my husband and I speak English in the home, but when I'm mad at my kids, the Urdu comes out like he would not believe, right? Because that's why I grew up here. So yeah, I remember once being upset, the Urdu speakers will get this, I remember once being upset with my kids and I got mad and I was like, but then it's, and they were like, cheapish. And then one of my boys turned to the other and said, Sean, my mama said, but then it means. But then it means the one without matters. And we have a mom at Elm Tree who every time she, she said when she gets upset with her daughter, she says in Arabic, may Allah guide you. And she said the other day and her daughter did something she was happy with. And she said, may Allah guide you. And her daughter went, no, I don't want a lot of guide you. Because she was used to it always being sad when her mom was mad. Okay. The last tip, let's keep an eye on time. The last tip I want to share. This is the one tip that I have to say causes the most tears. And every time I've given this talk anywhere, afterwards I have all these women line up and many of them cry about this tip. And they say, I don't have this in my life. What am I supposed to do about it? Is there any hope for my children? There's always hope. There's always hope. We can never despair. Everything's from Allah swt. But like I said, this is just data I've collected. And this is something that the parents have all shared with me. And inshallah, this is a blessing. I hope all of us have. They had a pious father who engaged them. That's the key word, engage them. Having a pious father wasn't enough. Engaging your children was the key part. And for years I would say that I don't have any scientific evidence to back up what I'm saying. It's just something intuitively that I've been told. But now I can actually say I'm science to back me up. There is a gentleman named Vern Benston who wrote a book. He did this landmark study. He started it in 1972 and he ended it in 2006. He interviewed 2,000 families, Jewish and Christian families. And the whole point of his research was to see how religion gets passed down to the next generation. And what he found overwhelmingly in his research was that those families where the children had a good relationship with the father and the father practiced the religion, then the majority of those families, the religion continued in the next generation. But the families where the father wasn't involved or the father was really harsh about the religion, those families, the success rate wasn't as high. I know more than anyone that there are single moms out there who are doing an amazing job with their children. And they are raising only up. Like I told Aunty Nasa, I'm like, I need to sit you down and interview you about how you raise the same movie because she's like a total example of successful single mom, you know, parenting, single parenting. And, you know, we know mothers are the first madrasa and that generalize that the feet of mothers. But there is a power that fathers have over their children that cannot be underestimated. And a true story that I'll share with you that's really heartbreaking is there's actually a famous, I won't call him a scholar, he's not a scholar, but he's a very famous figure in the Muslim community. A lot of people would know his name, he's not from the Bay Area, but many people here would know his name. He was once speaking at a conference and he's done a lot for Muslims in America. He's been around for quite a few decades and he's done a lot for the Muslim community. And he's very respected and he was really in demand, you know, the whole time I was growing up, I come. And he was at a conference, one of those ISNA or IKANA type conferences where there were thousands of people in the audience. And somebody in the audience asked a parenting question. And he started to answer the question on parenting and somebody in the audience stood up and said, how can you answer that question? You were never around when we were growing up. That was his son. And, you know, that's something Imam Bakr even told me, that he's being very conscientious of how much he travels now and how much time he can spend away from his kids because he's realizing as his kids are entering the middle school and high school years that they need their dad around. You can give as much as you want to the community, but you can't neglect, you know, your home and your children. Um, I know, I know of a, I had a boy come spend the night at our house while his parents were on hudge. He and his siblings came and stayed with us. They stayed with different families while the parents were gone for like two weeks. So when they were at our house, I said, oh, you know, it must be interesting. You're like staying in different people's homes and everybody's trying to raise their kids to be good Muslims. And you're probably getting to see lots of different ways that people teach their kids. And he said, yeah, I am. And he said, like, for example, I see that Rahim, when he prays, he prays and jump off with his dad at home. But so-and-so, he was talking about another boy. He said, so-and-so, his dad comes in the room in the morning at Fudger and says, so-and-so, Fudger. And so-and-so jumps out of bed and they go to the musket for Fudger. So I was like, wow, that's pretty impressive, you know, to get up and go out in the dark and the cold and to jump out of bed like that. And he said, yeah, but you know, his dad takes him to Starbucks afterwards for breakfast. So I think that's what he's actually excited about. So I don't know, we don't know, but all I know is that that kid has positive memories of prayer and of going to the musket with his dad and his dad has this routine and it's not cheap. It's not cheap, but the dad has decided that it's worth the investment of spending whatever how many dollars he does every day treating his son to a breakfast at Starbucks and spending some quality time with him after Fudger's prayer. And it's interesting, I recently found out about a bunch of dads here in the San Juan downhill community. Many of them are Ilmche dads. They were telling me about it and I was like, wow, I really impressed with this initiative. They call it Fudger and Donuts and they do it on the weekend and a lot of them have daughters. And their daughters, their moms were telling me the daughters are up and ready for Fudger and they come with their dads to service and they pray Fudger with their dads and then they go and get donuts locally here in San Ramon and then they go home and the kids go back to sleep. But I just, you know, that's just so beautiful much along what these kids are gonna be growing up with. And the fact that the dads are taking the time out to do that. All right. Okay, so now just to close out now I'm gonna do Q and A after Isha prayer, inshallah. There are a lot of people who will read this article and who will read these tips and they'll say, you know what, I didn't do any of that. My kids have turned out just fine or my parents didn't do any of those things and we turned out just fine. Alhamdulillah, alhamdulillah. There, you know, I love to do lists. I love baking and following recipes but I know that that's not how parenting works. Parenting doesn't come with a manual. It's not like you do X, Y, and Z and you will get A, B, and C results, right? However, it behooves us to learn from the people who came before us and to learn from their ups and downs and to take from their tips. And I know, you know, we know what prophets who've been tested, right? Prophet Nuh, alaihi salam, Prophet Adam, alaihi salam. They were tested with their children. And these are prophets who were in direct communication with Allah swt and they were still tested. So there's no guarantee, right? And Allah has promised us that He's gonna test us with our wealth and our health and our children. So the point is we're so lucky that we are not going to be held accountable for how our kids turn out. We're only going to be held accountable for what we did to facilitate their success. That's it. The end result is up to Allah swt. And I had a dad who recently told me that parenting kids in the West requires that you make really bold moves, that you really get out of your comfort zone and you do that which doesn't feel comfortable because it's what's right for your children. I know of a family where the dad's business is in LA, the mom's community of friends is in LA, but they moved here to the Bay Area because they found the community they wanted for their daughter. And they decided to sacrifice their own comfort and ease to make it work for their daughter. And I know of parents who pulled their kids out of very upscale school in a very expensive neighborhood school that everybody wants their children to go to. And they pulled them out because they didn't like that their kids were becoming materialistic or that they were caring about things that weren't important to them as Muslims. And so you have to make certain choices in order to end up with the type of adult that you want your child to eventually be in child love. You know, none of these parents took their success for granted, none of them thought their job was done even after the parent, after people started telling them, oh, you've done such an amazing job with your children. They know that the wheel is constantly turning. The person who's on top today can be on the bottom tomorrow. The person who's on the bottom today can be on the top tomorrow. So we can't ever judge each other and the only thing we want is we want to do this world in safety. We want to lead this world with khusna khadimah where we believe a shatana la ilahe ilahe ilahe ilahe ilahe ilahe ilahe. That's when we know that we've got ultimate success. And I want to end with this anecdote. I know a mom who did everything. She did every single thing that's in this list. She could have written the book on this topic. And when her son was in college, he one day told her, I'm not praying. I'm not feeling the being anymore is how he put it. I'm not feeling the being anymore. And she told me very calmly about what her son had said to her. And I was like, why aren't you freaking out? Why aren't you freaking out? Your son is telling you that he is no longer praying. How can you take it so calmly? And she said, because I did everything that was required of me. There was nothing more that I could have done. I did everything that was required of me and the end result is up to Allah subhanallah, not me. And she said, on the day of judgment, inshallah, I can stand in front of Allah and say, I did my part. I did what was required of me. And I have always been making du'a for my children. So we go back to the first tip. She's like, I've always been doing du'a for their iman and for their achara. And I know that those du'as didn't just disappear to the near. I know that they were heard and they'll be answered in Allah's time, not in my time. And so I just now have to answer that. And she kept the door open. She kept a good relationship with her son. She was loving with him. She and her other children and her husband continued living their lives cleanly and happily and joyously. And they showed their son that Islam works. Islam allows you to have a good life. And alhamdulillah, the son eventually came back. They kept the door open. It took some time, but the son came back. And now he's doing makeup prayers to make up for the time when he was a friend. So we can't ever despair. As long as we have Allah's command of Allah, we can't ever despair. So I will end with this one du'a. That's from the Quran. I won't recite it in Arabic. I'll just do the English translation. Oh my Lord, this is lovely. Oh my Lord, make me one who establishes regular prayer and also raised such among my offspring. Oh our Lord, and accept thou my prayer. Oh 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. We'll do Q and A.