 My name is Hossai Majeddi and I'm here a community member here at MCC. I'm very honored to be with all of you. This is our second panel with this exact same format where we are trying to bridge the divide, the generational divide and also the cultural divide between the youth and the adults. Everybody on this panel with me, all my co-panelists, we are in the service of this community and for years we have been on the receiving end of a lot of private conversations between parents and teens where there's definitely a conflict and they don't know how to navigate those conversations. So they come to us for our advice. So we have decided why not actually bring everybody together and try to have a conversation where everybody can benefit, inshallah. So with that I'd like to ask my co-panelists to introduce themselves so that you can get to know them a little bit more, inshallah. So I'll start with my right and if the brothers here can begin, just say a few words about who you are, what you do and why you're here. Salamu alaykum. Nice to see you everyone. My name is Azmat Muhtar. Everyone knows me as Isshan. I live in San Ramon. I have three boys. My wife is on the panel. We were involved in the Ilm tree homeschooling co-op and learned a lot of things about parenting and actively tried to do the best we could there. And the one thing I would say about myself is that I grew up in the United States in New York, California, moved around to Saudi Arabia and a lot of my needs weren't met when I was younger which became problematic later on. And so I feel like that experience helps me relate to youth and I like spending a lot of time with youth. And so that's why I pick up here. Zaklacha. Asalaamu alaykum wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuh. My name is Aaron, aka Harun Sellers. I converted to Islam in 1994 and since then Hamdulah I've been or striving to be a committed husband to my wife, committed father to my daughters. And I'm currently the audio visual manager at Zaituna College. Some of my interests outside of work are photography, videography, building Lego Star Wars sets, Star Wars cosplay and lots of other fun things. I'm here because I love Islam. I'm here because I love the Muslims. I'm here because I love Muslim youth. And I'm very excited to be in a gathering of parents especially because I think we have a lot to benefit from each other, inshallah. Asalaamu alaykum. My name is Suzan Derani. I am a high school teacher by profession. I've been working with the youth for about a decade, actually a couple decades. And I'm also a Quran teacher and I have been homeschooling my kids. I'm very excited to be here and to work with the youth, inshallah. I love working with teenagers. It's actually one of my favorite things to do. Asalaamu alaykum. My name is Hina Khan Mukhtar and I am the mother of three young men, wife of Zeeshan Mukhtar. My sons, our sons are 22, 20 and 15 years old, inshallah. I've been teaching middle school and high school students since the mid-1990s. And I also write some articles related to the topic of parenting for seekers' guidance. Asalaamu alaykum. My name is Asaat Arsine. I am married and have three children, ages ranging from nine to almost 16. Also with brother Zeeshan and sister Hina at the Ilm Tree Co-op and been active in the community for a number of years in different capacities. Sometimes working with youth, sometimes working with adults, mostly in education, but excited to be here with you all tonight, inshallah. Alhamdulillah. Jazakullah. I would like to now ask our volunteers to please come up. They're going to distribute surveys for the teens as well as index cards for the adults. So in... All right. Asalaamu alaykum everybody, again. So we've got some questions up here, but before we dive into the individual questions, we thought it would be a good idea to maybe just go over some general principles. With some of the surveys that came in, I was skimming through them and looking at what were some of the questions that young people were asking. And a few that caught my eye that I think maybe would be a good idea to start off addressing is more than a couple of kids talked about how they feel like they're very tightly controlled by their parents or they feel that they don't have any freedom or they feel like their parents don't listen to them and they feel that they're not heard. And then there's, on the flip side, there are parents saying, my kid doesn't talk to me. I don't know what's going on in his or her life and how do I get my children to open up. So before there can be any kind of success in any relationship, it's really important that there be trust and that there be vulnerability and there be open communication. And as parents, it's going to be crucial that we learn how to set ourselves up for success so that there can be trust and vulnerability and open communication. And one of the things that I know I found very helpful in our family and some of my friends have been implementing for a number of years and I've seen success in their family as well is setting up a weekly family meeting where there's a set time in the week where the parents get together with the kids and they're not allowed any distractions. People aren't bringing their phones and their laptops to their meeting. They're not allowing the house phone to interrupt them or other social activities or friends. It's a dedicated time that the kids have on their calendar and that they know that from this time to this time, on this day, I have to meet with my parents and my siblings and I can't opt out of it. And different families had different ways of conducting these family meetings. I know one of my friends, their family members took turns leading the meeting and then in other families it was parent directed but every family should figure out for themselves what's going to work best for them. But the point is over time to create an environment where kids know that they're going to have an opportunity to talk about what's going on in their lives and parents are going to have an opportunity to talk about any concerns they have or positive feedback that they want to give. It's going to take time to build that trust and vulnerability. It doesn't happen overnight. But it's worth the investment. If you do it week after week, month after month, year after year, you'll be surprised at what people are willing to share over time. I know of a father who met with his daughter for brunch since she was like five years old, every Friday they would go out for brunch. And when she was younger they didn't have anything super exciting to discuss. Maybe it was even boring for the dad. But now that the daughter is older and she's college age, she's talking to him about a lot of real life issues and getting his feedback on things that are important to her. And I don't know if any advice you have, Dr. Asif, about open communication. Yeah. Salamu alaykum. Bismillahirrahmanirrahim, alhamdulillahirrahmanirrahim. Allahumma salli ala Sayyidina Muhammad wa ala alaihi wa sallam. Before I add on to that, I'd actually first like to congratulate all of you for being here. And I think it is very important. It's a show of your dedication to your children. And it's also a reminder that we all are struggling with these challenges. I don't know of a parent of a teenager who feels like, oh, this is easy and I don't know why other people have problems. And it's always a challenge. And it's something that we face together as a community. So may Allah's print out a reward you all and accept it as an effort from you all and bless your parenthood with Tufiq and ease, insha'Allah. I would add on to Sister Hanna's comments, maybe just a little bit, which is to reflect on the Islamic teachings of the different phases of childhood, of parenthood, I should say, perhaps. Where in some narrations attributed to the Prophet, so I send them and some to Sayyidina Ali. But the principle is the same nonetheless, which is to play with them for the first seven years and then to discipline them for the second seven years and then to befriend them for the third set of seven years. So pretty much after 14 lunar years, which is probably age of 13, interestingly, right? Thereabouts, the relationship should really change. And I think it is important, Sister Hanna used the term being vulnerable and open communication. These are aspects of friendships. These are aspects, even if there is, you know, some of my closest friends are older than me. And I treat them with a certain kind of respect that I don't treat somebody my own age, but it's still a friendship. I can share things with them. I can be open with them. I can be myself with them. And even if they will correct me or advise me, it's going to be in a very different spirit than a position of authority sort of scolding me. So I think the first thing to consider is maybe framing the entire relationship, going from a much more vertical to somewhat more horizontal. Of course, it still should entail respect and adept towards the parent, but especially in our society here, I think that's an important facet to include. And that way when you do have something like a family meeting, the likelihood of a child or a teenager, no longer a child, a young man or a woman, you know, one of the things I grew up with was my parents' generation always saying, you know what sahaba we're doing at your age, people are leading armies at your age, but I want you home by six o'clock, right? So we want both sides of that, right? But it comes with both sides. So they are young men and women and we have to start to view them as young men and women, especially in a society that keeps trying to keep them as children on one level, that really fights a type of maturity and a type of responsibility for your own actions. And we can maybe get into that, inshallah, a bit later. But I think that when you realize that this is difficult for everyone and that there aren't really clear answers and that this is a struggle and a process, you will look less for solutions, right? There's a difference between a solution and a treatment. If I give you a math problem, there's a very finite amount of time, you'll get to the solution. Or if I say the microphone is broken up front, there's a wire that's broken, there's a solution. You can fix it. It's a problem and it has a solution. But when you think of things as diseases and treatments, you start to realize you don't take medicine and you feel better immediately. It's a process of healing and it's a process of growth. So whatever struggles we may have, we have to also bring along with it, I think the patience, to see that whatever changes we make, that it will take time and the relationship will have to grow with it. And so we shouldn't approach some of these as problems that require solutions. How, what's the solution for my child doing X? That may not be the best way to think of the question. And perhaps something more of how do I start to get my child to become more of Y and you'll start to see it a bit more gradually. We'll, we'll, I don't turn it back to you. So when Dr. Asa just mentioned about how vulnerability and trust is there are also elements of a friendship that just reminded me of a really fascinating article I just read recently about what it is that really makes a friendship. It's also a TED talk and it was really interesting. They, these experts broke it down and they said that a friendship is like a pyramid, a triangle and there's three sides to it and you need all three sides in order to have a friendship. And when I saw that pyramid, I reflected and realized why some of my friendships have really thrived, Masha'Allah, and why some friendships have floundered despite my best efforts. And the same three sides can be brought to your relationship with your children as well. So the three sides to the friendship, the bottom, they said the base of the relationship has to be positivity. So it has to be a positive interaction where somebody feels that they're seen, they feel that they're heard, they feel that it's a positive interaction, they feel that they're not constantly being criticized. It's not constant downer, not constant doom and gloom, depression, making each other feel better. So that's, so if you look at your friendships that are probably the most successful, you realize that there's a lot of positivity involved in your interactions. And then the other two sides of the triangle were, so positivity is the base, the other side is vulnerability, so that you have to be willing to share of yourself and talk about things you've been through and that you've grown from and then also be willing to hear another person share their struggles. And then the third side was consistency, so that you are actually seeing each other on a regular basis or making an effort to get together, communicate, talk on the phone, whatever it is. So that's where the family meeting can come into play because especially as our kids are becoming teenagers and going into the college age, what I've been surprised by the most is really how busy everybody's schedules are, especially here in the West. Everyone's running in different directions, we're always in the car. And we have to actually schedule time to get together and make sure that we're checking in with one another. And in our family meetings originally when we started having them, it was easy to start out those family meetings with just checklists of things that need to be taken care of and chores that need to be done, but that can take away from a little bit of the positivity, right? So it's also going to be important to validate one another in those meetings. Okay, so I think maybe we'll start jumping into some of the questions. Do you have one you wanna address? So this is one I think that particularly parents of teenage boys may relate to, but also teenage girls. And this is a question that says, salamu alaikum, how to stop a teenager? Again, that's a very solution-oriented, right? How to stop, but I understand. I have that impulse as well, but let's phrase it as how do you help a teenager reduce playing games and on their cell phone all the time? So the problem that we're recognizing that needs help is that teenagers are on their devices or playing video games all the time. So before I try to weigh in on that, I have a disclaimer to make. Sometimes when you come to listen to a panel, you might assume that the person speaking is either an authority or has already been successful on that. These are things that I'm struggling with as a parent. So this is, we're all sort of working through this together. I have teenagers that I have these very same conversations with. A few things that I think are helpful is one is to also begin with a degree of sympathy for your teenager, that if you are aware of how often we as adults can get sucked away, right? That you have to sympathize with how addictive these devices are to begin with and to not see it as something that they may be doing intentionally or treat them in a way in which they should be so easy for them to resist. The second thing I would say is it is important to have very open conversations with your children about the fact that after you sympathize and say, I understand these games are fun. I understand these games are addicting. I understand you need to stay in touch with your friends. But education is also useful. And to sit there and spend time with them, my son and I, I might get in trouble for some of these statements, but my son and I, we read an article together about how Silicon Valley execs have called these devices digital heroin because of the degree of addiction and the dopamine release that's attained when you get a notification or a dean. So much so that one of these Facebook execs, he told his secretary, he gave her the password to his phone, the administrative thing, and said, if you allow me to download a social media app, I will fire you because he didn't trust himself. If you allow me, I will fire you. You have to make sure I never download this. When you have these conversations with your teenagers, even if you allow them to have some degree of access, just so they are aware of the degree of danger, sometimes we let them have desserts, right? But we tell them you can have one, but if you have five here, you're gonna have these problems as a result. So discussing with them that you're going to be reasonable and expect some degree given the fact that they're teenagers and they're surrounded, unfortunately, by other teenagers, right? That's the main problem. And because of that, that you want to be understanding but also start to set gradual guidelines for decreasing. So you say, okay, how about this? Let's go, almost all phones will have, I'm sorry, almost all phones will have a way to know how much time has been spent on the phone, right? So you say, okay, let's just look at your use for the last week without criticizing. You're not gonna say, oh my God, I can't believe this three hours, right? You just wanna assess it. You're gonna be like a personal trainer, somebody comes in and they're at a certain weight or they're at a certain speed when they're running. You're just gonna say, hey, let's see how fast you run a mile. That's gonna be your starting point. Let's start setting some goals. Or do you agree that it's a problem to be on your phone that much? Yes, when they're not on their phone and they're away from it for a while? If you have a reasonable conversation, teenager, you're right, I shouldn't be on it so much. Okay, so let's start setting goals. And if you work to make gradual progress, you can make progress. And I would also say the other thing, this is just my own personal anecdote is, nagging is a way to bring the opposite effect of what you're nagging for for a teenager. So you have to be very careful about how you communicate because as they're asserting their independence, they feel like they're young men and women and they should be, they want a degree of autonomy to treat them like that your just simple word or command should alter their behavior. Even if they listen to you in that moment, they will start to develop a resistance in their mind to this very thing that they should be able to regulate this for themselves. Right? So one thing I would say is to have conversations, to help talk them through this and to work on realistic goals. And I'll turn it over to Sister Hennep. She has anything to add. One of the other questions wasn't just about video games, but it was also about using cell phones and being on your phone constantly. One of the things that we've found to be really helpful is not, just one of the rules in our home has always been that the cell phones aren't used in the privacy of the bedrooms. And so they're only used out in public. So in our loft or in our family room, in our living room. And recently one of my son's friends has come to start living with us. And so before he started living with us, my husband and I sat down and kind of went over with each other like what are gonna be our expectations? What are gonna be our rules? Because this is a young man who's, Masha'Allah, 18 years old, so he's a young adult. But at the same time, there's a potential to influence the family culture and what's going on with everybody in the home. And so we only came up with two things. And one was that we were gonna request that cell phones are not used in the privacy of the bedroom or laptops. And that they're only used out in public. And in order to make even a private phone call, can go outside or we'll give you privacy out in the living room, but not in the bedroom. And he agreed to that, Alhamdulillah. But even he's noticed that it's so healthy to not have the cell phone in your bedroom because the tendency to wanna scroll for hours on end to check it first thing in the morning, to be on it late at night, to waste a lot of time on it is reduced significantly when you're out in public. And you've got other people around you who are gonna want your attention, or you're gonna wanna make conversation with. So video games is not something we actually have that much experience with in our home, but cell phones is definitely, I think, something that everybody, I think every family struggles with it, trying to figure out how to limit it, how to deal with it. And I think personally that having that one rule that cell phones are not used in the privacy of the bedroom can really make or break the experience. Salaamu alaikum everybody. Handed up, please forgive me for not being here. Earlier I missed, I'm sure, some very fruitful discussion. I was actually looking over a lot of these survey results that we have and the questions. There was an area for the teens to provide their specific questions. So this is actually coming from the teens at tonight's event. And some of the questions really had to do a lot with being allowed to hang out with friends. So some, you know, teens are really worried about their parents maybe being a little too overprotective and controlling when it comes to their social life. And so that's something that in my own personal experience I have had this probably right up there with devices. It's one of the biggest concerns coming from the teens. And there seems to be again, maybe again a generational or cultural divide there about how much is too much, right? And what groups of people are my teens allowed to socialize for example between genders, right? I have had to definitely have that discussion with some families where the girls have because they're classmates, they grow up maybe sometimes with boys from a very young age in the same school environment. And they form these friendships with them that they think it should be perfectly fine and normal by the time they reach the high school years to hang out in a large group setting with those very same kids or same boys. So that obviously poses a problem because as we all know, when children come of age and they're actually more responsible and they become adults in Islam through adolescence and puberty, that shouldn't happen and actually we should start separating them more. So how do we navigate this particular issue because it's everywhere, everywhere they look, this is very normal in the society around us. And it's becoming more normal even amongst American Muslim teens where they feel that these things are not a big issue. So that's something that maybe our panelists because they have the experience. My children are still young. I have 10 and seven years. I'm just, I'm reflecting on what's been shared with me but I think we can also maybe turn to our panelists because they do have older kids to ask maybe some advice or tips on how do you have that discussion in terms of gender mixing and friendships with the opposite sex? That's a heavy one. I didn't actually come mentally prepared to discuss that but it's an important topic. I need a moment to think about this. So when, yeah, please. Yeah, I don't have a response but I'm gonna give sister Hinda some time and maybe just set up some basic principles that I think are very useful for this topic and topics similar to that become more and more serious. We're not talking about phone use and video games. We're talking about things that tend to have greater consequences. There, you know, something that some should you have said that I have found very useful is they said, make sure that you develop a relationship with your children that when something happens the first person they think of to call is you. Not that they're running away from you. How, oh man, I can't, my parents can't find out about this, right? But they should feel so safe even if they know that you would disapprove. They would know that their first impulse should be to call you because your first reaction will be to help and to guide and to love, right? That's not a very easy thing to do. It's a very high ideal, I think, right? But that should be a goal. The second is we should strive to have relationships with our teenagers in which, although they may still have shame with us, we don't force them to start to live a secret life where if we set a standard that becomes so difficult for them to fulfill, one of the challenges about that is you can, it's very common for Muslim kids, you hear this more times than you care to admit that they live a double life. They just start to hide things from their parents. And I don't mean just out of shame that they won't mention things, but they will, they literally will have an entirely, like they'll live a double life and that becomes very dangerous because then a parent has no ability to guide, to teach, to advise, any of those processes, right? So even if it's something you disapprove of, it may be good to develop a ground rule to say, you can talk to me about anything. Even if I disapprove of it, you can come to me, we can discuss it, I can advise you, but I'll share with you my disappointment, but you're safe from that. Don't make the first thing you think about, my parents are gonna kill me. So the first one is make sure that they flee to you and not from you when they're in trouble. And the second is try to keep them in a way where they can be open about their challenges, even open about the things that you made disapprove of so that you don't push them to the point of hiding and going underground and living a double life. Hopefully that gave him some time to answer the actual question. So I guess the reason I'm hesitating before answering is because I am trying to be mindful of the fact that my sons are in this community and anything that I share about how we do things in our life, it's kind of putting their business out there. And so I wanna be respectful of that. So I was just, while Dr. Esso was speaking, I was thinking about, okay, what could I share that maybe they wouldn't mind me blasting out all over MCC's videos. So I remember when my kids were little, and I'm not saying this as if we're the role models or the examples for everyone to follow. I'm just talking about what our experience has been as far as our young men growing up now into the early 20s and the teens of interacting with the opposite gender. So when they were little, I remember my husband once saying that, you know, Hanna, I want our house to be the house where all the kids wanna hang out. This is where our kids wanna bring their friends home to. And Alhamdulillah, his, I think, dream came true in that a lot of our social life is occupied with our kids' friends coming over. And with having homeschooled our sons up until eighth grade, for me it was very important that I didn't want my boys to be socially awkward and to not know how to speak to the opposite gender, but to also keep in mind what the rules of the religion are, what the son of the prophet, sallallahu alayhi sallam, is. So to that end, I personally and my husband, also we really like our kids' friends, masha'Allah, and there are young women in the group and there are young men in the group as well. These are kids that they've grown up with. The difference is that my husband is also friends with all the kids and I am as well. And so we end up socializing together in our home. So we might have like a movie night or the kids might come over and have dessert with us after dinner and we all sit together and talk, talk about politics, talk about what's going on, talk about religion, talk about books that we're reading. But there's oversight in the sense that my husband and I are there as well. But it came from becoming friends with our kids' friends and like gaining trust with them over the years. And this isn't necessarily true, like for all of our friends, all of the kids' parents, it's not necessary that they have the same relationship with all the kids. But this is something that's happened in our home. And when we started entering into the social media age and the kids were asking if they could get the Instagram accounts or whatever, having a talk with them also about how they were going to be interacting with the opposite gender on social media because a lot of us tend to think that interaction with the opposite gender is, oh, it's about dating or it's about boyfriend, girlfriend, but sometimes it's really just about how people are joking around and communicating with one another online. And so as a mother of sons, talking about how to be respectful of the opposite gender and how to behave online in a way that you would behave in person. So an example would be if girls are posting selfies and photographs of themselves, that's not something that would be really appropriate for a young man, in our opinion, to be clicking like on because it's not something that our young men, hopefully, would be doing in real life. They wouldn't be going up to girls and being like, you look beautiful, you look hot, you know, that wouldn't be okay. And so it wouldn't be okay to do that online as well. And so constantly talking to them, or not constantly because that becomes nagging, but checking in with them about and role modeling for them as well, like what is the appropriate way to behave with one another. If we even have WhatsApp groups where there are guys and girls on the WhatsApp groups, but again, we're involved in them as well. It's not just a boy and a girl alone talking, inshallah, and from my understanding so far. And so I think one of the key things in our experience has been really befriending our kids' friends and taking the time to get to know them. So those of you who especially have younger children really making an effort to get to know them, kids are not gonna fully open up in front of parents the way they do in front of one another, but taking time to make your home be the place where kids wanna come hang out, whether it's watching a movie together, whether it's having ice cream, checking in. Yeah, that's just off the top of my head. I think that's what I was like, all I can think of right now. Jazakul al-Kharan. I think what I got from both of your responses really is about open direct communication about these things because a lot of times many of our cultures, it's uncomfortable, right? We don't, in my family for example, I mean it was never spoken about. Never was the issue of having a friend from the opposite gender ever brought up. It was just understood that that was not acceptable in your home and so we would never even talk about these things, but I think we have to just keep in mind the great advice of Sid Nali who said that do not raise your children the way that you were raised because they're born into a new generation. So whatever cultural or dynamics that you had we have to kind of just be more realistic that our children are growing up in a completely different time than we were and a lot of these things have to be discussed even if it's uncomfortable and it's awkward for you to put your own comfort aside because otherwise if we're not having these conversations with them directly they will seek out other people to have conversations with and what happens oftentimes is other messages are so counter to the principles of our faith that they actually end up sounding better right to teens who are so impulsive and it sounds so fair and open minded and then here's nothing on this side of it it's just no or nothing at all and so we kind of have to balance whatever the messaging that they're getting outside with reflection with wisdoms with just having open conversations because it will to them the impression that they leave is that Islam is outdated it's not there's no context or there's no context for it in modern times Muslims are awkward socially that's what they leave with if we don't have discussions with them so we have to really think about that and just having asking them who do you hang out with at school being frank with them, what are their names and if they say a boy's name or a girl's name not thinking it's the end of the world and immediately shaming them or blaming them but rather asking what is it about that person that you enjoy their company and trying to just foster again an understanding and a conversation where you can see why they choose the people that they are hanging out with and who those people are it's very important that we know who those people are so, alhamdulillah now the next question I'm gonna actually ask the parents because I wanna gauge how you got I mean if you guys are seeing what we see so there was a question on the survey about do you support gay rights? This is a hot topic issue a lot of it's everywhere in our society now we can't really escape it so this is another topic we have to confront head on so I'm gonna ask you by a show of hands there's three options that we gave I'll read them to you and then I'm gonna ask you to raise your hand based on what you think your team maybe or the majority of the responses were the first answer was do you support gay rights? So the first answer was yes I don't see anything wrong with being gay at all and think it's perfectly fine to be gay the second one was yes I think gay people deserve to have rights but I don't agree with their lifestyle and the third is no I don't support gay rights at all so I want you to think about your team and everything you've raised them with and all the maybe discussions you've had or maybe you haven't but just what you think they answered on this survey if you think your team answered the first one which is yes I don't see anything wrong with being gay at all and think it's perfectly fine to be gay raise your hand I think that we'd have anybody for that okay the second yes I think gay people deserve to have rights but I don't agree with their lifestyle if you think okay so this is again based on your knowledge of your team okay the third one no I don't support gay rights at all how many of you think your team answered that okay what do you think the majority of the answers were one two or three do you think we had any one we had quite a few of the first one quite a few online and here this is again a sweeping sentiment across our society across our community where people are feeling that it's not a big deal this is another very important discussion that we have to be able to frame in a healthy way and have open discussions because again as I just you know sort of alluded to when you don't have discussions then the dominant opinions that are being presented sort of take over and then people you know that's how people succumb and eventually majority wins oh well if everybody thinks this way then I don't want to be an outcast so I should think the same so how can we balance that right we have to have open discussion so I'm gonna again turn to my panelists and ask them how do you talk about this issue with your teens I'm sure it's come up with your teens how did we frame this discussion oh okay very good point this might be a good time to just do a quick time check for prayer brother Menir do we have is it time okay so sync we'll pause right here but we're gonna come back and address this hot topic issue inshallah okay all right just like that and we'll stop for parents here have had an open conversation with their teenagers about this topic I'm seeing probably a quarter maybe a third okay maybe a third at best more from the mother side than from the the fathers uh... I would say a starting point is to begin there that having this as a topic that society is literally uh... inundating you with uh... and almost pushing down your throat uh... it that it's normal that it must be acceptable but beyond that that to have any criticism of it is a type of bigotry now the american mind there's nothing more revolting than than being called a bigot right and so if that is equated with bigotry by treating someone unfairly just because of something that's incidental to them the way they were born right then that's a type of bigotry so you have to be able to have navigate conversations with your teens about these topics now some of you may come from places but this was never even a thought your parents never had to discuss this with you you could have lived the rest of your life and never had to deal with this your children have a different reality and so what worked for you as sister hosai reminded us say naali radiallahu anhu said nasu ashbahu bi zamanihim min abaihim that people resemble their age more than their own father right that's that's what they will resemble more the age the time will have greater impact upon raising your children than what you do yourself and so how do you if you know that that's there as a as a factor influencing your children you have to be able to address it uh... in my experience an open conversation which is not reactionary right and what i mean by that is your teenager is made here the young adults in your home was formulating their own opinions and their own ideas they have their own personality their own autonomy uh... and they're being told by people that we send them to in school or in the media these authorities are telling them one message if you want to bring present another side you have to come with good arguments and you have to come willing to listen and you have to come willing to share uh... i would suggest addressing this question with your teens head on and i would suggest doing so in a number of ways from its taking it from a number of different perspectives the islamic perspective or you know what could be called the islamic perspective is one that goes beyond just is this a sin yes or no this is something that have done that the consensus of the slum is very clear on there's no question marks there but your child is processing a world that's telling them that anything like that is bigotry or unfair or it's hatred nobody wants to be hateful you have to help them to reconcile these two things so i'll tell you a story there is a uh... a scholar who is visiting from a west african country and he was doesn't speak english he's here visiting and someone asked him who is a convert to islam he said i have a relative of mine and this relative they're openly homosexual and my my muslim friends are telling me that i cannot have a relationship with him is this true and the sheikh again this is still very foreign to him it's not as but he said shirk is bigger than that and you have to keep ties with shirk shirk is greater than that but you can still keep ties with that so we have to that framework should be that i can tell you that your beliefs are wrong that your actions are wrong and still respect you and still treat you kindly so this is a false dichotomy that your that's being forced on the muslims that in order to be respectful in order to be kind you have to accept what everyone does that's that's not that's not help your children to break through that fallacy that's a lie they'll see through it and you tell them they come to us this is something sister hosai was saying i have to give the credit here she said they come to us with the uh... with the call for acceptance you have to accept us as we are total acceptance but in turn they're not accepting us as we are so that mutual respect has to be there and so we have to help our children our teens these young adults to see that part of this is that they have the right to also have their opinion you can be respectful you can be kind you don't does not have to equate hate right uh... and we can still believe that this is immoral and it's forbidden and it's wrong et cetera the two are not mutually exclusive right the two are not mutually exclusive and so we have to develop some nuance in which even if we accept that somebody has this affliction or this challenge or this desire that a lot of time to place for whatever reason we all have desires that a lot of time to place in a set we have to fight since when does that mean all embrace all you have that desire embrace it that's not our religion to begin with so even this argument of all but i think they were born that way of course we're all born these ways we're all born with things that we have to so help them to break out of this simplistic way of viewing it that all what if they were born that way and you know why we can't hate them we can have bigotry et cetera bring some nuance to the conversation in which you can accept that they are part of society that isn't going to disappear we can engage them and treat them with respect but that we also ask to be respected for our beliefs and we also cannot be subject to bigotry and we also cannot be forced with their intolerance to say except change your religion to accommodate us so this is something that is that is very important and this happens with beliefs about Allah swt this is not an iman issue you know but even with shirk we say people you have your way i'll leave you to your way leave me to mine so this is we should help our children to develop a sense of self in which they are okay standing on their own and saying this is this is my belief my last point before i'm going to pass it off to sister henna because i'd like to hear what she'd have to add is train your children to expect to be opposed by society to be outnumbered by society the prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam said bada'a l-islamu ghareem that islam started a strange thing wa sayyadoo ghareeman and it will become strange again i think near the end of time fa tuba l-ghuraba so blessed are those who are estranged right that this is something if you read the Quran which prophet has all of his people welcome him and accept him and believe in him from the beginning nobody they're always opposing people it's always the mass of people against them we should try to train our children to accept that they may have to be different and they will be different and that wrong is wrong even if everybody is in the world is doing it and right is right even if nobody else is doing it that we have to give it to allah swt last statement in closing a scholar a great alam and from syria he said he said to someone he said when you go to america tell them whatever sins they make the door of tuba is open the door of repentance is open but if they say that the haram is actually halal you can't make tuba from that that will bring allah's displeasure upon you so he said i mean we don't say this to a teenager but it's okay if they sin because they can make tuba from that but tell them to be careful of changing the religion of allah because you can't make tuba from that because you're changing so say you can keep the halal halal and the haram haram and don't change your religion and be strong in who you are and your own identity, be respectful be kind, be generous allow them to but also have your own beliefs about what allah swt permits and what he forbids this is allah swt is right, he created us he's a creator of humanity i'll leave it at that just on the topic of the whole lgbtq issues a few years ago when gay marriage was legalized uh... i was kind of surprised to see how many of my friends whose kids were in public school were surprised at how supportive their children were of the new law because the parents assumed that their kids were going to be on the same page as they were on this topic but they didn't realize that for so many years the kids had been indoctrinated uh... in public school to think a certain way and so it's going to be very important to have these conversations with our children a slight different angle that i wanted to go in on on the same topic it's also as our sons and daughters are growing up it's going to be really important to get them to look at the world around them with what we call the eye of discernment to just really notice all the subtle messaging that's around that may not be very obvious that's trying to get them to accept this world view and one of the things that my sons have noticed is how effeminate the clothing is now for men in in department stores house sometimes they can't even tell that the shirt is it for a man or for a woman but it's being sold in the men's department and so to really give our men strong role models on what it means to be a man and to give our young women strong role models on what it means to be a woman and that it's okay to be feminine as a woman and it's okay to be masculine as a man because there seems to be this concerted effort right now to do away with masculinity and femininity corresponding with what our biological sex is and so we need to make sure that inshallah we're helping our kids navigate that aspect of the environment right now as well jazakh al-khair and mashallah amazing viewpoints from both of you uh... there's really not much to add but just to piggyback off of something that doctor asad said as far as uh... you know being uh... able to kind of accept that you're not always going to you know reflect what everybody else is doing and being okay with that you know there's that famous quote attributed to alexander hamilton if you don't stand for something you'll fall for anything and this is really what we as muslims have to commit to that we have to instill in our children a strong sense of identity and who they are from a very early age which is why you know falling into you know trends and you see this you know throughout our community a lot of parents aren't thinking about how that's going to affect and shape their sense of who they are if you're always okay with them doing oh just because so-and-so is doing it or just because classmates are doing it or because it's popular you have to as a parent know how to draw the line between allowing your kids to do things that are okay and healthy and also just blindly saying oh if it's okay by everybody else's standards i'll let you do that too because that's how they again just start to their condition to think that you know look at the majority messaging and that's what you should be doing so that's why celebrity culture is so strong and has such an effect on youth because they look at those people as being role models and everybody else is so accepting of them and so if we allow our kids to to fall into that same trap then we shouldn't be surprised when they come home having adopted a lot of the views that everybody else has around them because who are their influencers and this is where again being you know really uh... smart as parents we should know that by the time our teens enter i mean our children enter the world of adolescence their peer group has far more influence over them than we do up until that point we are their primary influencers they'll listen they obey but you'll notice every parent who has teens notices that by the time you know adolescents kicks in there's suddenly you know more pushback they don't uh... you know they don't agree with everything they start to argue a little bit and push back on certain things so you have to be really on top of things in terms of who are their influencers who are they you know being influenced by and that's why going back to the conversations we've had so far as far as devices are concerned as far as friends are concerned all of those things have to start very early in my experience i found and i'm sure the panelists will agree that a lot of times there's not much oversight in those areas in the younger age and even up until middle school and then high school kicks in and parents start to panic because it's like oh no what happened to my teen i don't recognize them anymore they're acting so different uh... and then you ask them questions like okay you know who are their primary friends i don't know i don't know their friends uh... what what are their interests you know what are who what are the things that they're into i don't know and this from uh... the teen perspective also it contributes to why there is this huge divide i've talked to several teens who have told me that their parents have no idea who they are they're like they don't know who i am they don't have any interest in the things that i like they don't know my friends and so we have to again ask parents look back and ask ourselves how much time do we take if we're coming home and we are ourselves drawn to this and we're just you know busy with work stuff or family stuff and we don't take the time to actually have open conversations with our teens and then when a problem arises we suddenly panic and we call the masjid or we call halil center or we go to you know sister henna or or doctor asad or whoever else that you see in the community as a leader and now you're trying to you know to damage control it's likely because you weren't paying attention to red flags that were there so we have to start paying attention you have to have conversations what are my children doing if they have a particular genre of music i've had now i think two or three cases where parents and teens have had huge fallout because of the music that the teens are into and uh... you know i had one mom very frankly tell me that she told her son that she was he wasn't welcome because he was away for college uh... in the house because of the way that the genre of music that he was into and you know she asked me what to do about it and i said what i mean i'm just going to tell you my opinion that's a mistake uh... it's uh... and i i would say in that situation instead of you know just closing them off shutting them out completely and having no interest whatsoever rather go back to uh... the basics of you know what i need to get to know you a little bit better why are you interested in this type of music or this new you know way of life that you've lifestyle that you've adopted what is it that draws you to that let me enter your world a little bit and you know this is where just fostering an environment of mutual respect is so important if your parenting model is that's not good enough for me i don't like it you're turning your kids away and there's plenty of people who will receive them plenty of people who will receive them with open arms and tell them they don't ever have to go back to you because you're just close-minded your backwards and that's what's going to happen it's happening already what's the solution is to say no i have to start being more open having discussions like i we've been saying all day long and really being open to listening to their perspective with with respect you know with with that true sincere interest in your child because they're individuals as much as we want to hope that they are going to be turned out a certain way that's not up to us right if if if the profits couldn't control how their children turned out we should realize we have no control outcomes are not in our hands there with a lot of stuff what we can do is do our part to make sure that we always have that door open for them so that whatever they're into whatever interest they have whatever topics and you know i mean i have for example you know i had a a teen say that they were very conflicted by this whole issue of lgbtq because one of their friends from you know growing up it's a very close friend identified as gay and so it causes them constriction because how can i hate something but love someone who does that right uh... and so again we have to be willing to hear those conversations but if our attitude is like haram no that's unacceptable you can ever talk to that person again you're just exacerbating the problem and your teen will absolutely find ways to uh... communicate with their friends because you're asking to make a choice that's really difficult but if we step back and say you know what as we've been saying respecting an individual a human being because they are human being and they you know even with all of their the things that they do as an individual that we might not agree with that shouldn't come uh... that shouldn't be a difficult thing for a believer i mean the proposal i saw him that was his example he accepted people even if they were completely you know against him his own enemies he was able to show compassion and mercy to so i think we have to step back and say this sort of black-and-white thinking in general is causing real serious problem between parents and teens and on this issue especially and i've seen it and not just in the surveys but in discussions i've had a lot of our teens are very troubled they feel like you know if parents aren't even willing to have a conversation about it and they're so close-minded then it just poses you know it starts to really emotionally affect them towards their parents but also the faith that their parents ascribed to we don't want to do that so you know just remembering being respectful being open being tolerant but still being principled this is the believer stance right? Yes one point that speaking about influence on our kids that really resonated with me was something that she aloha din bakri shared a few years ago he said that our children at all times they're being influenced in three different areas at all times it's either the school or it's the streets and by streets he meant their social environment so who their friends are the school the streets and the home and he said that parents need to be winning in two out of three of those areas so two out of three streets school home two of those the parents have to be the primary influence on their children and a book that I would like to recommend that in child because it's very easy for us to say oh you need to have open conversations you have to get your kids to trust you the question is how right how do we get there there's a wonderful book called why parents need hold on to your kids why parents need to matter more than peers hold on to your kids why parents need to matter more than peers and it's written by two psychiatrists one of them his last name is Maté spelled like M-A-T-E like mate and I believe the other last name is Neufeld N-E-U-F-E-L-D that book changed our parenting philosophy and many people have told me that that book was a very um big parent created a big paradigm shift for them in how they raised their kids so and he starts out with talking about being with his teenagers so inshallah there'll be some very practical tips in that book and how to establish that trust with your children and one of the things that we told our kids is that at all times in every relationship in every friendship one person is influencing the other so either you're influencing your friend or your friend is influencing you it's never neutral and so to help our children to really reflect on what role are they playing in their different relationships and what role are their friends playing on them and what direction are they taking them into so to get them to reflect for themselves as well rather than us always talking at them one little practical tip I wanted to share that I forgot to share earlier when the questions were coming in about how to have open communication with kids one of my friends told me about something that she does with her daughter that has worked really well for them so I think it's worth sharing with others she said that she keeps a diary by her bed and her daughter has access to that diary anytime she wants and when her daughter has something that she wants to talk to her mother about but she doesn't feel comfortable actually discussing it face to face she'll write it out in that diary to her mother whatever issue she's facing and the mom will read that diary entry from her daughter and then she'll respond in that diary to her daughter and so she said that that diary has gone back and forth between her and her daughter for a while and they don't actually ever speak in person about whatever the topic is that might be bothering her daughter sometimes kids need a little bit of distance to actually be able to come close to their parents to communicate with them and anonymity can sometimes help some parents say that they have certain communications with their kids just over email because the kids aren't comfortable speaking face to face about certain issues I know some of my most valuable conversations have happened in the car when my child is sitting next to me and we don't have to look at each other and we can just have these really deep conversations but it doesn't get uncomfortable where we're like in each other's faces you know having to look at each other's facial expressions so just a little tip I wanted to share so we're getting questions over text message as well that the Monir is sending in so we're going to try to address these we have several questions over text and several here so is there one that you want to start off with now? there's a very tough question that I think we're trying to avoid masha'Allah, Bismillah so yes, I don't have an answer there was a parent who filled out the survey online who asked a very good question and to paraphrase the question was that my teen says that if Allah swt is so forgiving then why can't I just do what I want to do and ask Allah for forgiveness afterwards and so this is a question that maybe some of us will have posed to us maybe just different forms of taking Allah swt's mercy as a license to sort of stray my thoughts on this and I want to very much say that I don't have an answer for this but my thoughts on this would be that I think it's important that you develop an understanding of sin that goes beyond points on the day of judgment right it's very important that they understand that disobeying Allah swt that Allah swt is not a great accountant that we meet on the day of judgment who tabulates things and we go to hell or to heaven a relationship with Allah swt should be developed in which there starts to become a type of love of his obedience and a shame with his disobedience and the number one way to do that and this is very difficult for all of us is to model that right this is not something that you can simply say to your child you can use conversations to further reinforce that but I would help the young adults to start to see the impact of sin upon the heart right that if a bone heals why shouldn't I just break your bone and it'll heal over time why not right if you can lose weight why can't I just why don't we eat five cheesecakes in a row and gain 10 pounds right over Eid which sometimes happens but then it's okay because we can go to the gym right because there's heart disease there's consequences and so it's important to help the child to see that Allah swt created this world of Asbab right there's a famous Moroccan saint who said the entire universe is meanings that Allah put into forms whoever realizes this will have learned many lessons what does that mean that Allah has placed many spiritual lessons in the physical world it's a meaning what happens to a plant if you pour Coca-Cola on it and you keep it in the dark what happens to it it's gonna die what happens when you give it water and sunlight and good soil it's going to grow help the young adults start to see their spiritual heart as something that's real is it not just haram halal day of judgment I can just make toba right they have to start to see that they should they would be ashamed with Allah swt the second thing is of course I don't want to talk about a pre-planned toba not being a true toba you cannot intend to sin and say but I'm then I will repent the third aspect is obviously that Allah swt only knows how long our lives are and you don't ever want to feel safe from the makar of Allah swt is playing for you you don't know if we see Allah's forgiveness is there so that if we sin we don't despair and that we can get out of it it's not there to be abused okay and so the mother talk about it that there are two wings that have to balance each other hope in Allah swt is mercy and fear of his justice and his punishment if the young person and this is something that I'm also talk about that in youth you have to emphasize fear of Allah swt that he has punishment and if this happens you have punishment in the dunya before the Akhirah for sins sometimes you'll have difficulty you'll have all of these things but as somebody ages and they've accumulated sin and an elderly person you remind them of the the hope in Allah swt mercy that he's merciful that he's forgiving but because the youth always looks at Allah's mercy and says I can get away with things the elderly person is always thinking about everything that they've done and they can fall into despair so you have to help them to balance out their hope with with a healthy dose of fear of Allah swt and understanding that their hearts are far more than just an accounting booklet of points for the day of judgment and I'm not making light of sin and and reward on the day of judgment Allah swt erase all of our sins inshallah that's that's easy for him to do but to also understand that this is the meaning of the Prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam when his own wife asked him our mother said it now ishah radiallahu anha she asked him she said yeah Rasul Allah why why do you pray at night until your feet swell his blessed feet would swell when Allah has given you paired he's promised you paradise and he's forgiven anything you could have ever done and what was the Prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam's response that we all know should I not then be a thankful servant I fell I couldn't have done Shakura should I not then be a grateful servant it's not just about the points he has a relationship with Allah he's Habibullah and he's teaching us to take our relationship with Allah beyond that wouldn't you be ashamed for Allah to see you right as opposed to you'll get sin you'll get this punishment wouldn't you be ashamed of Allah right and I think these these are the kinds of conversations that we should work to have so that our children understand that these things that Allah has made forbidden he's made forbidden for a reason out of his wisdom his Hikmah subhanahu ta'ala right out of his wanting good for us as his Ibad right that Allah's part out of he doesn't see a harm except that he forbids it and there isn't something good except that he's he's encouraged us to do it so they have to they see the sharia as arbitrary the fun stuff is all haram and right and the all the difficult stuff is what we have to do you have to help them to see it differently than that that Allah is giving us things that is for our heart and our soul to develop so these are some thoughts of mine but I definitely think it's a very difficult question I mean it's something again that doesn't have a solution but has a treatment that you should continue to have so one of the questions that's come in online how can I generate love towards Salat and Quran in my kids I see other older kids who are regulars at the masjid now rarely coming to the mosque unless forced by their parents so there's a young man I know who mashallah every time I see him he sits in the front row at Jama'a and every Jama'at prayer that I've ever seen him and he's right there in the front row and I was asking him about that like how where does that desire come from or that habit and he told me that when he was little he's older now he's 19 when he was little he said his father would give him a dollar every time he would go and sit in the front row and he said so as a child he loved collecting those dollars five dollars a day adds up and he said but now I just do it out of habit it's he knows he's not getting any dollars from anyone for sitting in the front row but it's become his habit and he mashallah broke it down really beautifully for me because we were talking about how is the best way to teach the religion and put a love for the religion and the practice of the faith in the next generation and he told me that he thinks three things are very important he said one is that there needs to be motivation so he said when he was little that dollar that he got for sitting in the front row was motivation but now that he's older the motivation is talking about Akhira talking about Allah subhanallah but to really make sure that there's some motivation when you're talking to your kids about their Ibada the second thing he said was role models he said he named specific shoe who were there in his community who inspired him and who he enjoyed watching while they were praying and that they were the ones who had a big influence on him on the way he prayed and his desire to pray and the third thing he told me was so he said motivation role models and the third thing he said was understanding he said it's very important to understand why you're praying and what you're saying and what the point is behind prayer he said for many kids he's seen that parents say oh Allah expects you to pray so you have to pray it's hadam not to pray but they don't actually understand why and what's the purpose behind it and as far as the question which says that they saw that kids who used to come regularly and you know maybe we're into the Quran or into praying but now they see that they don't come unless their parents are quote-unquote forcing them to what I've seen is that in life it's we're not just on the steady course there's ups and downs that come even in our own lives and if we look at ourselves and think that right now if I had somebody who was forcing me or telling me that I have to read this much Quran every day or I have to sit for this long in my prayer afterwards in Dudua would we rebel against that or would that be something that would make us go yeah that's something I want to take on and it's important that when kids after the age of 14 what I've seen is that we need to kind of give them their space once you've established routines for them throughout the early years what I've noticed is after 14 you're really just maintaining whatever you've taught them up to the age of 14 with all three of my kids I've seen that that after 14 it's really hard to start implementing anything new and whatever we've been teaching them up until that point is now what we're going to be maintaining and I hope we can build on that but if we are going to build on it it's going to come from them it's not going to come from us it's going to be completely self-directed and self-motivated and you know this I learned it the hard way one of my sons when we gave him a car for his personal use I told him that you can have the car we're going to give you the car but only on the condition that you go to the Masjid for Fajr and Isha so if you go to the Masjid for Fajr and Isha then then you can have the car and he had been going but it had been hit or miss it wasn't a regular thing he'd been going on his own but all of a sudden I saw it take a dip it wasn't the effect was the opposite of what I had wanted and what I had hoped for and he actually told me he said you know mama up until now when I was doing it it was doing I was doing it because it was a goal I was trying to achieve for myself but now that you told me that in order to have the car I have to go for Fajr and Isha to the Masjid it feels like a chore and all of a sudden the desire isn't there the way it was before and I took it back I apologized and I said he could have the car and as long as he's not going anywhere Haram in it or doing anything Haram and God forbid he's welcome to use the family car but but that was a big lesson for me that you can't force kids to do to do anything when they're older and we're talking to parents of teens right now so after the age of 14 you have to give them the space to figure it out and hopefully you've been setting routines and giving them role models throughout their life before so there's questions about is it okay to give your teenager a phone every family has to assess their own child and their own relationship with their children and what they would not every child is the same and different children struggle with different kinds of addictions some children are able to set limits for themselves some aren't they need you know direction from their parents more than other kids personally just for our families just to share what we did is our kids did not have smartphones throughout high school and but with the understanding that when they graduated from high school they were going to get the latest iPhone but they so they had a light at the end of the tunnel but throughout high school they had dumb phones and one of my son said that other kids used to take pictures of his phone because they thought it was like such that this antique relic and nobody had seen dumb phones you know and you know they got they said that people gave them a hard time and like why don't you have a smartphone but generally if they told that they're having a lot of fun over there I want to join that room so what did they tell me they told me oh yeah they said that at the end of the day even even the kids who don't understand or make fun of you or whatever at the end of the day they get that parents are authority figures and if the kids say you know what my parents are the ones paying for my phone I don't have a job this is a phone I get I got to make do with it at the end of the day everybody understands that I mean whether they think it's a good idea or not you know everyone has their own opinions but alhamdulillah we we my 15 year old has a smartphone at home that he's able to use to communicate on whatsapp with family but it stays at home it doesn't leave the house and that's it that they have they had flip phones up until graduating from high school that was our family you probably have a different experience yeah so I think this is one of those things that every family is different and every child is probably different and also the the environment in the peer group whether through relatives or friends or school makes a big difference so I don't think there's a one-size-fits-all solution and I typically think questions like this are more about principles and guidelines than they are about set rules that at this age it becomes suddenly appropriate certain people mature better some people have better impulse control other kids have very addictive personalities so yeah I think we handled it a little bit differently this is a question to touch upon so the question says it doesn't matter how much you create the good environment kids from age 12 to 14 are more likely to listen to their friends and try to isolate themselves from parents and this is one of the age milestones we cannot deny this milestone so how so how we parents so how should we as parents deal with this and build more trust this is a very good question I think whoever asked this question simply realizing that they're in a different milestone and who they will listen to is is is half the battle I'll share two brief points and then hopefully I just want to try to give time to get through the questions two brief points one is I think it is important that yes you show your child that you trust them that you believe in them treating your child like a criminal will simply engender criminal behavior they will start to hide things they will whatever you tell them they are I even sometimes will bluff that I'm worried about something I say I'm not worried about you ma'sha'Allah you have talk while you know you know and you tell them these things and it will become their own inner voice of of what my parents believe me to be but if you say no no I'm not letting you out alone I know you if you have freedom I know what you're gonna do with it then oh yeah maybe I should if that's what they think of me I might as well enjoy it and if I'm already getting blamed for it so it's very important to have that positive reinforcement I just wanted I don't like to translate ayahs but I wanted to read this verse from Surah Ali Imran and just we'll just translate it no commentary and just think about how it may relate to this now this according to the Mufassirin was revealed in the context of the battle of Uhud when some of the Sahaba had left their post and the Prophet SAW suffered some injuries etc a very sad day for the Prophet SAW and the Sahaba so Allah S.P.A. says and it was by God's grace that you were gentle with them okay that it's Allah's grace that he gave you the gentleness when you dealt with them and had you been harsh and heart of heart they would have indeed broken away from you if you treated them in a way he's now talking about the Prophet SAW and the Sahaba that had you been harsh and heart hearted with them they would have broken away from them from you so pardon them then and pray for them that they are forgiven and take counsel with them in all matters of public concern then when you have decided on a course of action place your trust in Allah the role of Tawakul and parenting cannot be overstated you have to have trust in Allah S.P.A. if you think your parenting can do it you're you're really deluding I don't think anybody I don't think any parent of a teenager feels that way right you know that you need Allah S.P.A. grace you know that you need his help so he says so place your trust in God for verily God loves loves those who place their trust in him so I think that is a nice parenting related verse to think about that it's from the grace of Allah S.P.A. that you were gentle with them so I would say tell them be gentle with them forgive them seek make a star for them seek their counsel start to treat them like an adult start to bring them in out of childhood and you know the one of the things I always say to my teenager is you know what distinguishes a child from an adult as a child is only thinking about their needs and they want it's not strange when a child sees candy says I want candy right that's what they are but when you transition to an adult you start to you have to start just thinking about the group and about others and my behavior my nefs is no longer guiding every decision I make and so your adultness is measured by that and not by your height not by your weight and not by your how many days you've been alive that's what defines men because he's a he's a he's a young man and that's what defines women one of the questions here says many of the answers provided are about communication with our teenagers what can I do in a situation where the teenager does not want to talk he just wants to be left alone that's very very normal I think every parent here of a teenager especially those of us who have sons know that experience of of young men especially wanting to pull away wanting privacy not wanting to be nagged not wanting to be asked a hundred questions about what are you thinking what's going on so it's going it's more important to create a positive environment and make sure that they feel safe and that they feel comfortable and that they actually want to just hang around with you in comfortable silence and sometimes something may come out after a long time of just sitting around quietly but not feeling like they have to produce or they have to present something to you when when you guys are sitting together it's important that again like that triangle we talked about of friendship the positivity being the base it should be a positive experience and that sometimes can mean just sitting in comfortable silence you you can't force anyone to talk you have to make sure that they feel safe and the way they feel safe is by knowing that you're you know having a high opinion of them the way doctor has mentioned not constantly grilling them trying to get stuff out of them not checking up on them and letting them know that you accept them the way they are and that you're here if they ever do want to talk it won't last forever at some point kids do share it may not be today or tomorrow but it does happen yeah one tiny point on this matter of youth not wanting to talk two quick points just because we're tied on time one is for if you still have children who are younger than teens you have to start investing in that relationship early if the child is somebody to not be seen or be heard and then when they're 14 is saying no no no hold on talk to me about everything on your mind that's not a fair expectation right so you have to invest in that relationship and the second thing is if the relationship is always either lecturing or telling them how they should be living that's not an enjoyable conversation that a teen would like to sustain as much as difficult as it may be for us develop an interest in what they're interested in no matter how silly you think it is right develop a foot listen to them it's amazing sometimes why I'm gonna get in trouble for this but sometimes my son tells me goes Baba I know you don't care just pretend to care for the next five minutes tell me yeah oh SubhanAllah wow right and he knows I don't care right but he just wants an audience but even in that listening to him right even in that listening to him I will I want him to speak to you out something I think is the dumbest thing in the world right because I want him to feel that kind of connection that positivity that to have somebody listen to you and smile and say really oh my god no no he's a horrible player this player is better you think he's you know I stopped watching basketball for years I couldn't tell you a single player I was still in the Michael Jordan era now because I have a teenager you have to start to know you you have to otherwise what's your conversation to how was school today you have any homework did you clean your room who wants to talk to me at that point so that's something else I think I would keep in mind and if your kids are playing video games play video games with them so you know what they're playing and they they have a fun experience with you oh I think I think we're wrapping up it's 916 right any other questions there were a couple of questions that some different people had sent up about how to help a child how to keep a teenager from falling in love and hearts are hearts I don't know if we can control who a person likes and doesn't like and how strongly they they feel for for somebody of the opposite gender I think again going back to making sure that we try and create a safe environment where our kids we can talk to our kids about about their feelings what what I I've seen some parents do that I think is is a good way to get your kids to think more of future facing is to talk about what kinds of qualities they'd like to see in a future spouse so that they're not actually talking about the person they may have a crush on right now that they may be in love with right now talk about like what are you looking for like when you get married one day in shallow what are the qualities that you'd like to see in a future in a future spouse and then hopefully through that lens they'll share you know what what qualities they like don't like and helping teaching them how to do the law for what they want and doing the law for them in their presence like me a less punnettala give you a spouse who's going to take you to Jenna one day and who you're going to take to Jenna one day inshallah you guys are going to be positive influences on each other and who's going to bring our families together and letting them see that what's important to you as well and but as far as like protecting your kids from falling in love I don't think anyone's ever been able to do that the heart is the heart so but we can create halal environments definitely you know like teaching our kids about how they should be interacting with the opposite gender and what not okay anything else I think that's it we need Hussai to come up for us oh sure so so going into a room of boys it was pretty quiet for a while you guys are talking about that and I thought you know man this half hour is going to be difficult we're going to be back in here within a half an hour but the kids started to really open up and I met a lot of I think about 20 wonderful young teenage boys and I'll just quickly summarize the theme the communication gap is the number one theme that came up and the generation gap and the cult the communication gap the generation gap and the continental gap so by that I mean communicating under the adults understanding what the kids are going through that would be the second one and just the adults not understanding the environment that the kids are growing up in and they're trying to be good and they're trying to do it their own way they have their own hearts and sort of us as adults kind of you know living life the way our parents raised us so those were kind of the three themes that came up they were all good nature good hearted one of the things that you know really really made me sad that I heard was I'm not going to try anymore because I'll be leaving the house soon enough that's the most sad thing to me that that I hear is when kids shut down and they're not being heard and they know they just have two or three more years and they'll be gone they won't have to deal with it and that's when the parents are going to be sad so my response to the to the to the boys were you know as a parent I have to worry about whether when they leave the house they're going to want to call dad back and talk to him just to see how he is and if I'm not concerned with how I feel that I'm not going to do the right thing for them so I would say to the parents if you want your children to come back and call you you have to invest in what they want and what they think and understand how they feel and make them happy and it's okay if they mess up because they're not perfect but you have to be the adult for them and keep that relationship for them they are toddler adults so a 15 year old is a three year old toddler in the body of an adult they're toddler adults so the really good kids Masha'Allah they opened up I don't know if you heard the cheering contest the girls cheered and we cheered I think the guys won but yeah so so the really really good kids and that's what makes me I would say that adult starts here and the child starts here and the child grows and the adult stays the same and then there's a crisscross point so the kid is going this way and adults still staying the same it doesn't work so as adults the kids come here and then we have to go with them you have to change your adult you have to change your parenting style by the age of 11 to 13 seriously with boys I don't have that experience with girls see how it was here but be be really really trying to be flexible and what Dr. Asad and Hanna said here and I heard the last part of it is just really having the adults invest in making the strategy of change you guys are the adults you have to find a strategy for change that works for both you and your children as they grow so inshallah that's that's the advice that I would have and that's my experience in the room I'll turn it over for see the hard ones wise words we're wrapping up so I just I guess to reinforce what brother the sand said something that I took note of was how my parents react prevents me from opening up how my parents react prevents me from opening up some of them have parents that they said they just can't talk to about what they're actually going through some of them said they have parents who told them to come and tell us anything talk to us about anything but when they did that the reaction was so negative or left them feeling so negative when they went to their rooms they said I never want to do that again so now I'm just going to put my head down and just bear with it until like the other brother said I'm off to college soon so I'm out of there so another one was that a theme that they felt was God forgives but my parents don't God forgives but my parents don't toba or repentance is one of the primary gifts of religion besides like knowledge of God himself the gift of religion is repentance a a a mechanism by which we can right our wrongs and so we're actually taught that we should be forgiving to the degree we want a law to forgive us that's a principle to to memorize and live by forgive others to the degree you wish a law will forgive you also a big one was the inability to compromise learn to negotiate certain things with your children especially when it comes to things that are not explicitly forbidden by the religion learn to negotiate a big theme was driving wanting to drive and honestly it's something I'm personally terrified of I helped my wife and I we partnered in helping one of our daughters drive and after that I told her I'm never doing that again so now from our youngest daughter who is now you know eager she saw her big sister be able to drive down she's been so eager and hyped to drive I told my wife honestly that's you it's not me and that was fair we negotiated I was up front when my daughter do not take it personally it's just that I did not enjoy the enjoy the experience of teaching your older sister how to drive it was too terrifying it caused me too much anxiety it was affecting our relationship negatively and so I just can't do it humble us but we negotiate especially for things that are not for forbidden in the religion your children want to do certain things learn to have that discussion well hey maybe if I let them do this that will actually empower them positively in the in the area that I would like to see them have broken one person was like I want to be able to drive I love cars I'm very passionate about cars but they said I got to get a 3.5 then a 4.0 and I don't mean the engine okay so it's like you know as a parent well you know maybe if I give them some flexibility it will actually instill a sense of confidence that my parents trust and love me and that was spillover into improvements in other areas also stop comparing to other quote-unquote perfect family members was a big one they referenced you know a certain cousin or older was a who falls so it was like they're always being compared your child is your child meet them where they are and have an attitude like I say in my household our way is to build up not tear down do not tear your kids down you are the means by which they came into the world they're one of your most precious assets if you have a kid that means you signed up for that so take that as your prized possession and let them feel like you are they are the star of your life like I'm always telling my daughters I'm your biggest fan I'm your biggest fan you should be the biggest fan of your children and not be afraid to sit down and level with them meet them where they are and not act like it's just all about you it's not all about you when you got married it ceased being all about you marriage is a compromised situation you have to write compromise and negotiate with your husband you have to compromise and negotiate with your wife right same thing with your children it's not just this constant top down because what that's doing is making them check out and that's the last thing you want them to do you want yourselves to be the first check in so I challenged the the boys I said I'm just challenging you to have that just so you know moment with your parents just say just so you know mom or dad when you talk to me this way when I do come to you you make me feel so negative I never want to talk to you again does any parent like to hear that from their child no so I challenged them to have that conversation and I also bring it and put it back in you all's court have that conversation have that just so you know conversation with your kids hey just so you know I actually love you and care about you I just have a hard time understanding your culture the way the environment that you're growing up in I can't relate with that I can't relate with the type of music you listen to the type of artist you listen to you say the word wrap I just add a C in front of it automatically okay so be willing to have that conversation I'm challenging you to have that let's just be real with each other conversation to be willing to admit as a parent you know I'm just treating you the way my parents treated me for better or for worse and maybe that's not working I'm just disciplining you the way my parents discipline me and maybe that's not working have that conversation because at some point the relationship has to be genuine and real it has to be genuine and real if not it's just you're raising they're looking at you as a hypocrite and it breeds hypocrisy in themselves too and that's what I wanted to say I want to make it easy I mean about a coffee come on shall again sage advice just a clock and see the haroon we are right about at the end of this I wanted to end with actually reading something and I asked you for just patience I'll try to go through this as fast as I can but it was a post that was posted on Sunday and it was actually CD Haroon who recommended that we read this to really just drive point drive the points that we've been making even further for all of you about open communication negotiation all the stuff that was just mentioned so I'm just gonna go ahead and read Bismillah this is from a sister named Susie Ismail she also works with teens so please pay attention last weekend I spoke at a youth conference on the topic of gender interaction when the talk finished I asked the room of over a hundred teens aged 13 to 18 years old if they had any questions I was met with complete silence thinking that hesitation and embarrassment may be the culprit I shared my cell number with the teens and asked them to text me any questions they had on the topics we covered expecting maybe four to five questions from a few brave souls I was shocked to see my phone light up with question after question after question that continued late into the night long after the session was over in the end I received over 100 text messages from 79 different teens some of the numbers were cloaked in anonymity and couched in doubt of whether or not parents might find out the questions ranged from is marijuana and vaping really haram to why do my parents hate me so much to how do I stop people from bullying me and beating me up in school to comments such as I'm not sure I believe in God anymore or I am really depressed and sometimes I don't think life is worth living to heartbreaking words of how do I recover from something really bad that I've never told anyone about buried amidst the questions about sexuality LGBTQIA plus secret boyfriends and body image there lives a palpable undercurrent of fear sadness loneliness and a type of desperate reaching out what broke my heart was after staying up late and responding to each and every text so many of those teens sent back a surprised message of I didn't think you would really answer or wow I didn't expect a response have we turned our backs on our youth that they no longer ask because they expect to be dismissed or ignored have we led them to believe that they will not be heard validated or responded to so many of these questions and comments that came through my phone that night were stitched with threads of helpless desperation a cry that shook the depths of my consciousness as a mother a speaker an educator a counselor and a community member we are so quick to blame our youth for not talking to us but are we accessible enough to them in the way that they need to speak and express themselves do we simply expect them to mold to our method of communication and the guidelines we provide last weekend I learned more from the teens that attended that session and from the text that came in then they could ever learn from me I pray that Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala guides us all as parents teachers mentors friends and community leaders to be better to do better to open up the channels of communication with our children to listen to hear and to love may Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala forgive us for our failings and raising our children with a sense of security and safety safety to face their fears with us by their side may God make us better than we were and better than we are in protecting our youth and being there for them when they need us the most and when we need them the most to learn to understand to grow and to heal together before it is too late we cannot lose another heart another mind or another soul I mean everybody thank you so much everybody for staying for attending for entrusting us with your beautiful children we had some amazing conversations I just spent a short amount of time with them but even that time I wish I could increase it and I asked them Alhamdulillah it was unanimous would you come again if we provided this forum for you all the hands went up please allow the people in this community like the panelists up here with me and myself and Suzanne Ostada Suzanne who's in the room still with the girls to do this service with you alongside you it takes a village we have to support one another we are here for you and I expect Wallahi when my kids are hit teens I'm gonna be coming to all of you as well like be there for me I need to look to my community and say that there will be people there who will help them navigate tough conversations and so I really want us to embrace these events if we do this again inshallah I pray we're able to do this again that you come back you take the surveys online please and ask your children to do that as well do the questionnaires inshallah what that's we'll close the event but before I do we'll have a light dinner afterwards so please make sure to eat I'm gonna ask Dr. Assad to please close us out with a with a short doc the doctor you the doctor the heart doctor Bismillah Bismillah I'm gonna ask you to give us and our children all of the and give us the character of the Prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam we ask you to make our homes homes of love of the Prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam love of Allah Subhanahu wa ta'ala make our homes filled with Dean and filled with faith we ask you to enable us to raise our children in a way that is pleasing to you and is good for them in both this world and the next we ask you to guide them and to protect them from themselves and from society we ask you to make their mistakes small ones and make their mistakes things they learn from when we ask you to help us to guide them and give them good friends and good spouses may Allah Subhanahu wa ta'ala make this community one in which all of its youth are protected and rescued and saved and die on full and complete faith in Allah Subhanahu wa ta'ala and his blessed messenger sallallahu alaihi wa sallam may Allah Subhanahu wa ta'ala take any of the difficulties that are present in any of the homes out may he make all of it easy may he make love between parent and child between husband and wife and between siblings may Allah Subhanahu wa ta'ala make Sakina in our homes make it places of love of one another and love of Allah on his messenger sallallahu alaihi wa sallam may Allah bless you