 But I think one of the best ways to understand the challenges and the issues that teenagers go through as they change from being children to being in between child and adult is to think of our own days, even though it may be a while since we were teenagers, you will be able to relate to some of these and say, yes, this is exactly what I went through. So the first part, which is general advice on raising teenagers, one of the things you begin to notice about your child is when they go from being a child to becoming a teenager, they start being a little or not a little but a lot more aloof from their parents. So your son was a chatterbox, was always talking fast and you had to keep stopping him. You find now he's quiet and everything you ask him, his answer is a single word, just yes, no, no, yes. And he's always silent, right? And your daughter was always wanting to do things with you. Now she doesn't want to go shopping with you anymore, right? She wants to stay at home, they want to stay in their own room, they want to keep their door closed. Some of us as parents become alarmed by this. What's happening to my child, right? And we want them somehow not to become like that and to still remain the way they were. But actually it's very natural and it's in fact very important for kids to break away from their parents at this age. This emotional separation actually helps them to adjust into becoming adults later on. It may be very hard for us to accept this but it is a natural process and you need to allow that to happen. It is also a very confusing time both for the teenager and for you as a parent when you see these changes. We normally talk of terrible twos but in comparison when you just search over the internet, talk to psychologists, read books on these, you will hear that the teenage years can actually be the most difficult years because they're not just difficult for you as a parent, they're difficult for the child as well, unlike when the child is too. But there's plenty as I said we can do to nurture our teenagers and give them some guidance so that they move in the right direction. The first thing that is happening is these physical changes happening in their bodies both for male and female. These things happening in their bodies that is now signaling to them that they're now becoming adults. With this dramatic change they're confused because they're now feeling that pressure of behaving different, being an adult but they can't still because their thought process hasn't evolved as quickly. The first thing they start doing is they start becoming conscious of their peers, meaning the other teenagers around them and they want to fit in. It's not like us when we are in our 40s or 50s, we really don't care if we fit in with others. We are quite happy doing our own thing, if somebody thinks we're handsome or beautiful or doesn't think so, it doesn't matter as long as I'm comfortable. So you kind of get comfortable in your own skin as you grow older. But when you're a teenager it's very, very important for that teenager to fit in society and with peers. So there's a lot of that pressure. And one of the things they don't want to see is that I'm still a child under the shadow of my parent. So they don't want to be seen with you and that's why you find them showing this embarrassment of you being around them when they're with their friends or sitting with you at the mosque. When they're little they'll sit on your lap, they'll sit beside you. As they grow older they don't want to be seen with you. But you also want them to come to the mosque. So we're going to be talking a little bit about this. And for teenagers sometimes their peers are more important than their parents in their decision making process. Which is why their friends are very, very important. And which is why madrasa is very important. Because sometimes parents think, you know what, I can impart the religious knowledge of the madrasa myself at home. I'll give you my own example. I've got a six year old in the madrasa. I wrote the curriculum and the notes for the madrasa. So I could teach him at home whatever I put together for the madrasa. It's been improved upon, it's been edited. But I have the material. I can do this myself. I don't need to send him to the madrasa. But there is something he gets from the madrasa that I can't give him. Which is the friend circle that he builds, the peers that he builds. It doesn't matter so much now. But when he's a teenager, who is he going to play basketball with? Who is he going to hang out with? Who is she going to be going shopping with? Who is she going to share, you know, ideas with? And so on. When they're in trouble, who are they going to talk to? So it's very important that you allow them to build a healthy friendship and social circle that will become their peers who have the kind of values you want them to have. So that even if they don't take certain values from you, they take from their friends, they're still of good value. You will find that your teenagers, as they start becoming teenagers, they're trying and experimenting different things. They want to try different hairstyles. They want to dress differently. They want a different identity. And that is again because they're trying to find themselves. They're trying to build an identity for themselves. They don't want to stand out from the crowd to be embarrassed or to be laughed at, but they also don't want to disappear in the crowd. They want to be a trendsetter. They want to do something unique and different that makes them special. They thrive on compliments, on praise, on admiration, right? When you walk into the mosque, you'll just walk in anywhere and sit. When they walk in, they're very conscious. They're thinking, everybody's looking at me, when in fact nobody is, right? But they're very self-conscious. So our goal is to help our child to become a caring, independent and responsible adult, and that includes being a responsible Muslim. Now, the first advice that I can share just in general about teenagers, and this is perhaps the most important, is we need to be role models. We cannot expect very, very good children if we ourselves don't have those very, very good values and ethics and morals that we want them to have because you can fool a young child, but with teenagers, they're watching your actions more than they're listening to your words. So this is extremely critical. For example, when they hear you interacting with others, do you lie? Right? Because they know the truth. If you're telling someone something that's a lie, they have the insight perspective. If you're lying, they might not call you out on that, but you have given them a value that it's okay to lie once in a while, right? Do you cheat others? They will find out, right? Do you break your promise? Do you make a commitment to others and then you don't keep your promise? Okay. Do you swear? So you're in the car with them, you're driving, some small incident of road rage, you know, suddenly there's all these four letter words being exchanged. If you swear, you cannot expect them not to be using foul language, right? Do you pray on time? If in your home, you know, praying Salat on time is not important, you cannot lament when they're much older to say, my child doesn't want to come to the mosque, doesn't want to pray, this and that. It's easier for them to slip once they start going to university because if you give them very, very strong values, you can expect it to water down and become just strong or good values. But if you give them just good values, there is a danger of it deteriorating and watering down when they're on their own, when they get busier with university and work and life and so on, right? Sometimes little things, for example, do you as a parent have a habit when you start eating, you say Bismillahirrahmanirrahim loudly for your own self, not just, you know, I want him to hear. When you start your car, do you say Bismillahirrahmanirrahim? You know, put these little habits, introduce them while your child is younger and you will be surprised, they might not do it as a teenager, they might not do it in their 20s, but when they are in their 40s, it will come back to you. Because if you look back at yourself and think about your religious values when you are past, you know, your 40s and 50s, some of the values that you have adopted were not your parents, they were your grandparents. Your grandparents never sat down and told you do this, do that, but it was just the things you saw them doing, like you grew up seeing your grandmother always sitting on her bed with a rosary or a tasbi in her hand and just doing tasbi, right? Or you grew up just seeing your grandfather always on his prayer mat, spending some time, worshipping or going for a walk, enjoying nature, whatever it is. These are sort of memories that stay with you and you admire them even though you don't practice them, but they come out again later in life. So there are little things we can do that our children will watch and our children, our grandchildren will pick up on these values. Is attending the mosque important to us? Do we backbite at home at the dinner table? Is music played in our house, in our cars, right? Have we given our teenagers examples of being courageous? There are times in life when we have to show courage and courage is not always fighting with someone, but just doing the right thing, like for example apologizing when we're wrong or owning up to something we've done that is wrong or standing up to someone who may be trying to intimidate us or bully us. They look at what we do and they take values, especially values of courage from us. Okay, values of integrity, for example, you go to a store, they give you extra change or you forget to pay for something, you go back and give that back or pay it back, or do you say, you know what, it's just a dollar, forget it, right? Little things like that they pick up on that. The second piece of advice that I could share with regards to teenagers is don't try and fix all their problems. Give them the right tools, but let them try and fix certain things themselves. Let them go as far as they can, even if they have to struggle a little bit. It's good for them to struggle a bit because you're passing on values that they will benefit from later on. It's just like with little kids. When you have a four-year-old, a five-year-old, a three-year-old, it's very tempting to, especially when you're in a hurry, always put their jacket on for them, always tie their shoelace for them, always brush their teeth for them, right? But imagine if they're a teenager and you still have to tie their shoelace for them or brush their teeth, right? Now you're not doing a service to them, you've done a disservice to them. So as much as it might hurt you to see your child struggling, you also have to think of them one day becoming an independent adult. So let them struggle a little bit and try and fix. If they come to you with a problem before giving them a solution, sit down with them and ask them what do you think we should do about this or what do you think you want to do about this, and let them make suggestions and then guide that. So now you reverse the role where they make the decision and you are a guidance to them, a mentor to them. The other piece of advice is, this is the third, is choose your battle wisely because they're going through such turmoil within their lives and they have always this anger within them that you don't get me, you don't understand me. Don't nitpick about everything. Don't pick battles about every single thing. Your room is always dirty. This is always not right. Your fingernails are always long. This is just on and on and on. What happens when you constantly criticize them is they become deaf and then we complain that our children don't listen to us, they only want to listen from their friends or from someone outside, right? But if we don't have a habit of nitpicking and criticizing every time, then when we do that, it's a big deal. Otherwise it's just, well, it's her habit. She's always going to go on and on. So I'll hide stuff so that she doesn't even know about it, right? So pick your battles wisely. The fourth advice is, invite their friends over. It is important for you to know if you are the parent of a teenager, you have to know who your teenager's friends are. And the best way to do that is invite them over for dinner. It will be a lot of work, your teenager with a house full of teenagers, but you will get to see how they interact with each other. You will get to see, you know, what's good about it, what's bad about it. If you want to take it a step further, invite the teenagers with their parents as well because you will see how those teenagers interact with their parents as well. So there's a lot that you can take and learn about your child just by observing what values they look up to, what kind of friends they look up to, who they like to hang out with, and so on and so forth. Number five, decide on the rules and discipline in advance, which means amongst yourself as husband and wife, agree in advance what the rules are going to be. So for example, if there's going to be some consequences for your teenager doing something inappropriate, what is that consequence going to be? And then you stick to that rule. If it's, for example, a teenager who's now driving and you're going to ban them for driving for a week, or they're going to be grounded for a week, or you're going to cut their allowance or whatever it may be, agree on that in advance and if your child says it's not fair, then you're open to discussion and talk about why it's fair or not fair as a punishment, but then stick to that so that they know when you say something, you mean it. Otherwise they know your weak point and you're not taken seriously then. So a lot of times we're so eager to be friends to our parents, to our children, we forget to be parents. Your friends, yes, no doubt, but at the end of the day you are the parent and you have the final say. Now in some cases you're here, especially outside our community, parents using this line with the children to say it's my house, I'm paying the rent, so as long as you're not contributing to the rent, you have no say. That shouldn't necessarily be the reason of argument, that because you don't have money to pay rent and you need a room and I'm giving you a room, therefore I have the final say. No, the final say is because I am your parent and Islamically we're Muslims and children who come to the mother say get this totally. The respect for parents is just second to obedience to God and that in the words of Rasulullah sallallahu alayhi wa sallam, namasalli ala Muhammad wa alim Muhammad, when he was asked about parents he said, Humaa jannatak wa humaa naarak They, your father and mother, are your paradise and they are your hell. Meaning no matter what you do in life and how far you go, if your parents are pleased with you, you have secured a place in paradise. But if they are upset with you, then you have ruined your hereafter. So children get that, right, and it's enough to say I'm a parent, I'm your parent and these are the rules we live by. But of course we have to be role models, we cannot have double standards. Having said that, number 6 would be give your kids some leeway. Give them some breathing room and some independence to establish their own place in the world because as we said they're trying to find themselves and become adults. It doesn't mean that they can hang out with the wrong crowd and you turn a blind eye. It doesn't mean that you don't care who their friends are. It doesn't mean that you trust them so much they can take the car and come home at 2 a.m. and you don't care or don't know where they are. It doesn't mean that they spend hours and hours on the computer but you have no idea what they're surfing on the internet and what they're looking at. So there's a fine balance where you don't give them too much discipline but you also are not completely lax about it. And of course it's an easier said than done but it's good for us to be aware of this. The other piece of advice, number 7, is this idea of checking in. Discuss checking in with your child and let your teenager feel that my parent is always bothering me and wanting to stay in touch. That's okay. But in a subtle way they also appreciate knowing that you're there for them because sometimes we get so busy with work, so busy with life. We tend to just think as long as he's at someone's house or with someone then it doesn't matter. But develop a system where your child knows that when they're out beyond a certain period of time they need to check in. They need to call in. They need to text you. If they're with their friends and they're going to be embarrassed with you calling them then you send them a text message. They reply a text message that way it's more subtle. But you have a system where even when they're not with you you're always in touch. They've gone for a ziara or they've gone on a camp or they've gone anywhere else. Your child should always know that there's certain expectations. When I'm late I have to check in. My parent has to know where I am because they will worry. Number 8, keep an open door policy with your teenager. Meaning don't interrogate them about everything but genuinely be interested in your child's life and make sure they know that whenever they have an issue they can come talk to you. That you are their first port of call. That when they're in trouble, before they think about their friend or their teacher or uncle or aunt, you're the first person they want to come to ask for help for. And I've seen parents who have that sort of relationship and it can certainly be nurtured. In terms of showing interest to your child with your child even if they're a teenager make sure just like you ask them how was your day, how was school, we need to ask them how was madrasa or what happened at madrasa today. A lot of times it's just pick up the child from the madrasa, go home, you have homework, do your homework. But no, what happened at madrasa today? That should also be a point of conversation at the dinner table. And we need to do this with genuine interest. Sometimes when children are younger they're trying to tell us what happened in the madrasa with a lot of excitement and interest but we are so busy talking to our spouses or watching TV or checking our messages on the phone it sort of is on the side. And the child quickly picks up on this that I'm a child and my life is not of interest to my parents. So it's pay now or pay later. The more time you spend with your teenager and the more interest you show now it's an investment you put in and then it pays dividends when they're older, when they're teenagers, when they get married, when they have their own spouses they still have a bond and a connection with you where you're not just talking about the weather or you've got nothing in common to talk about. Many of us have this issue because we were raised very differently with our parents. The older generation had this thing where you're just always silent in front of your parent, always answer yes, no, do as you're told and we find as we grow older even though there's a bond, there's love there isn't a lot that we can talk about or share in common with them, isn't it? There's also not that physical interaction of we probably hug our parents on each day maybe, it'll fit twice a year maybe, right? So this generation is different and it allows us to have a much healthier and a much closer relationship and if we can nurture it we can certainly make them very good adults as they grow up. We should be able to tell our teenagers even when they seem sad or upset they're just answering there's nothing wrong or I don't feel like talking about it you should be able to say to your teenager you may not feel like talking about this right now and I know exactly how it feels because I've been through what you are going through but whenever you feel like talking about it today, tomorrow, any time you can come to me, okay? And if they know that you just need to be patient and I guarantee they will come and talk to you but don't be alarmed or panic or start drama and you know, why is he so upset? There must be something wrong I need to know right now what has happened, right? When you already come talk to me as long as they know there's someone because everyone needs to talk to someone about their problems at some point which brings me to number nine which is don't be impulsive or reactive which means skip the drama even if the drama is from your child they're yelling, they're shouting doors, right? And that will happen sometimes you as an adult, as a parent need to understand, you know not to be reactive not to get involved in the drama you need to be able to say to them we're not going to talk about this right now when you feel better, when you're ready to talk then we'll talk about it we need to be able to reprimand the behavior but not reprimand the child and this is not very easy to do and the way we do that is we avoid using a sarcastic or a demeaning or a humiliating tone especially when they're still in front of their friends if they've done something wrong and their friends are around it doesn't have to be solved right away and no matter how much you feel anger within you as a parent bite your tongue and resist the urge to say something hurtful to the child that you will forget but the child will not we have a saying from Africa that says the ex forgets but the tree never does so it's easy to forget when you say something hurtful but the person you hurt that scar stays for a long time before it heals so never say something to your child like you know, I wish you were not my child or I wish I'd never given birth to you or you are a disgrace to us or I feel ashamed of you or you are no longer my child or I wish you leave my house forever or you know, these things you may feel them sometimes but that may be normal but we need to be able to hold ourselves back and say they're not themselves they're going through a very troubled period you may not have been through this you may not have been exactly that way but every human being is different and what you do with them is exactly what they will do with their children another thing we should never do is compare our teenagers or our children with their siblings or their friends or their cousins and we tend to do this sometimes even when they're very young look at how you were behaving look at Ali, look at Hassan, look at Muhammad how he was behaving look at how you did and look at how that one was doing look at how he sits with his parents and look at how you sit in the mosque and look at how always drawing comparisons because now they themselves will always be comparing themselves to others and in their mind, my parents admire so and so more than they admire me to them, they want to be the center of the world at that point in time it's very important that we think about these things very very carefully and I've said this before in a manjulis as well that even when they grow up and start looking for their own spouses they will look for spouses who are like you your daughter will look for a husband who is like you, the father and your son will be attracted to a woman who is like his mother and that is why you will find and you can think about this in your own lives and your own experiences you will verify and testify to this you will find that sometimes you see a young girl who has everything in life she is educated, she is beautiful she has everything to look forward to but she gets attracted to someone who is what we might call a loser someone who has violent habits somebody who is going to beat her treat her with the meaning manner and you look at that case and you think why did she not have that self esteem to know that she deserved better than this but when you go further up you find her father was treating his wife or her mother like that so in her mind this is how a man treats a woman so she is attracted to that she is not consciously obviously wanting someone who will ill treat her but that happens like that if a mother is very protective and very controlling of her son he will subliminally without consciously doing this we attracted to a woman who is also very controlling because that's what he knows and expects so your children will take values from you even if they say I hate you and I wish you were not my father I wish you were not my mother and that is why we say being a role model is so important you really need to think about this that the way I behave today as a man is how my daughter is going to seek a husband and vice versa okay in the interest of time I move a little faster number 10 is show your love unconditionally your child needs to realize that no matter what they do you are never going to stop loving them it doesn't mean that you are okay with your choices your daughter might decide to stop wearing hijab it doesn't mean that you give her the impression that I'm okay with that because my love for you is unconditional but they also need to know that you have not given up on them you might not accept certain things and you might never accept that and they need to know that you are hurt and that you're not happy about it but they also need to know that if they change their mind and mend their ways you're still there for them right? one way to bond with our teenagers is to spend time with them and to show that we care so just like we say about interaction amongst ourselves as adults the same thing with teenagers when they're talking to you listen to them with utmost interest and really be genuinely interested in them and again you find this very interestingly with the older generation when we were talking to our parents they were not really interested in what we were saying because these were like kids today they might feel the opposite that when they're old and they talk to us we're not really interested in what they say but if that bond was built then there's a sense of friendship that remains and I've seen that some in cases with adult women in their 40s and 50s and their fathers are 70s and 80s and they still say my best friend is my father so it is definitely possible and it comes from what you invest when they're teenagers spend time with them, respect their feelings just like you are immediately concerned when they do something wrong and you talk about it when they do something good as well complement them don't wait for big things to complement like when they pass their final exam or when they win an award or something big but even little things when they do something and you complement the fact that they haven't given up on it or the fact that they thought of doing something that was clever it shouldn't be flattery it shouldn't be false praise but it should be there to know that you admire them and that you're proud that they are your child it is important as parents and children to make sure that we regularly have meals together I know it's a fast-paced life lunch everybody is out but there should be at least one meal in a day where there is a rule dinner time you have to be home and we have to have it together no one is sitting on the TV and having dinner while parents are on the table while this one is having in the room we're going to sit at the table, we're going to eat together dinner has to be together same thing with salat, if it's possible have a space in the house that's a prayer room and pray together things like that when things together you bond you might also on certain days when you are having some trouble and there is a cold war between you as a parent and your teenager consider doing your own things but still being in the same room and sharing the same space and suddenly one might open up and start talking because there is a bond with our children that is different from our bond with our spouses or anyone else and it heals itself just being near each other could start a conversation you can also encourage your teenager to talk to another adult if there is someone in the family that you really trust like you have a brother or a sister or an uncle or someone you could encourage them that if they need guidance or they're having a hard time talking about certain things to you and they're physically changing and becoming adults they might have questions but they're embarrassed to talk to you you can encourage them to talk to their uncle or their aunt or a cousin who is older who can help them and the motto or the policy with which we should work with our teenagers is you're not going through this alone we're going through this together and we're going to come out of it together okay we're family and we're there for each other what I've talked about listening paying close attention to what your teenager says reading between the lines in what they say paying attention to their body language sometimes the body language will tell you a lot about them a lot of times your teenager just like your spouse doesn't want you to just step in and solve the problem they just want you to listen they want you to be a sounding board and they want you to just ask a few good questions so that they can express their feelings and when they leave that conversation they feel closer to you and they feel a bit clearer about what they need to do with their own lives and this is from what I'm told particularly important for girls a lot of times for girls they might internalize this and they have a lot of emotions and feelings and it's good for them to just know they have someone they can talk to and express all their feelings I think the feelings are silly or immature or really why are they making such a big deal about this but don't downplay it as something not important to them it's very big so to you it must be big but if there is unconditional love you will ask the right questions and inshallah they will feel closer to you and they themselves will admit later in life that all that conversation we had in retrospect it wasn't such a big thing I've talked about doing things together so whether it's going grocery shopping together watching TV together going camping together even doing chores in the house together if you're doing laundry and you're sorting the clothes and you're doing it bring your teenager over don't tell them do the laundry do it together clean the backyard whatever it is involve them one very important thing we can do is volunteering together because when you volunteer together not only are you spending quality time with your teenager and bonding with them but you're passing on them a value of helping others being selfless and you're introducing them to the joy of helping others so it could be local volunteering volunteering in the madrasah we've seen it in masumin center and sun helping in the parking lot whatever it is it could be volunteering with the food bank it could be helping the homeless whatever it could also be sometimes a trip overseas you go together to wherever India, Africa Iraq, Pakistan help building a school anything but if you're doing it together you're passing on values you're enjoying the time you're spending together it's a holiday or whatever but you're also teaching them the value of volunteering and people who volunteer a lot of their time they become selfless they become more concerned about helping others and they become less concerned about their own problems and because of that because they're less I hate to use the word selfish they're more selfless it's easier for them to bear their own problems in life they're less likely to face depression or anxiety or just feel life has been unfair to me or to be materialistic or to fall into wrong ways because they're constantly concerned about helping others and when they build that image in society people know that when I have a problem this person helps so now they're going to get so many requests from people asking them for help and they're getting so much joy helping others their problems seem small and that is why I often say if you're going through a particular challenge in life find people who have had the same or more and talk to them and ask how you can help them it will help you heal whether you've lost a loved one whether you're going through a sickness or illness whatever it may be when we help others we help ourselves actually number 13 is keep a physical connection which I alluded to earlier we are always hugging and kissing our children when they're little throwing them in the air giving them piggybacks cradling them throwing them on the bed whatever it is don't stop doing that just because you might feel embarrassed or she might feel embarrassed just grab them and hug them keep that physical connection it's very very important sometimes creep into their room when they're asleep and kiss them on the cheek you'll be surprised they might be awake but they'll pretend to be asleep but they will feel this intense joy that I'm still special to my parent right tell them you love them this is something again you won't find with older generations it's very embarrassing for them but it's again something you can't just start all of a sudden but I've seen cases where the parent is craving to tell their child and the child is craving to be told or to tell the parent but they just don't have that relationship between them so don't be embarrassed to put an arm around your child or teenagers shoulder just because they're taller than you now or punch them in the shoulder or whatever it is if they ask you for something like can I have the car keys you say well it's going to cost you I need a hug first or whatever it is I think when my son is a teenager one of the things I'm going to be doing is asking him to massage my feet because I think this is something that I grew up seeing with my grandmother my grandmother used to do this if you went and sat near her she's like you're just sitting and talking be useful, massage my feet and we'd be pressing her feet for her and she'd be talking to us and telling us stories of the past while we're pressing her feet for her but I'm still here talking about her like 20 years more over so keep that physical bond because we are very social creatures and we love having that sort of remind your teenagers how special they are to you don't shower them with false compliments so that they think they're the center of the world or they become egoic but acknowledge even their small efforts and then lastly have fun together with them there should be some time about your career, your school your madrasa, your work, majlis this, that, how you dress, how you look your friends do certain things that are just fun or even silly laughing out loud don't be embarrassed to be yourself in front of them and your teenager will just keep admiring you that you have this unique ability where you have rules you have discipline there are certain things you will not compromise on such as your faith and your religion you're very strict about certain things like praying on time but you also have a side to you where you can laugh, a lot of us just become very nice and silly and friendly when we have grandkids and the parents in the middle are sometimes thinking they're so nice to my kids they were not like that to me they were so strict with me but they're spoiling my grandkids everything I do they're undoing it giving them junk food because they're not doing it with me so don't wait for grandkids do it with your kids now I am running out of time I think our time is almost up isn't it I was going to share a second part on specific to the madrasa but I will just in like a minute summarize this be conscious of the fact that when your child comes to madrasa they hear for only Quran and dinyat 40 minutes each a day, a week and that's like less than an hour and a half and in a total year the madrasa has about 28 weeks, 26 weeks so that's half a year there's 52 weeks in a year so for only half a year your child comes to madrasa and gets religious knowledge for less than 90 minutes if this was secular school they would no way be ready for a life or a career post university so Islam places the burden of teaching your children and imparting them religious values to you the parent, not to the madrasa the madrasa will not be questioned on the day of judgment we the parents will be questioned and it's very important that our children leave the madrasa they know how to recite the Quran they know what is halal and haram they know the rules of taharat and najasa they know the rules of wudu and salat so we really need to explore these when I was asked to do this workshop I asked the madrasa what are the things that are of concern to you with regards to teenagers and some of the things that I was told was issues related to wudu and salat and taharat and najasa and they're teenagers they've been here since they were 5 etiquette in talking to adults hijab indifference to homeworks and tests and communication between parents and teachers a lack of genuine interest in religion and inability to recite Quran these are some of the highlights that I got as feedback from the madrasa so it's not like whose problem is this is it the parents or is it the madrasa but as I said at the start it's our problem collectively we really need to have more of these sessions to talk about this and say how are we going to fix this so that our children are strong they're not allowed to be Muslims well grounded when they leave madrasa they can recite the Quran fluently they know the basic rules of religion they know where to go for help they're caring individuals responsible adults it can be done but there is work that needs to happen at home as well it can't just happen in 80-90 minutes once a week for half a year if our children are the most precious possession we don't want them to just succeed for 60-70 years in this temporary world we want them to succeed in the year after so that inshallah we are with them again in paradise so we really have to think about their akhet as much as we think about their secular world and their secular life so to summarize become a role model discuss religion with your children read Nahjul Balaghah he's one that Imam Ali A.S. writes to his son stop thinking of your child as your possession but think of them as an independent human being and be genuinely concerned for them emphasize courage and moderation in religion try and take your child for religious trips as well for ziyarah, umrah and so on it's very very important speak to the madrasa about how additional classes can be held for the children and if possible have a prayer room in the house and have a home library an Islamic home library where you collect Islamic books, CDs, DVDs it will grow an interest inshallah at home