 parents welcome to this parenting webinar and had a parent with more ease and calm from a done without the burn out. I am yesterday son of parenting coach and educator serving this beautiful Muslim community and I'm so excited to be here. So many of us parents can agree that parenting is a 24 hour seven days a week job that doesn't stop including our middle on struggles. Let's be honest, our children will still need we'll still refuse to eat their breakfast, take hours to get ready in the morning as we juggle the many responsibilities of time and constantly keeping them occupied. We can find ourselves feeling emotionally triggered for our children's behavior. Quite often we end up feeling overwhelmed and frustrated by our Ramadan experiences. Especially coming out of the pandemic where there was no escape from the constant stress, misbehaviors and exhaustion of juggling so many responsibilities without extended family help and community. So I have a question for you in the month of Ramadan. Do you find yourself feeling physically spiritually or emotionally depleted at the end of your fasting day? Do you feel there's not enough time for your Ibadah for praying for reading Quran, etc? Do you find it challenging to empathize with family members who have short tempers? Or are you trying to do it all by two lists of yours? And it gets difficult to feel the Ramadan experience. Great, you're in the right place. Yes, Ramadan has incredible blessings. And but it also comes with unique challenges for us mothers. Continue. I am so excited to spend the next hour with you in this webinar. We're always sharing some some insights and tools to start shifting your parenting from overwhelm, burnout, to feeling more calm, and not having the regret or burnout a lot of parents feel during the month of Ramadan. So great. So happy to have you all here. I will cover the two keys for creating more ease and calm in your Ramadan journey. I'm Yusuf Hassan, your partner parenting, a certified parent coach and educator as a mother of four daughters for the last 23 years, homeschooling for 70 years and a trained parent coach. I've had the beautiful opportunity to work with countless families over the past decade. I've worked with over 100 plus mothers, empowering them to step into their leadership roles, learning how to manage their big emotions, and cultivate positive parenting mindset all the while modeling the prophetic way of love, mercy, and patience. I've taught from East Africa, Kenya, just in California, hosting workshops, teaching life classes as well as coaching one on one in groups. So I'm so excited here to have for all the participants a link that I'm providing at the end of the workshop. Over the years, speaking loss of parents and my own experience, parenting while fasting and fasting children can be quite challenging. I found you have a Ramadan plan and reasonable expectations. Things go a lot smoother for them and for us. That's why I'm providing you a list of 20 screen free activities proven to give your kids engaged and persons participating in Ramadan while having fun and building lifelong family memories. Insha Allah. So this is my disclaimer that this isn't a magic formula found in this webinar, guaranteeing the perfect parenting, nor are you going to understand everything you need to know about creating more calm and easy parenting. But what you will learn today are some crucial insights on effective parenting approaches, women experience mentor and learn some amazing truths truths that will help give you food for thought. So as the parents are truly appreciate that you made it to this webinar, despite your many responsibilities, give yourself the gifts of living present by turning off all distractions, phones, closing any other windows or television, really allowing yourself to gain whatever it is you intended to want to get from the webinar today. So now let's go ahead and get started. Let's remember our Islamic perspective and recognizing our children are an amana, a gift from Allah to guide and to say keep. Yes, we are responsible for filling this trust to the best of our ability. It's our duty as parents to create loving and connected relationships with our beloved children so we can guide, teach them and say keep them. Parenting is any bad that form of worship by beautifying our intentions and setting our intentions and then taking action. There's a great reward with the law out of this divine generosity. This really includes every diaper we change, every time we wake up to put our baby back to sleep, every lesson we teach patiently, every time we give our teenager the benefit of the doubt, not exploding on them and taking it personal, but setting and setting firm boundaries and giving understanding. All can be forms of a bad that with setting intentions. Also, it's always blessed us with so much influence of our children, especially in the early years. So by stepping into our leadership, more calmly, lovingly, yet firm when necessary, we can effectively parent our children. So it's getting to key number one, three mindset hacks to remove overwhelm and make the most of your Ramadan. This inner work of parenting starts with acknowledging our mindsets and our emotions. The inner work is such a beautiful part of our parenting journey as one of my parents by the teachers has said it is the opportunity that Allah gives us to refine our character in the most beautiful ways by aligning it with a prophetic model of love, mercy and patience and our interactions and so much more. So what are parenting mindsets? Quite simply put, mindsets are the thoughts and beliefs we hold about ourselves, our children and the circumstances that Allah spontaneous put us in. At every moment Allah gives us a choice as to which thought and beliefs, which thoughts and beliefs we choose so we can choose and these thoughts and beliefs drive our actions. So examples of negative unhealthy parenting mindsets would be believing that parenting is so hard during Ramadan. Believing that kids just don't listen these days or often hear, I can't manage to parent and enjoy my Ramadan experience. You can only imagine believing any of these things would affect your emotions, have you feeling sad, overwhelmed, probably resentful and then how would you behave as a result? You may not find solutions to how to manage your energy, how to create more energy within you, how to parent a little differently so your kids are able to listen better, are able to cooperate as they're expected to. So really shifting unhealthy negative parenting mindsets is the beginning of shifting our parenting approach. So the first place starts as we said is by taking back our thoughts. Allah has given us the capability of taking back our thoughts which inform our emotions and these emotions are what drives our actions. There is no compulsion and we get the opportunity to take it back at any moment because the reality is is no one is forcing us to think what we think, to believe what we believe, no one is forcing us to feel what we feel and no one's forcing us to act how we act. So for example if a parent was to believe my child never falls asleep unless I'm with her, I have to sit with her, I have to rock her to sleep, I have to sleep with her. A good place to start will be asking your question, asking yourself a question. Is it true? Is it ultimately true that my child cannot sleep without me? And is it possible at some point that she can sleep by herself? So what's key here is asking the question, questioning the beliefs, they really aren't serving us and this opens us up to new solutions to our parenting challenges. Calm and our parenting is crucial more now than ever. Having entered the bus a month or a month, we have the opportunity to reset ourselves on so many levels spiritually, mentally, emotionally, physically and provide a different experience of being together as a family based on cultivating more calm and more peace. So how many times have you thought as a parent if my child would just behave and they would just listen, I could keep my cool as a parent. My child would just listen, I could keep my cool as a parent. In reality, managing our emotions is what makes us peaceful as parents. When a child feels to do what we expect them to do, we often lose our cool and become angry and frustrated whether they spilt the milk, ran into the street or hit their sibling. By questioning the belief and reframing your thoughts, you can better manage your emotions and therefore your behavior. This encourages us to instead focus on working together when we're calm, to find a solution instead of being reactionary and getting angry or just got consequences in the heat of the moment. As I said, we do have a choice however difficult it may be in the moment. So good news, we have three simple mindsets to create more ease and calm. So the reality is that every day we're given this opportunity to make new choices by Allah when we're taking responsibility for our mindsets and emotions that drive our parenting actions and we can then show it more calmly and effectively in our parenting and really feel good about the choices and the approach we take. Mindset half of the one, go easy on yourself because we all know perfection is for all of us once out of love. There is no perfect Ramadan plan, there's no perfect experience. So go an easy on yourself means showing yourself some empathy. Wherever you are in your current phase of life or season as a parent, you're juggling, you're juggling a lot of different roles. So be easy on yourself, not hard. Go easy on yourself means striving, striving to your best and trusting. Trusting your best is all Allah expects of you. So whatever your capacity is, whatever amount of you bad that you can do during the Ramadan, while parenting and all your roles is all that is expected of you. Lastly, go and easy on yourself is accepting your, you are exactly where you're supposed to be in your journey. Wherever Allah has placed you is just right and perfect for you. Whether you're a mom with a newborn nursing, whether you're a mother who has toddlers and elementary school children, whether you're a mom who has testing teenagers. We're in different places on our journey. We have to bring capacities in different forms that we bother that we're able to take on and strive to fulfill. By taking this pressure off of ourselves, we'll feel less regret about needing to do more, especially in the month of Ramadan. But then we can start tasting the sweetness of those moments of connection with Allah throughout the month of Ramadan. Mind said hack number two, get curious not furious. When we approach our children in a furious state, it causes harm to the relationship because they are confused by all our upsetting emotions and they can't hear the lesson and when we're in that state there really is no lesson learned. What we can do is reframe the situation because we do have a choice. A choice either to allow our emotions to hijack us, our emotions, whether it's anger, frustration, disappointment, and explode these emotions onto our children or we can take a pause, give ourselves permission not to respond to the moment. It can start with taking a deep breath, doing some thick good, reminding ourselves not an emergency, and the next step would be getting curious about what's really going on for ourselves in this moment. Here are three ways we can check in with ourselves. First we can ask ourselves what am I feeling and being honest with ourselves. Our feelings are a wonderful sign. They're a wonderful indicator to get us to knowing what we're thinking about what's happening. So we're feeling connected to what am I thinking? What am I thinking about myself? What am I thinking about my child? What am I thinking about circumstances? Lastly, what do I need? What do I need for myself? These simple reflections can dramatically make the difference. So you can shift from a furious state to a more calm state. It's more effective and a loving approach in your parenting, really more aligned with the prophetic way of showing gentleness with ourselves and with others. I myself, I myself haven't always remained calm in my last 23 years of parenting. Like the time it took 20 minutes to find my daughter who was hiding behind her dresser because she was still in one of her school that day. Oh yeah, in the moment I was furious, even though I can laugh about it now. What I've noticed is that it is when, what I've noticed that it's gotten easier. It's gotten easier when I show myself my empathy. In that moment I could have been asking myself, why do I feel so much pressure? Why am I so upset with her? What do I feel as if she's not listening? What does that mean? And if I tended to my own need for that moment to reassure myself that it was going to be okay first, it really helped. And these are the small shifts over time that can have a big positive impact on your parenting journey. It's really about catching yourself just one time and creating this new inner habit. And with the last help, as many moms I work with, this can happen to you too. So next time you feel the anger bubbling while your parenting, I invite you instead to take the five minutes to get curious, not furious. Mine said hack number three. Lead by what you do, not by what you say. We want, if we want to have more calm and ease and to reduce the exhaustion of parenting that's common, it starts with us modeling ease and calm in our interactions with our beloved kids. And yes, so starts with no more nagging, yelling, or shaming our children. I recommend instead when dealing with our children's upsetting behavior, taking that pause, hitting your pause button, putting the space between you and your baby emotions, and how you respond to your child. As parents we have a prerogative, we can always circle back around, we're feeling more calm and in the driver's seat. Then we can discipline more effectively. By pausing and not reacting, we're modeling beautifully good character. How they themselves can respond in those difficult moments, to life's frustrations, disappointment, and anger. Our modeling is so important and precious to our kids. Secondly, by less directing, correcting, ordering our kids around, basically helicopter parenting, we can shift our focus to what our plan is, it is we made, and those expectations we have for our kids, and helping them with their routines, and if need be, giving them consequences when necessary. This really reduces the main source of a lot of parenting exhaustion. We can take these steps to create so much more sequela, peace in our home environment. So let's go ahead and get into key number two. How do we encourage our children to fast and actively participate in the month when we're done, while having fun and building long life memories? Our kids need our support when fasting on all levels, spiritually, emotionally, physically, in turn we'll discuss four ways to support and encourage our children. It starts with acknowledging acknowledging that our children are young and as that as so they are not required to fast and treating it more as a training time, or training them, helping them develop the habit, develop the behavior of fasting, so perhaps for a five-year-old that may be fasting from lunch to snack time, and then from snack time to iftar, or perhaps for older kids, maybe eight or nine or ten having them fast, and then if something comes up where they're getting a headache, or they need to take a little medicine for a condition they have, allowing them to have something small and taking care of their need, and then reminding them that they can reset their intention, and then they can break fast with everyone else later, which really does build a certain amount of confidence and positivity through culture our kids are treating this as a training, a training when they go into adulthood and then they're required to fast. So second here is organizing a schedule. The more you have a plan to occupy, the easier things go. Having a framework for your day, it may be a loose framework, it needs to have flexibility because it's the month of Ramadan, things go a lot easier if the kids know what to expect. Next, knowing your child, each of your children are different, some of your kids may require more sleep, even more food, fluids, or drinking when they're fasting, so being able to help set them up for success and helping them take care of those needs that they have particular to them. Last is praise their efforts. When our children are fasting, we should never, never ever criticize or show disappointment, they just can't maintain their fast, but the opposite should be happening, we should be acknowledging their children and they're learning and they're doing the best of their capacity and we are so, so, so incredibly happy and proud for them to gain Allah's pleasure, because it's counted, it's counted for them as children, which is such a blessing from Allah. So now we're going to get into three steps to support our kids, without having to nag, yell, or shame them. So first step is stepping into your leadership by setting up clear expectations, expectations, routines, and schedules during the month of Ramadan, and enforcing them and leading them by your example. So if you're minimizing screen time for them, then it's important for you to minimize your own screen time and you do use that time to bless your child with more of your full presence more often, by providing our children loving connections, unlock the positive interactions throughout the day, not all day, it's just doses sprinkled throughout. We're providing these positive loving interactions that kids so thrive on, as was the way of our beloved Prophet Muhammad, so Allahumma ne'ayhe wa sallam, he showed love for true and everything he did, therefore he was able to open up their hearts for his beautiful guidance. It's quite similar with us, more attention we give our kids in little ways throughout the day, then more cooperative they are. Our beloved Prophet Muhammad, so Allahumma ne'ayhe wa sallam, was the most realized in all of the five love languages, words of affirmation, acts of service, gift giving, quality time, and physical touch, are the five love languages that our kids all benefit from. So now it's time if one feels there's some disconnection with any of their children. Disconnection shows up and perhaps us not have an understanding between us and our children, perhaps an unwillingness for them on their part to do what they're told, or just straight out resistance to your guidance. Those are all signs of disconnection. However, Ramadan is a beautiful opportunity to connect with your kids for the sake of Allah, yourself, and your family. So step two here is having a Ramadan plan. Parents don't have a plan, it makes it much harder to guide and teach our kids, teaching life lessons, Ramadan in particular, any life skills, characteristics, and so much more. Daily Ramadan routines and schedules including includes things such as wake-up times, chore times, Ibadah time, what they can do on their free time and when it is. We don't have some sort of framework for them to follow. We can easily resort to click fixes like allowing them lots of screen time, which doesn't really lead to effective parenting because they're not involved or connected to the family or us, but it also prevents them from having the opportunity to enjoy positive family interactions as they fast in the month of Ramadan. And this is where the memories are created and those little moments and exchanges and jokes. This is where the feeling of joy and happiness, excitement, peace, and so much more happens. Ramadan can be a time to jump start these loving and peaceful relationships with our family. So lastly here we're talking about providing alternatives to step three. Part of having Ramadan plan is providing activities that will really enhance our children with that experience. Yes, moving away from screens means doing something else. And as I said earlier, I'm providing a handout called the 21 screen free ideas for kids during the month of Ramadan. It's an amazing list of so many simple things that can be done that don't require buying things and require lots of hours. I'm going to go ahead and share a few things on the list. The first section here is independent and quiet time activities that you can plan ahead. It's important for the kids to have downtime to rest their bodies at some point during that fasting day. So having them read something whether it's an Islamic book or something appropriate for them to read is a good way for them to engage themselves in some entertainment and some fun. They can listen to audiobooks. They could sit quietly and do some drawing or some coloring or quiet toys. I remember my daughter's really enjoying up until a certain age Legos. All of this can be really enjoyable and something they can do quietly. They give their body a rest and they'll also get you a break. So planning ahead that sort of thing. Then there's also you can have them do fasting crafts that encourages their creativity in Ramadan. So whether they make a menu for the family for Iftod would be one one fun crafty thing to do. Another one we're making in Ramadan placements for do our cards to post. And that's a wonderful way of remembering making a do our card decorating it and posting it. All of those things help them. InshaAllah be able to participate. Next we have family entertainment. It's something lighthearted as a family and fun. Nothing perfect here. We're just talking about having some lighthearted fun. I do recall when I was growing up that as a family we would create little poems to share at the dinner table or we would have these jokes for you to tell or we could come up with a short play just for each other as a family. So it was very very lighthearted and very informal. You could also have the kids play card games or board games in a fun lighthearted way so they could enjoy each other. Another great way would get them involved would encourage their participation in meal preparation and serving. They could set the table. They could decorate the table. They could help prepare the meal. They could help wash the dishes. All these are wonderful contributions and knowing they're getting a reward for it gets them motivated, gets them involved as a family. Of course another really important one would be Ramadan inspired activities for family bonding. You could be reciting Qur'an or doing thicket together, reading a lot of hadith and discussing how to implement it, making a family list of things we're grateful for and thinking a lot into our there's so many wonderful things you can do as a family, daily or weekly that really will enhance Ramadan experience and create traditions. Last but not least outdoor time is essential getting our kids moving off the screen and out the door doing energy busting activities because they have energy. They're kids. They're spike writing, taking a nature walk, jump roping, or even delivering a meal or a gift to a family friend or neighbor. There's so much one can do in this blessed Ramadan that it can be fun, they can be engaging. It doesn't require a lot from us as parents. So thank you so much for saying until the end. We'll come to the end of the webinar where we focus on resetting and implementing a neurobiased mindset which will really allow you to change your perspective and therefore support you in changing your actions for the better. It's been such a pleasure being here with you in this webinar and I so appreciate you attending and investing in your precious time and efforts towards improving your parenting with Nila. So to access this gift just use the link provided on the screen for the checklist and you can post it on your refrigerator for easier reference or you can use it to plan your daily activities during this blessed month. Just use the bit.ly link provided there. InshaAllah it's my hope for you that the blessed month will enable you to become closer to Allah and receive his immense rewards even if you're parenting your children. Have a blessed Ramadan and may Allah be with you.