 Parenting these days has shifted from when my parents were parenting. I grew up in public schools, so did the majority of my entire community. Homeschooling was not anything that existed. I think my aunt and uncle lived up here. They were part of the NCA community in the 90s when I was a kid. And my cousins were the only ones that were homeschooling at the time and we all thought they were crazy. But Alhamdulillah, the proof is in the pudding. They're amazing. They're some of the best children, adults now. They're all married with kids. Very successful in every way, Dunya and Dean. But the reason I'm saying this all is because I grew up here in this society and I can say that in the 90s and early 2000s, this society still built healthy vessels because when you have a child, you have a vessel that you fill. And you're filling that vessel with truth and goodness and kindness. And that's what my parents did and they did it, masha'Allah, with our entire community. They found a community and we had a beautiful community where it wasn't just my parents but our entire community was filling us with truth and goodness and beauty. But the problem that I see today is that we live in a time where the vessel is broken. So if you leave this society to build the vessel, if you allow the society the world we're in, it's not just America, it's the global world, it's the global culture. It's producing broken vessels and a broken vessel can't contain anything. So I see oftentimes a lot of parents struggling to fill their children, they expose their children to truth and kindness and beauty but the child can no longer carry it because the vessel itself is broken. And what do I mean by it's broken? It's built with wrong thinking, with incorrect ideas, with ideas that are, it's not, high school used to be something that was, when I was growing up, the worst thing you saw in high school was all the stuff that you still see in high school, right? Drugs, addictions, you know, other stuff. There are children in the room so I'm not going to go into details. That was all around when I was there. But wrong was wrong and right was right. Sin City in Las Vegas was Sin City. Very soon it won't be called that. The fact that it's still called that is a miracle from Allah. Insha'Allah always remains that. But wrong was wrong and right was right. And even when my friends did all these wrong actions, they knew they weren't doing something good or healthy or whatever. But now that's changed. Wrong ideas are being, our children are being trained into wrong thinking and the vessels, not just Muslim, like all human vessels, humans are no longer well adjusted. And what we, Islam is good for our akhah. But we forget that it's also really good for our dunya. Islam is not for the akhah. Islam is for your now. It's not for later. It's not for what you're going to get. It's for what you do get right now in the moment. And I never saw that as a child. I never needed to see it. But now as an adult, I see it because I see that it gave me a healthy life. It gave me a right way to think, not in a right way to be. And so really my mission with my children and all my students and really with parents that I help advise is to build the vessel. And I hope we can share some of that today. But it's building the vessel, insha'Allah. And we can build a good vessel. Okay, so Bismillah. My name is Zeeshan, officially Azbat Muqtar, father of three boys, husband to Mr. Hina here, people calling Mr. Hina, because the article has done so well. But you know, I came to this country, a child of immigrant parents. And I started living in two worlds. What my parents thought was going on in my brain, I was developing in a very different way. So if you're immigrant working here and you're raising your children, I probably have more to identify with your children than with you. And that became the way I was raised. And what I will say is that as I came into deciding to get married and deciding to have a Muslim spouse, deciding to have a Muslim home, I had to make those intentions to myself very clear. It wasn't something that I would have normally just did. And I think that what has to be realized here is that your children, if you're raising them in this world with the environment and the society around them, they can be very, very different from you. It's not just to say that, oh, you know what? I was okay. They're in my home. They're going to be okay. You know, that was what my parents did. And they did their best. And so when you make that, when I made that intentionality, I also needed to make sure that I was learning and becoming a Muslim. Because I was going to be responsible for raising Muslim children because I had a vision. So I had to have a strategy and then I had to have a plan. It's very, very intentional. And one of the things I'll understand, I think I understand with the men in the room is that we live in two parallel universes, right? We come home at five and five to 10, you know, we're Muslim family men. And then 10 o'clock, your thoughts start going towards sleeping, getting up, commuting, working, being successful, dealing with the day, coming back. So it's almost like two different lives. Your spouse with the children are in the now with the children, feeling them, seeing them, understanding what they're going through. And so when you come home, there has to be a partnership. There has to be a conscious partnership. It won't happen by itself. It can't be, oh, I'm going to be treated like a king and I come home. There's a lot going on with children. And so, you know, I came up with a few tips. You know, we've all seen PowerPoints and there's a gap. There's a gap in the way we are built and the men are built and the way men think and a gap between the way women parent. And so because of the stresses of everything, I came up with a few points I want to share with you guys, inshallah, they're beneficial. They work for me. And so I'm just here to share my experience and my personal struggles, which inshallah turned into growth. And we have children now from Mashallah that are men. They've learned what they need to learn and we need to trust them and hope for the best. So the first thing is coming home. Like I said, you come home five o'clock. There's a lot going on in your mind. And you're not really necessarily going to plug into what's going on in the home until you consciously give up what's been going on in your brain for the rest for the morning while you were at work. So manage your personal stress so that you're able to be your best when you walk in the door. I think that that's a very conscious decision that we can all make as men because we want to do that. We want to kind of like let it go. Allah what put the dunya behind you. The second one is to make sure that you unwind. You can't have stuff coming at you. Oh, this is happening. This is happening. This kid did this. We need a little bit of time to unwind to let that eight to five go. So we need that time. Communicate that. I need that. I need that 20 minutes just to chill and get that off. Sometimes if you're a gardener, you're going to want to take a shower. You're going to get that stuff off your body. Your home, one of the things you can do, the best thing you can do when you come home is think that your wife and your children, they are your oasis. This is what you're doing it for. To have beautiful spouse who cares about your children. You trust her when she's home. You trust her with the therapy of the children. And she has a keen sense on what's going on. You don't understand what another manager's team is going through. You go to that manager and say, hey, what is this team going through? You trust and you rely on that person. So they are your oasis. This is what you do it all for. The next thing you would say is don't bring the outside stress into the home. So if you want to check the bills on the way home, grab them from the mailbox, walk in the door and be stressed out with the bills. You can put them away. You can leave them in the mailbox. You could grab them on the way to work. It would probably make your commute more stressful. But it's not in the home. The second thing is the greeting. So when you come through the door, greet everybody with love. Greet everybody with love. And it shouldn't be like, oh man, dad's home. The whole vibe of this place changes. Do you think your children are going to want to call you when they move out when they're adults if they feel that way? So inshallah you can do your best to be like, hey, I love you guys. I'm here for you guys. I'm so glad I'm home. Make them look forward to you coming home and make everyone feel special. The third thing I would say is once you've unwound and you've got this greeting under your belt, you're going to be a team. There's a lot going on. There's different ages, the 13, the 7-year-old, the 2-year-old. I mean, you're managing some different ages. There's homework going on. There's some chores. What are you good at? So I tell my wife, I'm the samurai. I will chop. I will help chop because I like to wheel the knife and I think I'm good at it. So I help with the few chores. I help with the homework. But again, always with gentleness. Always making them feel like, hey, am I making this person feel small or am I helping them become big? That's really important because I remember an uncle that when I was a kid and when he came around, I felt like the most special person in the world. I really did. He just made me feel special. And I can't say that for every adult that was in my life. But you never forget those people who make you feel special. So you have to be that person. You have to be that leader, that Amir that comes in the home and man, captain's on the ship now. Things are going good here. So yeah, yeah, I'll get to it. She's giving me tips here. I'm being counseled. So come to luck. The next thing is quality time. So the amount of time you spend is really, really important. If you come home, have dinner, demand things, and then you go back on the computer, you know what the signal is for your family? It's all about the dunya. We are like, yeah, jobs are stressful. Jobs are stressful, but you have to manage communicate. Is this really what you want to do? Sometimes people have to change jobs so they can be more present with their families. I can be a manager. I can be a director. Is that five or 10% worth me not being with my family, take the director promotion? So the dunya could call me a vice president or a director. You have to make those conscious choices. Sometimes you have to make those choices because at the end of the day, the children are the most important thing. And then bathe the kids, read aloud to them, tuck them in bed. Those are the things that you can do. You can really, really make a difference. And then as I was growing, I wasn't really very knowledgeable in my religion. So my children saw me learning the religion. And I will say, well, by Allah swt, the more I learn about the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam, the better manager I became, the better father I became, the better husband I became. So learn, continue to grow in this religion. And the more you see, not just the seerah, but the shemail, how the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam was, in every single instant, he did the 100% right thing. It's probabilistically impossible. But he did it. And you can grow in that sense. And inshallah, I'll just say a couple of things. Learning the sunnah is barakah. Reinforce the prophetic example of a peaceful home. Show that Islam and your wife and your spouse and your Muslim marriage works. If your children are not seeing your marriage work and your homework, how do you expect them to be adopting this religion when they go off on their own? How is that possible? I cannot give you a bad example and expect you to take it and run with it. So inshallah, I'm going to add with three more things, inshallah. So the barakah is to try to please Allah and do things that Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala loves. Try to stay out of debt and try to adhere to the sunnah and bring the barakah in your home. Bring the halal and come into your home. Bring the barakah into your home. The metaphysical angels will multiply. Inshallah. Here's the quote that I was coached about. They won't remember what you said. They will always remember how you made them feel. The words disappear. The feelings stay. And then don't ever be a critic. Always be a gentle guide. That's the prophetic example. I'll end with that. Allahumma salli ala Sayyidina Muhammadin wa ala alihi wa sahbihi wa sallam. JazakAllah. Thank you for having me. It's a pleasure to be here. InshaAllah. Okay, these are three questions. And I think that they're kind of two in a sense. The first question is how to make children respect their parents. And part of that is also how to handle children who speak back to you rudely. You know, we live in a time where authority is being questioned and how that's translated into parenting is we don't recognize that we are an authority. Whenever a parent comes to me with a child throwing a tantrum, like a toddler, the best piece of advice I have to them is know that you are in command, right? But you can't just act like you're in command. You have to know it. You have to recognize the authority you have. And I know that's very difficult nowadays where we live in an anti-authority society and it's seeped into every part of our living. So let me give you more. This is all theoretical. So let me actually give you practical tips on how to command, respect, not demand it from your children. So it starts from a very, very young age. If you want your child to respect you, you have to start when they're one, even younger. Don't wait until they're 15 to expect respect from them. So I'm going to share kind of a list with you guys of how to do that. So about a year ago, my three-year-old was throwing not a tantrum, but he wanted to open the window. He wanted to open the window in the car. And the window was locked. And so he was crying. Open the window. Open the window. Open the window. And he was throwing a tantrum. So what my husband did, he told him, instead of saying, say please, ask nicely, don't ever put your child in a situation to disobey you. Okay? Because what you're training them, you're training them in disobedience. So instead model it. So what he did is he said, this is the tip. Model it. That's what I'll title it. What he did is he said, oh, he acted like he was my son. He says, oh, Baba in Arabic. He said this, but I'm going to translate it. He said, oh, Baba, can you open the window? And then my husband said to himself, oh, yeah, of course I can. And then he opened the window for him. Next day, same thing happened. Tantrum. Open the window. I was just so rudely crying, screaming. And my husband says, oh, Baba, can you open the window? Oh, have you? Of course I can. He opens the window for him. Next day, same thing happened. By the end of the week, my son says, oh, Baba, can you open the window? And my husband says, of course I can. So when your child is one, two, three, four, what you're doing is modeling. You don't ask them to do something. You show them how to do it. Don't tell your child what to do. Show them what to do. You have to be calm about it. And then another tip I have that follows modeling is the tip of try again. So when kids make mistakes and all humans make mistakes, instead of lecturing them, yelling at them, telling them, don't do that or do it better, if you spent time modeling it, they know what's right. They already know how to do something because you've shown them how to do it. You didn't tell them, say please. You showed them how to say please. So when they're older, we do this thing called try again. And it's magic. I think it's like the most magical parenting tip ever. And it works with all ages, all temperaments, right? It doesn't just work with a docile, respectful child. It can work with the most rebellious child. And rebellion really does start at such an age. It's a temperament thing too. But try again. So after years of modeling, it can start with something as simple as I give my child something and they grab it really fast. Instead of telling them, hey, grab that nicely. Like, don't do that. That was impolite. I just say, I give it back to them. I say, try again. That's it. No yelling, no nothing. Sometimes I don't even make icons. I'm like, oh yeah, try again. They come running down the stairs like maniacs, my boys. Come running down the stairs like maniacs and just disrupting an entire setting. And I tell them, try again. They have to walk back upstairs and walk down slowly. My daughter, my 13-year-old tells me, I asked for something. She's like, what? I don't say that. Just like in a very impolite way. I don't say, that was rude. I don't tell her that. I don't say, how could you talk to me like that? I just look at her and I say, try again. And she's like, na'am mama. She'll say in a more polite form in Arabic. But the power of try again and the power of modeling, when you model the first few years of their lives, you show them how to do things in the correct way. And then you tell them to try again. What happens is they're now following something they inherently want to do. So instead of following a command, they're following something from themselves. This is really important. You've given them power. You've empowered them. You've given them power over their actions and their decisions. So again, parenting, these things, disrespect from a teenager did not start when the hormones kicked in. It really did not. It was there from day one. It was there from day one. Because parenting is in the nuance of language. It's in the nuance of language. Parenting is in the details. It's not in the grand gestures. It's not in the lectures. It's in the small everyday moments. Something as simple as asking, you know, I was with, I was with a child earlier this week who was being quite disrespectful to his mother. And she was trying to get him, 13 years old, trying to get him to do the right thing. She went, asked him, no response. Asked him again, no response. Asked him again, no response. And my daughter witnessed this. My 10, my 11 year old witnessed this. And she says, you know, mama, like, I wasn't listening to his mom. And I said, I told her, I was like, you know, everyone has a struggle and they grow. But I told her, look. When you suggest things that are not supposed to be suggestible from when the child is two, like I don't suggest to my child to go to sleep. And what do I mean by suggesting? A lot of parents will say, oh, can you please sit down? Tell you a two year old, three year old, four year old. Can you please sit down? Can you please go to bed? Can you please put your clothes on? Can you please put your seatbelt on? Don't ask. You have authority. Tell them. Let them know what their boundaries are. Kids love, love, love boundaries. They thrive on boundaries. Don't be afraid to set boundaries for your children. And those boundaries aren't set by telling them the rules. It's by the way you ask for them to follow the rules. So you command respect. You don't tell a child, can you please put your seatbelt on? You tell a child, put your seatbelt on. Because what you're training that child to do is to have choice in what is right and wrong. And ultimately what you're training that child to do is have choice in what is right and wrong with the loss of Panathana. And the reason we speak to our children this way, if you're from an overseas background, you already have a leg up over a lot of modern parents. If you think, oh, like people who are born and raised here, oh, they know, they grew up here. They know what it's like. No, you guys have drank, you've grown up in an environment that builds healthy vessels. So it's already in your language. My father says kids don't throw tantrums. I was like, yeah, okay, Dad, like they do. You know, what can I say? He was like, I raised five kids. I have four brothers. I raised five kids. No one ever threw a tantrum. It's like, okay, Baba, but they do. I visited him last summer, my one year old. Yeah, he was one. He was like one in three months. He was throwing a tantrum. My dad just looked at him. That's it. He just looked at him and very firmly without yelling, told him to stop. This is a one year old. One year olds don't understand anything. My son stopped from that day. Anytime you need him to be quiet, you just have to make eye contact with him and tell him to stop. But what I realized is my dad was doing something he learned from his parents. So if you are an immigrant, you already have generational knowledge of how to parent, right? So lean into that. You know what authority is. You grew up with authority. Like modern parents here, like if you're my generation, you need to learn how to have authority, right? I think that's what we struggle with. It's like, oh my God, my kid won't listen to me. Yes, he will if you believe it, right? And I know I had a child that was like this. My first two are amazing. My third child, she's also amazing, but she's my humbling child. She's, I realized that, oh, like Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta'ala, like that's from Allah. This one is the one I actually have to do terbiyah too, because that was where all the pushback came. And until I believed that she'd listen to me, she never listened to me. It took me four years to get her to listen to me. And the only thing I did different was believe that she will listen to me. So lean into your authority. Do not be afraid to have authority as a parent, because what you're teaching them is how to have boundaries with Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta'ala. If your kids don't respect you, they won't respect them well, because their first relationship with authority is their relationship with you. So also have healthy authority. Don't be overbearing and authoritarian. And that's a whole other discussion, but I'm going to leave it there. One thing I would share is the Hadith of Hazat Ali, where Hazat Ali, he said that, I'm going to paraphrase, but he said, for the first seven years, play with your children. For the second seven years, teach your children. For the third seven years, be their friend. And then, inshallah, hopefully, they'll be how you hope for them to be. But that advice goes completely in line with modern-day child psychology. That zero to seven is all about just being there for them, playing with them, letting them absorb their environment, not expecting much from them, like not saying, ask me politely how to roll down the window, modeling it for them, playing with them, giving them that environment so that they can learn. Then the second seven years, seven to 14 is where you teach them. That's when you start really laying down the law, disciplining, saying that there will be repercussions that you're not going to like if you are rude to your parents. And then, after the age of 14, 14 to 21, be their friend. What that means is that, or how I understand it to mean, is that you don't come down hard on them. You actually consult with them. You give them choices in the matter. You ask for their advice. You find out how they feel about things. You keep modeling the respect you've modeled your whole life. And you continue it through the years when you're supposed to be their quote-unquote friend. And inshallah, they will respond accordingly as well. But that had these as a really good one to remember when it comes to child learning. And thank you, Amira. That was beautiful. Everything you shared right now is beautiful. We have a decent amount of questions. So inshallah. No, no, no, please take your time. But I just want to let you know that we do, we've got some pretty interesting requests. By the way, I'm taking notes. For those of you that don't know, my baby is a senior in high school. I'm still taking notes. So we're always learning. For those of you that are not taking notes, there should be a sign enough for you to take notes. Some of this is still for my own kids and this is preparation for my grandkids, inshallah. Say, inshallah. Okay. I have a very specific question for Brother Zeeshan. But I'm going to come back to that. That'll be the next one. I'm going to, I'm trying to combine some of these questions here. How much Islam, how much Islam do we need in their daily lives? Is weekend school or Sunday school in this specific case? Is Sunday school enough? And then the other question is, I know this is a loaded question. Home school or Islamic school? I don't know what to do. So the question again was, how much Islam do we need in their daily lives? Is Sunday school enough? Home school or Islamic school? I don't know what to do. Okay. I personally, this is my personal opinion. I don't think Sunday school is enough. And it's not enough if that is the only thing you're relying on to teach your children the deem. If you have an environment at home, where Sharia and Fiqh is a priority, where Allah's Panathala and the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam are talked about regularly. If the kids are going to bed, being told bedtime stories, but also having Habis told to them or are having stories from the Sida recited to them, then Sunday school can help support what you're doing at home. And it can help support it in that it shows the kids what's a priority for you. It shows the kids that there's a place where other people are coming because the deen is important to them. It's also a place for children, but hopefully to make friends. But Sunday school by itself can't be it because Islam isn't just taught in one moment of the day or in one moment of the week. Anybody who takes on anything that's important to them, whether it's music or whether it's sports or whether it's academics like going to Q-mon, they do it multiple times throughout the week. They don't do it just once a week. And I hope it's going to stick. Everything builds on what came before it. Sunday school is a noble effort. I am in awe of the parents and the teachers who put in all their time and their blood and their sweat and their tears and their energy into making it happen. I see the Sunday school parents out there directing traffic. But I also see the graffiti that kids write on walls that say I hate Sunday school or I hate coming to Sunday school because to them it's like half their weekend gets taken up or a big chunk of their weekend gets taken up and sometimes the topics are taught in a dry and boring manner. So it's really important like Zeeshan was saying earlier that the kids see that Islam works in their lives and that it's a thing of beauty, it's a thing of joy and most importantly that Islam is relevant. Islam has to be relevant to their daily lives to every moment of their lives. So Sunday school just in a vacuum one thing during the week isn't going to be enough but it's a start and inshallah every parent who is going to Sunday school and taking their kids to Sunday school will be rewarded for their intentions and inshallah it's just a door that's going to open up to even more better things inshallah. I'm going to let Amira answer about Islamic school and homeschooling. So I actually also want to talk about the first question Islam question before I get to homeschooling but I'm a Sunday school kid. I grew up public school, community, masjid Sunday school and I'll tell you this. Sunday school did not equip me for Psyche 101 in college. Sunday school did not equip me for English 101 in college where we deconstruct literature and we try to get to the heart of why things were written and how they were written. Sunday school did not equip me to go through an education system an academic institution built on secular atheism which is what the entire western education system is built on. So Sunday school is not enough. Back to the question of how much Islam, what was the question, how much Islam? Homeschool or Islamic school, I don't know what to do. No, and the one before. Oh yes, how much Islam do we need in our daily lives? Okay, so that question in and of itself is the issue because Islam isn't something you learn, it's something you live. So going back to my Sunday school experience, what did equip me? Take Psyche 101. What did equip me to take cultural anthropology without coming out of it an atheist? What equipped me for that? It was my parents' daily interactions with me, not the lectures, not the lessons, but just the daily interactions with me, teaching me Islam through living, right, through good character, through all these things. By making every moment a teachable moment, not a lectureable moment, but a teachable moment, and I'll give you an example of something that I experienced today, I was sharing it with Hannah earlier, but my kids, whenever they memorize, when they're very young, whenever they memorize a sura, they get a put-a-and gift. That's like what we celebrate. We don't do birthday gifts, we don't do those kind of gifts, but we do do put-a-and gifts. So they memorize a sura, they get a put-a-and gift. When they get older, it has to be more than just a sura, but so I took my 11-year-old and my 5-year-old to go get a put-a-and gift today. I used to go to Toys R Us, Toys R Us closed down, so I went to Target, and we're going through the aisles, right, the toy aisles. My son, my 5-year-old son's first time toy shopping. He's never toy shopped before. All his gifts are purchased on Amazon usually, so he's going through the aisles. He's going through the boy aisles, right? This is a perfect moment to teach my child gender, right, because they're going to be struggling with this when they're in public school, or even if they're not in public school, just it's what's out there right now. So he goes through the boy aisle, he goes through the first aisle, the second aisle, the third, there's about four aisles there for boys, and he wants to go through each one, so I was like, okay, let's keep going. I knew that the next aisle was the Barbie aisle, the pink aisle, and he didn't look up. He was just going, and then he walks in. I wanted him. I was like, oh, there's one more aisle, so he walks in, and he takes a huge step backward, and he's like, oh, that's so girly. I'm like, when? So I was like, okay, back to the boy aisle. And then my 11-year-old is there, who is fascinated by all the toys in the boy aisle and in the toys in the girl aisle. So she asked me, she was like, mama, why is it I like all the toys in the boy aisle and the girl aisle but he doesn't like the toys in the girl aisle. I was like, oh, this is why the profit size and all profits are men. Because I know my daughter, when she goes out there, she's going to question, when she gets out in the real world, she's going to say, why are there no female profits? This is my moment to show her why, because she's experiencing it. I was like, because as a woman, mama, as a girl, you can enjoy everything. You can see yourself in men. We have women, we have the capacity to see ourselves in men. Therefore, a ball is a toy for us, and so is a doll. Boys, and I always say, because they're XY and we're XX, so we carry that extra, we see we can relate to boys in a way boys can't relate to girls, and Allah created us that way. We're mothers, we're meant to know the boy and the female and male psyche. It's not the same. So the reason your brother couldn't even walk into that aisle is because in Islam, girl world is the private sphere, boy world, there's girl world and all world. That's what it is. I'm getting really philosophical here, but she understood that through her experience that there's a feminine and there's a masculine, but a girl can understand the masculine in a way a boy cannot and should not approach the feminine. That's why women occupy the private sector and the public sector. I mean world society, but men occupy the public sector and why this is a one-way door, not a two-way door. So in that moment, we've just hit gender ideology, we've hit feminism, we've hit patriarchy, we've hit all the things that she's going to get exposed to. That's Islam. That's what it means. That's the kind of struggle of parenting that we have here living in this society. It's about building the vessel. So I didn't fill her vessel, I built her vessel in that moment. If that makes sense, I'm kind of getting all over the place. So the answer to that question isn't how much Islam does my child need because that's just talking about what's being filled. It's constant. It never stops. It doesn't stop. It's a world view. What you're giving them is glasses to see the world through. And if you don't give them these glasses, they're going to get another pair. Everyone sees the world through something. So what you're building is these glasses, these lenses. So that's how much Islam they need. Now Sunday school does help with that, but it is nowhere near enough. It's nowhere near enough. So it's part of your just everyday life with them. It's part of the small conversation. Yeah. Again, yeah, I said, yeah. Islam isn't about the ah, it's about your dunya. It's about raising well-adjusted human beings who can recognize beauty and truth. Back to homeschooling. Time check. We've got just about 20 minutes for Isha. So go, you can in about a minute or two. I know you have a, that's a whole hour for you right there. Yeah. Homeschooling versus Islamic school versus public schooling. First of all, just Dua. Dua. Dua. Dua. Right. Alhamdulillah. Alhamdulillah. Alhamdulillah. That's all I can say right now because it's terrifying. But homeschooling. So yes. Sorry. But I am a huge proponent of homeschooling because honestly, academics matter. But okay, you guys are very lucky you live in California. If you are from an immigrant background, you live in California. There's great ways to get into college that have nothing to do with high school. Okay. My entire community quit high school in like ninth and 10th grade. We took the Chespi. We did the transfer route. We went to Berkeley, UCLA. My brother is a director at SpaceX. Okay. Managing got like so much. Mashallah. I'm not saying that because I'm saying that because he did the alternative route. We all did the alternative route. We went to public school in high school. We realized this is a joke. We left as high schoolers. We left. It's a joke. You don't need four years of high school. Go to DBC. Get your kids in the UCs. They're great programs. Homeschooling. When you put your kid out of, when you pull your kid out of the education system, there are so many opportunities here to educate your child in a different way. That lead to extremely successful, an extremely successful dunya like academics and jobs and all that. But more importantly, just well adjusted human beings. Your goal is moral education. Not academic education. That's terbiah. You are a murabbi. Right. So as your child's murabbi, Allah puts you as their murabbi. You're their shepherd. You're the shepherd of that soul as their murabbi. You have the oneness. It's an amana for you on you to protect that child and do your best to raise a well adjusted human being. I will tell you, public school is very difficult. It's not impossible. It's just you're swimming upstream. It is so much more difficult. The struggles you're going to get from public schooling outweigh sometimes the struggles that you're going to get from figuring out the academics of your child. Figuring out a child's academics is way harder than figuring out how to keep my child from committing suicide and becoming an atheist. Which battle do you want to fight? Which battle do you want to fight? And one you can win. And the other one, if you lose too much ground, it's over. And this is coming from people who were raised here and went to school here and have children who we've raised our children. So my own kids have all been homeschooled. And it's the best decision we ever made. And in fact, my kids went to public school for the initial years of their life. But as they got older, when most people would think it's time to send them to public school, we chose to take them out of public school. It's the best thing that's ever happened. Khair, can we move on? Barak Allah fi kum. Jazakum Allah khair. Brother Zeeshan. So time check. We've got about 15 minutes for Aisha. We've got more than there's one specific request for sister Hina to finish her seven points. So we'll get to that in a minute. Brother Zeeshan, you mentioned a little while ago and you said, stay out of debt. What does that have to do with raising kids? So I'm an economist. And I counsel people financially for the mosque and for the greater society, inshallah, the ummah and try to bring barakah in it. But there's two things that Allah swt uses the word war for. War. Not that he hates it, not that it's haram. One is debt. The person who signs a contract pays it. Usury. Usury. Interest. One who signs a contract, pays the debt, collects the debt, earns the debt, earns the use... Yeah, pays the interest, gains the interest as income, witnesses the contract. My chef is here, my teacher is here. And then the other war is cursing, saying bad things about Allah's awliya. So those are the two things. But the example that I will give, keep it very short, is that no one here with any sense of the physical world would try to fill a cup with water while they have a hole at the bottom of it. No one would do that. And I get people who have double master's degrees and say, you know what, help me with my investments. And I'm like, okay, I'll help you with your investments. What do you got? Oh, I got $74,500 in debt. I'm like, how do you earn baraka and income and wealth while you've got this huge hole, this huge chain dragging you down every time you want to go. So, and I'm not just talking about the physical, the money. There's also a hole in the baraka. The baraka of the money, the money, your water is running down the bottom, but also your baraka is running down the bottom. So the problems, inshallah, if you hate, if you're in, if you're in debt, just make the intention tonight. Right now, Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala, I hate what you hate. I love what you love. Help me. Give me an answer and say that to every day when you wake up and touch her. Inshallah, Allah is generous. This universe was made by. So inshallah, people are like, I don't know how to do it. Make a dua. I made a dua. I was, you know, doing stuff that I had to do. And inshallah, there was ways to do it and never, ever, ever look down on someone else. Like, oh, you're just doing that. You know, it doesn't really count. Oh, yeah. Whatever this person is doing, do it. I'll give you a hint. Most people will get a $500 a month lease on a car. That's $18,000 in three years. You don't own that asset. Buy a $9,000 car. Just buy a $9,000 car. Drive it. You're going to own it. It'll be worth $4,000 in five years. It's still an asset. I don't know what this, this is what we have to try to understand. And inshallah, the barakah will come in your family. So you hate what Allah hates and you love what Allah loves. And inshallah, my dua is for barakah for everyone. Can I close with a hadith on that question? The Prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam says, Man ahadha amwal an-nas, yuridu ad-daha, ad-dallahu anhu. Whosoever takes a loan, man ahadha amwal an-nas, whoever takes a loan from someone, yuridu ad-daha. And actually intends to pay it off. Not just minimum monthly payments. Like actually intends. Like I need to pay this off. I need to work towards paying this off. I'm going to be active in paying this off. The Nabi sallallahu alaihi wa sallam says, ad-dallahu anhu. Allah will pay it off on behalf of that individual. In other words, Allah will give you enough barakah where places you never imagine to pay your debt off. But of course, that doesn't mean that you continue to be in debt and go get a loan for the next big thing, whatever happens to be. InshaAllah. I've got two questions and I'm going to combine again both of these questions because I feel that they, well, they're two separate questions. I'm not going to. The first question is, and again, but some of you alluded to this earlier, do I need to change my social setting if it's not that they're just inclined, if my friends are not religious? And then the specific question, and this comes from younger people, bad Muslim friends versus good non-Muslim friends. Where do I draw the line? Yeah, you do have to change your social setting because a beautiful saying that I got from Sadaranya is that children listen with their eyes. Children listen with their eyes. There's a saying in English that I can't hear what you're saying because I'm too busy watching what you're doing. And who we surround ourselves by, I can't even overestimate for you the value of good friends and good influences for your children that come even from your own friendships because the type of friends that we have, that's going to tell our children, that's going to create the normal for them. What they grow up to be at home and in their family social circle. I'll give you one example. I had a friend who grew up very conservatively like I did and after she got married, her husband was not very, he wasn't religious and he moved in high society, whatever you want to call it. And so she got used to having, seeing alcohol, seeing Muslims drinking alcohol, seeing Muslim women, men, mixed dancing, the women smoking, what not. She saw all that, right? And I remember one time she said to me, Hannah, can you believe when we were kids how horrified we would have been if we had seen an auntie smoking or if we had seen an uncle drinking? Like she thought it was funny, like as if we were backwards, you know, like villager type people, like we weren't sophisticated, that we would have been so horrified. And I remember reflecting on that and saying to her, but don't you think that was beautiful that we would have been horrified by that? As children, as teenagers, to see elders doing something haram would have horrified us because that was what was our norm. Our norm was to be around parents, adults that we respected, adults who were trying to live their lives according to the rules of the Dean. And I remember she paused and she said, you know, I never thought of it that way. Like she was starting to think that the new life she had was a cool, sophisticated life and the life her parents had given her was kind of backwards and simple. And, you know, we ended up having a much deeper conversation on that. But yeah, your children, they're like sponges and whatever is around them, they're soaking it in. And then when they get squeezed, that's what comes out. I can tell you right now, Amira's husband was my youngest child's Islamic studies teacher. And he's also a very big mentor for my eldest son. I can hear things that come out of their mouths that I know they got not from Zeeshan, not from me. They got it from Amira's husband Mehdi. I know that because they are literally repeating what they've heard their teacher say. One of the biggest lessons my youngest told me he got from Islamic studies is it wasn't stories necessarily about the Prophet ﷺ or about Allah ﷺ. He said he remembered one time in class Uncle Mehdi always kept his phone off, never answered his phone because he was teaching and it was a rule. And one time his phone rang and he looked glanced at it and he said to the class, you guys, I'm sorry, that's my mother calling. And I can never ignore my mother. I have to take this call. And my youngest son told me that that was the most valuable lesson he remembers learning in Islamic studies was from his teacher giving value and importance to his mother. And Uncle Mehdi's not just my kid's Islamic studies teacher, he's also our friend. And he's a very different friend from the types of friends we used to have back in the day, back in the battle days as we call it. So, Alhamdulillah, yeah, good friends, good sohbah is a gift that just keeps on giving. And you will see the benefits in your children and children. Well, I have a rule of plus three. So an 11 year old looks up to a 14 year old. A 14 year old looks up to a 17 year old. You can do the math. And that's because you can see the adoration in their eyes. So if you surround your children, your 11 year old with a 14 year old who loves to come to the mosque, who loves teachers, who loves to play basketball here, you will inshallah that's the person that has the biggest influence on them. So surround them with the plus three that you want to model them by. So we call them young uncles. The dad can say the same thing, but the young uncle says it's like, oh man, the uncle Mehdi told me this. I was like, wow, I've been telling you for 10 years. But alhamdulillah, these are practical tips. May Allah put barakah and all that advice and what your children would grow up to be. Sorry, one thing I say about the good Muslim friend versus the bad Muslim friend. It's true. There is a young man in our community that when we talk to him about how he was raised with our children, he was good friends with our children too, but his mom and I sometimes we ask like, is there anything you wished we had done differently with you guys when you were little? He did say once that you guys were so afraid of us having non Muslim friends that I do feel that I missed out on a couple of good friendships. There were some good Christian friends I had made in school that I never could do anything with them because you, you sang about his mother, you were so worried about the influences that I would have had on me, but I wish you could have trusted me a little bit more to know that at that point in high school that I wasn't going to be that easily influenced. What I would say is every child is different and you need to know your child's temperament. Some children are followers, some children are leaders. What I always told my kids is that I'm not worried about other people having bad influence on you. I'm worried that you might not be a good influence on other people around you. So raise the standard. Don't make it about, oh, you're weak. Make it about, are you strong enough to carry other people along with you? And it doesn't mean lecturing people about Islam or proselytizing. It means about, what it means is that you're a walking advertisement for the dean, right? And reminding the kids that you are an ambassador and are you doing justice to this legacy that has been passed down to you from the Prophet Muhammad sallallahu alayhi sallam all the way through your, you know, ancestors. I'm going to add like just super quick to the friend question, a sahib sahib, right? A friend is a puller. So whatever, when you're with your friends, choose your friends that are on the same path as you and choose for your children that are on the same path as you. You can be in different state, like you can be at different places on that path. Where you are on that journey doesn't matter as much as being on the same road going to the same destination. So sometimes yes, a Muslim friend who might not be exactly where your child is, but is on that path is better than a child who's on a different path. So this is really important because it helps you not raise self-righteous children because I tell my daughters, oh, it doesn't matter where she is on that path because she might outspeed you at one point. Like she might reach the destination before you. You don't know that. Look at the Sahaba, right? And then to just the point of your social settings, I just do want to, you could choose your friends, but you can't choose your family. So everything that was shared when it comes to your friends, your best friends, because you can choose those. It's not easy. You have to put a lot of work sometimes for yourself and your children. It is not easy. Sometimes it comes easy, but a lot of times it doesn't. It's work. Don't be lazy about it. Number two, your family. Some of us don't have family that we particularly, particularly would want around our children. And yet they are our family. This is really important that you don't abandon that or cut those ties. You can draw boundaries around it, but pay it, make it into a teachable moment with your child. For some of us, we don't even have Muslim family, but they have a right to our children and our children have a right to them. So don't cut those ties. So this, this advice only applies to friendship. It does not apply to family. That's a whole other approach that you have to be gentle because children are also learning what they, what they will learn with the, if you cut the ties with your family, that lesson is worse than whatever they were going to learn with that family. So especially grandparents, especially grandparents who might feed your kids candy and let them watch TV all day. You cut, you draw boundaries with grandparents. What your child is learning is significantly worse than any chocolate they're going to eat and any programming they're going to watch. So just being mindful of that. It takes a village. It's a, I was saying earlier, it's a tragedy that only two people raise kids these days and in some cases one. It used to be an entire, not community, an entire family. And so you need to find that family. If it's not your family, find the family because you can't do it alone. If I've learned anything is you can't do it alone. Find people. And the fact that you're here is you looking. So find people. I think that I would want to add also when it comes to friendships is just to know what kind of language to use when talking to your kids. One thing that I used to say to my children is that in every friendship, in every relationship, one person is influencing the other. Every single one. So never think that I'm not being affected. Either if you're not being affected then you're affecting the other person and how are you affecting the other person? Are you bringing them closer to Allah? Are you taking them farther from Allah? And if you're not affecting them, it means you're being affected and how are you being affected? So we need to teach our kids how to look at things through the eye of discernment. We have to teach them to start thinking critically and making good choices for themselves. We can't always make their decisions for them. They are always going to be choosing their friends in life. My son is now married and his community that he's making a whole new community that he's meeting through his wife is different from the community that he grew up with and making choices of what do I want to be around? What do I not want to be around? What's important to me? But I don't get to make those choices for him. His dad doesn't. We don't get to lecture him about it. Hopefully I hope that we taught our kids how to think and then they're going to take it forward now. We're all concerned parents and for as long as the concern is there and the dua is there then inshallah Allah will assist us. When someone asks me on tips on raising kids I usually don't use the word dua because dua is like food. You feed your children, you clothe your children, you have to make dua for your children. That's something you're not even supposed to mention but I guess these days we have to do that as well. Just as we don't forget to feed and clothe our children we shouldn't forget to make dua for them and this is the most powerful thing out there but we also have to work hard and it's not easy. May Allah bless us all. Jazakum Allahu Khayran Assalamu alaikum warahmatullahi wabarakatuh