 We're so excited to have all of our parents here and Alhamdulillah to learn from your years of wisdom and experience with working with youth and children. Alhamdulillah our theme for this event as Miss Allah mentioned is the heart of homemaking for fathers and mothers and oftentimes when we think about homemaking we usually think about it being the work of a mother and we think of things like cooking and knitting and preserving things but what we discussed in our meeting is that the home is an environment where everyone participates. Fathers have a role in that home and the vibe that they create and the energy that they bring and the resources and the the talents that they bring as well as mothers and then also the children right they create the home and the space we felt and what we see right now in our society is that the institution of home and this concept of home where you know a family lives and generations kind of thrive where there's grandfather's presence and aunts and uncles and this vibrancy of how things are done with Ihsan and it's kind of you know in a decline and actually being kind of actively attacked and our children are kind of being taught to be these autonomous kind of machines that have to leave the home and have to not be a part of the society that we or the atmosphere that we create in the home inshallah and our intention is to go back to those traditions that we've had for thousands and thousands of years and to kind of redefine what our role will be and especially in how we communicate with our kids and so we want to begin our program by kind of talking to our panelists because I know that you all have a lot of experience in either your role as educators obviously your role as parents in seeing some of the stressors that are impacting our youth today and I wanted to see if you guys can kind of talk from your experience some of the things that you see that are that are impacting our home and our families today so inshallah and definitely feel free to introduce yourselves I know that Ms. Salah did but if you want to say a little bit about yourself before you begin feel free to do so inshallah so okay so if I was going to have a question to answer the question would be what are what am I seeing that people are struggling with yes exactly okay so that's it's interesting because we just came back from Thanksgiving break and got to spend a lot of time with family a lot of time with nieces and nephews talking about different issues and one thing that came up we have some nieces and nephews who are visiting and they're they grew up in a different culture a different country but they're visiting these days and so they were in a bunch of different households watching families interact with one another and one compliment that they gave to my siblings who are parents which I thought spoke to a big issue is that they were shocked at how open families are here about talking about things that are happening in society and over and over they were like we could never talk about these things with our parents our parents would never even admit that this problem existed because they wouldn't want us to know about it but we do know about these problems it's just that we're not talking about them in our home so um a lot of us are probably going to speak from our experiences with our children and the phase that Zeeshan and I are in right now is um our I had to change my bio on my website because it said in a fun fact I was the mother of three young boys but I had to change it to three young men because they're not little boys anymore inshallah so my eldest is 25 my middle one is 23 you know my youngest is 18 inshallah so a lot of our experiences are going to be talking about young men and boys but that if I was just going to pinpoint one thing that we can expand on later and I'd like to hear from the others as well um I think communication between parents and children and open conversations and children feeling safe uh talking about what's going on in their lives and what they're dealing with I think that's that's yeah for sure anyone else want to add so I actually think we are cooking and knitting and preserving at home we're cooking the most important dish you know which is our children and that's uh you know based on the prophetic advice last time when he says your children are born on the titra and then every parent you know you hope then he will sit on the majeseni and then the parent molds that child you know into a jew or christian an agent but we mold them into what we want we mold them to you know to love basketball or to love soccer or to or to love this or love that or hate to try this so we are cooking a dish right and uh and so um I don't think it's a shortage of good intentions of good hearts or good ideas I think every parent wants their child to be to be uh in in our context to be a good musnip they have good edith to love god and the messenger of god so I say to pray uh to be good to their neighbors uh and so all the parents want that right we all want these similar ideas in general we all we have a consensus on what goodness looks like and but then what happens where the missing link with all island that was best is the methods you know and and because culture is changing so rapidly those methods uh are also so relevant so the way the way I the way I see parenting is how can we strategically convey those principles that we all agree upon and it's and good intentions are not enough you know and they are important and necessary okay but they're not sufficient so good intentions good hearts you know intelligence is not enough so it's those methods that we can uh that we can learn from um from the you know the experience of our you know of our elders and of our community and that wisdom and what methods can we employ so that that that's how I see it yeah absolutely but it's time for us to turn it yeah I would just um that was beautifully said um you know mashallah what you're doing here is incredible because I always say um child rearing well when we were growing up here I feel our parents were really focused on pouring the knowledge into the vessel but society as a whole even though we're products of public school society as a whole built healthy vessels although it was going askew but it still wasn't where it is now but I think that the vessel is broken and the vessel is the child so it doesn't matter what you're pouring into the child if you're not building a vessel that can contain truth recognize beauty then um it's fruitless so this kind of communication where schools Islamic schools are with the parents um I think it starts here you're building the vessel because terbiyah is the building of the vessel and um like brother Mahdi and like Mahdi and you know we're saying um there are methods inshallah we can talk about those yeah for sure inshallah we'll definitely get to the methods and I think that's the key point and I want to reserve as much time as we have for that but I do want to say like um you know obviously like you said we've definitely seen um the the in terms of passing on the wisdom of the generations before us um one of the things that we often see is like this rise of like innovation or modernity or what's new is is the direction to go and so we're always kind of wanting to forward look forward so talk a little bit about the need maybe of like retaining those wisdoms I mean at peace here is like one of the things that we're kind of gearing towards and have moved towards uh slowly is the um providing a classical education to our children and the reason for that is not because we want to retain them or stunt their growth and in terms of innovation or the future but rather this concept of like the wisdom of the past so maybe you all can talk a little bit about like what are some of the um issues and principles that people of the past may not have had uh that we have now in our society that uh that impacts us like I know I mean one of the biggest things that we can talk about is like screens right like in the news thing yeah so maybe talk a little bit about the impact on that if you guys have dealt with youth or children um with with those things and what might be some of the impact of those kinds of things but do you want to and I would say um one of the biggest ailments of modern society is individualism um we're a rights-based society versus a duty-based society which our tradition was historically and most eastern traditions still are um duty-based societies and how that translates is you know the breakdown of the family right because when everyone's just by the very definition of family it's a it's a duty-based it's what can I do for the family versus what can the family do for me um and um that that individual individualism is built through the nuance of language um I kind of the thing I say is um words build worlds right and so as a parent you're constantly giving your children their worldview through how you communicate with them in very small ways actually it's such nuanced ways it's life is in the details it's not in the grand gestures so it's not in the lecture that you're giving it's in how you're asking them to do this or that and how you're how you're um how you're you know what what worldview you're giving them in that but um I'd say individualism is a big one um and screens are just a manifestation of that I you know I think they're they're a very tangible ailment um but the underlying ailment is individualism but yeah screens are definitely a huge problem for our youth uh screen addiction um and I tell my students and my children I tell them you guys are anytime there's a new technology um usually society kind of experiments with it then they see the dangers of it then they build laws around it then they build education around it and the culture kind of shifts and I use cars and seat belts usually that's an easy one when cars are invented there were no traffic lights there were no seat belts there was no driver's license and just they were invented and then accidents happen and then laws and in the 1970s I don't think um car seats were even required yet now they'll call child cps on you if you don't have a car seat so you know you're the experiment generation I in in 10 20 30 40 50 years I'm sure there are going to be laws I know China just implemented funnily enough that Elm tree you know I don't know Elm tree has a a media policy where kids can only uh watch three hours of engage with three hours of screen time a week um China just implemented that for its kids um for its population so the laws countries are following you know that they're seeing the damage so yeah definitely screen awareness is a huge one um because it's breaking down the vessel so yeah well the line you said teaching is in the details of the grand gesture yeah because that it's so true that was something I definitely picked up on for Elmira like um how many of you here know the picture book the giving tree by shell silverstein so the giving tree is a very popular picture book and um I always enjoyed it reading it and then I saw a critique written on it a few years ago and I remember discussing with Amira so the giving tree just a quick synopsis it's about a tree that loves a little boy and the little boy keeps coming back to the tree and keeps taking things from her one after the other her branches her leaves her fruit until there's like nothing left she's basically cut down to a stump and he's still coming back to her for one thing after the other and she's still giving to him and every time the boy spends a little bit of time with the tree she's happy and so the critique that was written about the book that's been so popular for so many years was about how it was a terrible message and that you know the tree didn't have boundaries and the tree didn't have you know the boy was a little narcissist and the tree was just giving and giving and being abused and didn't recognize that she was being abused and basically if we read this book to our boys we're teaching them to be narcissists and to grow up you know mistreating the women in their lives and when I talked to Amira about it Amira's take on it was completely different which was that this book was about um the exchange of love between a mother and a son and how a mother that's her role that she'll give and give and give and without really expecting anything in return obviously it's the duty on the children and for us to model for them to teach them about how to give back but that the ultimate message of the book was a beautiful one and so it's in those discussions that when you read picture books like that because what I always tell my kids my students is that every single book we read now every movie every video game every song that you listen to every single uh form of entertainment that we're exposing ourselves to is giving us a message and nobody's writing or creating unless they are putting a message out there that they want to share with the world and not all messages are good messages and it's up to us to learn how to decipher those messages and so what I used to tell my kids is that um I'm not going to teach you Inchella my goal isn't to teach you what to think it's to teach you how to think because you're not always going to be with us but there's going to be certain parameters within which you have to learn how to decipher the world around you look at the world around you through the eye of discernment they say and so that was to me an example of how you can choose to ban a book you can choose to cancel it you can choose to like be like no don't have nothing to do with it or you can choose to engage with it with your kids teaching them how to decipher the messaging that's given and another dad at Entree he uh told us about how he couldn't stand the movie frozen and it was the most popular movie every kid and their mother was watching it but he didn't ban the movie he didn't tell his kids you can't watch the movie frozen he watched the movie with his kids but then he told his kids what he had a problem with and he would ask them well what do you think about the lyrics in the song that say let it go that the rules don't matter right wrong you know none of these matter i'm free when i can do what i want and you know getting the kids to think about well what are rules what rules do rules play in our lives what's shettia what's fit what what our worlds look like if we did away with all the rules in our lives so in the end the kids concluded that they still like the movie they still enjoyed it but the dad managed to get his voice into his kids heads right so um any mom thought here also he said that all dads should be playing the video games with their kids so so that you know what your kids are playing what they're being taught so um that's just one example of like how to inshallah uh help our help our kids to decide for me i think what was said here is that i felt like the biggest blind spots of well-meaning well-intentioned parents are the children so i was raised at home and because my father was praying my mother was praying they talked to us about that we would be muslims but as i raised children i realized there's a there's a generation gap there's a continental gap because they were raised in pakistan i was raised here and then there's a societal gap meaning society has advanced so much and changed between when i was a kid two now so there's these not just one gap we always know the generation yeah we just talk to our kids and they don't get it right so there's these three gaps and um to not assume that because they're with you and you're nurturing them you know you're you're doing all the homely things that's not what's going to get the bean in their heart and having that voice and asking them open-ended questions about a movie like frozen like what do you think the message is this really listening to them so you can understand um it is is really important i never received the talk from my father but i had to give the talk to my my boys it was a new thing and you know you hear new fathers like oh my god when that day comes you know can you do it for me and i've also done it for other people so we have to rely on the village we have to rely on really really not having those blind spots with our own children because the children are they're your children but they're also uh so susceptible to the to what's going on in society and what's going on around them so uh well-meaning parents you know with blind spots and really engaging and then teaching the bean with luck my first Quran teacher in Pakistan in the first summer and he smacked me while i was reading Quran and that i can tell you that that affected me because the biggest thing that children can take is when religious people you're you're asking them to adopt a religion to learn a religion but when people in that mode who are older than you behave that right they don't behave in in accordance with the sunnah so it's very very important to teach this religion and the society with so much love and that's what brought me back to the religion while i was having very young children and that's i think part of the very important journey yeah that's okay so that uh that's a messy do you want to talk about maybe some of the ailments that you've seen that you've faced in your different roles or you know i can universally Dr. Hakim Murad says it says beautifully um we need to live in our time with timeless wisdom so um so set it another way uh we want to be rooted in our tradition and religion but want to be relevant we want to be connected to our our texts in our context you know set three different ways so um you know the ailments of today are and the obstacles in the hills of today are different than they were when i was a child you know 30 years ago and so the challenges are different but we still want to convey the same principles to to those children um and so uh so so so i think again it comes back to some of those methods that we will you know that that i've come to fall in love with you know that i that i've learned from others yeah and that i've seen very effective um and so you know that that's for me the exciting the exciting you know wisdom is the the lost property of the believer wherever he finds he takes it you know if you find wisdom and pros and take it out of a person but you know maybe they're the perfection in art you know and we need to protect our art in our schools you know what i mean yeah so so that that wisdom and parenting you know and coupled with the individualism of today where i want to do it on my own and my ideas and my way and no one no one you know invade my space and my boundaries and don't tell me what to do because i'm free so that that that recipe doesn't work to cook the dish that we want to cook for healthy wholesome happy children that are ready to navigate this world as as as as healthy i recently had a parent reach out to me and said i think i believe that my child has a learning disability and she's unable to focus in school she's unable to concentrate in class she's unable to listen to directions and follow directions could you please assess her for me just to you know an overview to just see if you know she has a learning disability and so i said well i i'm not a professional you definitely need to reach out to professionals but i can definitely come and spend some time with you and so i did that and and one of the things that i left her with is that you know your child does not have a learning disability your child is spoiled you know you need to every once in a while say no and set those boundaries and so if we are raising a generation of children who like you said are growing up that i am you know from the time that they're born and they're two years old and they learn the concept of mine and me and i they're big new foods and so our whole life is spent in trying to temper that down within ourselves like that enough right but in society now we're just continuously seeing that grow and continuing to please being kind of feeding that flame and watching it grow more and part of the thing that we're dealing with is an immense sense of like entitlement and an immense sense of lack of gratitude right and i mean i know for example for us you know growing up and i think for our parents generation is entirely different because even to our parents we were like you know kind of on shaky ground but growing up we had this innate sense of like my father works really hard you know my mother works really hard and i remember my older siblings would cry if my mom would be in the kitchen working and they were they she wouldn't let them like wash the dishes or do the laundry you know like if she was like no i want to do it myself they would really get emotional you know but we we don't have that you know kind of sense anymore or at least we're not seeing that within you know our children as we're as we're kind of dealing with the sense of individualism so yeah i'm gonna jump on to that we're spoiled because you know we live in a place we're here a lot of us have the ability to provide our children a lot of items and objects experiences and so and we like to do that as parents to bring them joy and happiness but there's a there's a difference between being spoiled and pampered and and and and both the spoiled child and the pampered child both receive the same gift but the spoiled child is entitled and the pampered child is grateful even though they're receiving the same octave right and so it is it wrong to quote and quote pampered child if they're grateful not necessarily wrong if they're grateful they appreciate it you know you can uh you know i i learned from a family where they give a it's called the putter and gift for every chapter of the put and that this child learns their parent gets them a put and you know there's certain parameters whatever 10 15 20 dollars whatever it is you know yeah used to be go to Toys R Us now it's Amazon but you get a put and then they make a put and gift list and you know they memorize you know 10 chapters and they can combine one get a bigger gift whatever is that wrong are they being spoiled there you know but if they're if it's a sense they have a sense of gratitude and they're grateful then then that's okay you're you're making it's it's a it's a tool to help them fall in love with the put and have a positive association and experience with the put and right you're receiving a gift as a reward and they're not being spoiled so so buying our children gift or many gifts isn't necessarily wrong as long as it's being you know processed in the correct way yeah absolutely i agree with that i mean but i i do i mean are you what are you seeing within your your your spheres of whether you know it's working or things like that that that sense of gratitude increasing as more materialism is increasing i mean i'm definitely for rewarding children in terms of like you like i remember at its camera one of the things that she said is muslims we have our festivals and our festivals come after two periods of like immense trials right so we we're definitely you know working very hard during Ramadan i'm definitely during the journey of hajj and then you know and as you mentioned this child who's working towards i'm going to memorize the Quran or i'm going to learn the 99 things of the law i'm going to do this particular thing to please my parents and so and and i think like everyone living according to their means you know is a great thing and rewarding children and and giving them things that they can nurture and kind of hold on to is great but as the materialism is kind of increasing one of the things that we do see is well i saw this thing on tv and it looks really enticing and exciting i want it now and then you know pairing those remarks and against the thing and then a few days later it's like on the pile of the rest of the toys you know so you know thinking about like we're i think we're definitely in a position to be able to buy things and give our children experiences maybe more so than our parents or maybe more so than our grandparents were in some cases because of just the environment that we're in and so on but but you know setting those limitations within those things and learning to say no about those things especially when we're seeing the hearts impacted by those things with that sense of ingratitude is something that i think we have to kind of wage as parents and kind of weigh in terms of what we want to do so just moving on into our next topic some of the things that we had come up with is um can i just come in on that yeah go ahead well absolutely absolutely so um just some ideas because to close it out give some tangibles i mean um we're dealing with a lot as parents right we're dealing with so much like there's so much there's depression there's anxiety there's suicide there's lgbtq there is uh there's um uh drugs there's pornography there's so much you know and i'm just there's many others i didn't mention okay um we have to choose our battles right and we can't choose every battle right and there's going to come a time where i'll be happy as long as you're right there will come a time where and the one who holds on gets the word of 50 sahaba and the one who does one tenth of the religion goes to jennet when if they missed one tenth they they would get so we're we're we're arguably yeah so we have to choose our battle so um you know yes it's it's it's not a nice feeling as a parent if i got my child a toy and then they threw in they didn't use it two days later and then they want the next yeah it's it's not cool um however um we we want to we can't we can't compromise the the health of the relationship of the child with the parents or the child with god or the child with the staff for the sake of some five dollar toy so an idea of choosing our battles sometimes we have to have strategic compromises right in other words getting getting that five dollar toy a dollar toy whatever it is they now have what what what what what what what what i understand they say in arabic their eyes their eyes say she also in arabic that's what our teacher is doing that then goes off in the background here in class you say the event and then you consider that's that's the end of it so um so um there's a saying in arabic and if we're raising our children where the forbidden is desired and they grow up they pretend 15 now 12 years old they feel deprived they feel snap deprived of this my parents deprived of this now they grow older now they're they blame a snap for this right and uh and so i want we want our children to be satiated my parents make i'm happy with my children they didn't deprive me absolutely right yeah childhood child so so like when they grow up now my parents didn't deprive me it's not they didn't deprive me i'm a happy person right i'm not going to grow up and now when i'm outside the house i'm 18 years old let me go sew my wild oaks and now i'm free let me go watch every single crazy movie let me go drink everything and try everything and do everything because i was never able to do anything in my youth in my childhood right absolutely so so the idea of choosing our battle strategically is something that we have we have to we have to face we have to choose you know as parents so i'm challenging the notion of how right it is we want to do this that that toy is is it's a little bit of views yeah you know maybe a little wasteful yeah and maybe that's the compromise we we somewhat need to make in our context here living in california in 2022 so we raise happy children that are not depressed and have anxiety go to trucks or just go to this or this or this or this or this a lot i have to work for my chores and then buy my toys myself and there's a very transactional part of it but then i think with our children it was like i think hannah read a book it was like at two years old your child wants to help you and they can you know use a fake room or you know one of those little rooms and they can also sort laundry by color that's right so those are very interesting things because then the child at a very early age is learning to contribute to what the family is doing you're a team it's not your parents are not your slaves right so you're and then the five-year-old can do the dishes and uh set the set the plate make the juice and then an older one can do you know there's there's gradations of what they're able to do but as you raise them and they want a toy you say mashallah you're a good kid you can have that but because they're part of the team yeah it's not as transactional as how i had it exactly right i had you know go wash the car mobile on mobile i had these checklist things to do so i could buy a 10-speed bike my father could have bought the bike but at the same time if he had said mashallah you're helping out you're a good kid here's the bike after you know several months i think that sits better with the child in the society we're in so i think there's there's that middle ground of like having your children contribute to your family needs as a team and then as they get older like we're seeing you know it it's just kind of a it's you don't have to shock it it's just kind of natural that they have that ownership over the house yeah inshallah whatever's best um to to build just on that a little bit um and i think being spoiled is with words what happens with words not with actions and what you're rewarding specifically but even like building a family where every it's a team i noticed myself asking i have three daughters um and i would tell them come help me in the kitchen and they always say of course you know they don't they don't say no then i realized by just by and this is what i mean by words build worlds um when i would say come help me in the kitchen what i'm implying what's the unset thing because every statement has an unset paragraph what's the premise behind that is this is my job and you're helping me with my job no you're not this is actually your job i'm helping you so i would say well let's clean the kitchen together so i stopped asking them for help and would ask them do you need help i can work with you you know so just kind of shifting that like um come come do this with me is not come help me unless you actually do need help when i need to make my bed i'll say hey can you help me make my bed because that's actually my that's my responsibility to make my own bed um even when i had their brother which they really wanted i said okay on one condition i'll help you when you guys but he's yours but um but yeah it's it's that it's you you spoil kids with uh words with expectations it's um how how you present the gift because gratitude it's not something that it's it's a byproduct of resilience people work towards gratitude without realizing that it takes foundational work before you get to gratitude you can't just gratitude isn't just manifest you have to have some foundational things as a human um and one of them one of the strongest ones and one of the most important ones is resilience because if you're not resilient you can't hear the word no you can't um you're presented with too many choices because choices equal disappoint choices equal disappointment um then you can't be grateful there's just no way and you're spoiled you are therefore spoiled and resilience is also there are methods and that's what terbia is you know um i tell my kids sometimes it's it's my job to make sure to make sure that you're uncomfortable like mama you're supposed to make us comfortable no because only the people that love you most can make you uncomfortable successfully so that when you're older you learn how to be comfortable that comfort comes from within not from without so it's just that that's worth spoiling it's not through um materialism as much as how that materialism comes into their household into their hands and their relationship with the material so absolutely no i'm no doubt about it i'm absolutely here with gratitude i'd also say that it's embedded in the in the prophetic duos and so it's important for me as a father to translate the duos for them in their in their five-year-old language right yeah seven-year-old language in the three-year-old language because they can say this drop for 20 years and never know what it means exactly so the drop for food it intrinsically has gratitude that this food that you gave you know the drop for clothes can't say any that you close me you know and so also like when we someone gives their their child a toy you can encourage them uh do uh suju chukru and then you know they don't bow on the ground and say thank you a lot shukr a lot shukr a lot so in that moment in that moment you know you're you're using the prophetic duos and the prophetic methods to imbue in them the shukr right and and to remind them that you know when you give your child medicine you say you know is the medicine curing you or is it large is the medicine curing you no they're they're four years old is this medicine curing you no but who's curing you oh well then you give them the medicine in their mouth you know so and these are all Islamic concepts i'm happy that's yeah i'm happy yeah well it's almost time for prayer but just one last question on this or one kind of comment on this um do you guys want to maybe some of you want to tackle um the roles of mothers and fathers or men and women within the home in in society today um there just seems to be so much confusion so much mixed messaging and so as parents we're often left with what is the dad's job what is the mom's job and how do we define those roles and how do we create the spectrum so what you know what are the teachings obviously of our Prophet ﷺ but also wisdoms of our past and some of the things that we're seeing today is definitely a lot of confusion a lot of mixed messaging around those kinds of things so so i don't know if anyone wants to talk about so are there defined roles absolutely when are we gonna break from break yeah we've got 20 we've got 15 we've got 15 i mean yeah there's definitely roles if that's the question there are definitely male and female roles there's i think everybody has a responsibility in the household it's not about male versus female mother versus father it's about how you work together as a team the child the elder the the father the mother um it was really nice in the past because there was it wasn't the the household wasn't about the woman and the man it was about a family there were elders there there's the elders of the elders i mean it was just so beautiful it was an upward facing society not a downward now we're very child-centric right um but it's really important that as a mother i mean i find it's it's important to for my own daughters and for my own sons to show that there are roles and to honor those roles um it doesn't mean um that uh you know men don't work in the household and women don't work outside of the household that's not what it means it's it's actually just in i think people lose their sense of role and duty in the household with their words again it just goes back to words it's not about like i i want my daughters to see me um i know this can be so controversial but even though i know i can go somewhere it's not a question of whether i can or can't it's out of eddeb for this partnership that i ask you know they need to witness that otherwise it's just like well it's again it's my right my right versus my duty my duty so it is important to reinforce roles in the household especially considering everything that's out there um and honoring our daughters and honoring our sons um i growing up i had four brothers and i'm an only girl um so that can translate into a nightmare because like you'd be serving your brothers right but that didn't happen come down to my household i mean my daughter my my father treated me like a my name is literally princess um that's how it translates um but i mean and i served in my household but like my brothers took out the garbage for example they cleaned the cars it's not that i couldn't but i didn't have to right um so honoring females and honoring males um through their roles is really important and then modeling it as parents with uh through respect and through language i'd love to hear what uh yeah shine i'm gonna have to say yeah i'm just gonna tag tag tag on so i think it's cool for that for the parents to tag team the tag team meaning i uplift mom in front of the children she uplifts dad 100 percent yeah because that way it's more honorable probably me uplifting myself in front of the children another way is let's say there is a moment of you know tension with your discipline or something between the father and the child you know i'll go to amida you know you know and likewise if she's having something she'll come to me and say hey i had this moment with so-and-so go tell her to come you know so if i tell my daughter hey go you know kiss your mom's hand and tell her sorry it's beautiful if she said the same thing go you know so it's this tag team you know someone once said that you know we love a lot the most and then mom and then dad with love and then they say we obey a lot but like which one is like well hold on but i love mom more so it's so it's not like this one is higher or this one's lower because you love mom more right according to the prophetic yeah to my care and my devotion my love you know your mom and then you your mom and then you your mom and then you and then your dad you know so it's not fair that's a fan state right but then but then obedience sometimes well is the father of the house and so but if the if the father is implementing that in his house it doesn't work but if the mom is the one supporting that you know under your father and then it works and then it's honorable and then it's you know it's smooth it's gentle it's lovely but if the father is self-imposing it you know then it doesn't sound right yeah so the tag team is so important yeah it can't be like well i just put my child and then mom comes says why'd you do this to so-and-so you know how dare you you know and then all of a sudden you're or vice versa why'd you say this that you know you can't do that you're undermining each other you know mixed messages yeah yeah i love to hear again no that's exact ditto languages you know there's this concept that dad works eight hours and then the mom's work is never done this is paradigm in society that oh we do eight but they do 24 so it's not fair so but but you know the work and the quality of work and the slings and arrows that you take in each job are very different i mean i have a commute i have a boss i have work that needs to be done i have pressure i can get fired a woman has the right to be supported the days are longer right the days are longer so there is a there is a balance there like i said in one sense we have one quality that is given to us and with another quality we have a responsibility for that quality and so i mean we started out as friends we've always maintained friendship and i never undermine her feminine nature i have three boys so we don't have the the luxury of daughter we tried the third one was supposed to be a girl we let him know that but you know we never undermine our role so it's very important for all your dad if the like the languages i have my hands full over here and your dad won't even pick up the cup and you won't even do the laundry he knows the he knows the washing machine's full of stuff if you're using that kind of language around your children you're emasculating your husband because you're you're you're treating him and his role with contempt you're not seeing the walls and the sugar and the water and the washing machine you're only seeing the load right you're only seeing the load that's very myopic and so that's why sugar is such it's it's the root sugar and love is the root of everything and so when you think that that laundry is there but then the washing machine and the water the bills come from you won't have that attitude but what's really important that's kind of a tangent what's really important is the is honoring the person by giving them the benefit of that saying um okay if if if if he didn't look he didn't see it i just need to ask you know he came home he could be thinking about a terrible day his mind is not on oh look the laundry machine's full you know that's not how we operate and so giving each other the benefit of that i think is really important using the language the the words the worlds that that's beautiful actually because um you know that's and then i had three things that i my wife knew i was read i'm really good i'm good at chopping i love using the knife i think i'm a samurai i like to read to the children because a lot of times i was involved i was read to and i have exposure to books through my children which i learned a lot through and the other thing is i like to bathe them and put them to bed so she knew that these are his strengths these are things i'm not going to ask him to do these other things i'm going to ask him to cook the chop but i and then she knew that during that time those things he'll take care of it i'll get my break i'll get my downtime and again it was like oh can i do this with my friends can i do that with this having that respect with each other so you know just adding on to what it's already i honestly think everything was so yeah yeah absolutely um i remember growing up i never saw my parents fighting like ever i don't think i there's one time when i witnessed an argument that they were in and so i just thought they just got along really well that there was never an intention between them you know ever and so as an adult i i said you know i i talked to my mom one day and i was like how did you guys have this connection you never fought and one of the things i my mom started laughing and saying we just never fought and argued in front of you and it was very eye-opening but i think connecting it back to what you said is i don't think they ever wanted us as children to witness them being dealing with some of the adult things that they were dealing with or some of the pressures of life that they were dealing with and so we never got the sense of you know not only like this chord within the home but also disrespect towards each other language that was used that might have been disrespectful or tensions that might have been within their marriage that might have been you know impactful and so one of the things that you know practice that i want to put that i implemented in our family and in my own household with this concept of we're not going to argue in front of our children you know and it was just something that really i think is a positive thing you know kind of a wisdom that we took away from our parents washallah so i absolutely agree um yeah i i think defined roles you know when you study this enough the prophet saw some and you see the examples of who he was at so many different spectrums of roles and then you hear the fact that he also you know took care of his household and was at the service of his household and maintained his own chair tours and things like that um it's just it's mind-boggling to see that level of beauty and i think i think our tradition doesn't boil down the human to the utilitarian value and that's like even the idea of gender roles i i'd like to even um the premise of that is that we're all very utilitarian the society is very utilitarian we have responsibilities as females and we have natural characteristics the female of course there's a spectrum for everything but the female in the male a lost partner has imbued the male with with characteristics and imbued the female with characteristics and these characteristics lend to certain types of responsibilities and roles and they can cross mingle because all of us have that that whole spectrum but girls tend to be you know with mercy and um we have more rahma i mean that is the that is in the biology of a female the mercy the rahm right and um men they have like the futuwa and the responsibility and the like honoring in the safety and you know um so i mean one metaphor that i love is um men are like the pawns that carry the household within you know and they carry the woman right they they're there to like my brothers they're my honor and i feel it you know um they're not my competition and neither am i theirs um and i think because we're in such a utilitarian society everything is competition everything is you know one upping the other and unfortunately that's blood down into the family yeah but but historically it wasn't that that whole thing of gender roles didn't even exist as a concept and that's that's i think a lot of things is a lot of the things were being pushed up against in today's ailments like if you're talking about modern ailments is that these concepts didn't exist they didn't even exist linguistically i mean arabic is such a beautiful language but um it was my aunt she's just like oh you want to save your kids just don't teach them don't teach them english i was like okay i don't live in america she's like try to say self-care in arabic yeah it sounds silly or personal space you know these because these words you know they don't exist right self-service or self-service you know um or self-care um all these things all these concepts so so gender roles it translate that into arabic you know so it's it's not about that it's beyond that so yeah and definitely it's a very beautiful way to think about it i think the one of the things watching her have babies you know and you know there's this quality that amir mentioned which is i could be asleep and then she can hear the child the very very lowest tone cry and get up and go right and how do you do that how do you have this radar that does that and then at the same time the men were the ones that are have an argument in the home or be displeased with something that was going on and then still go outside and in the old days track an animal and shoot the arrow true cloud all those other things that are happening so the village days we had this separation of duties in the ceo and cfo one's good with money one's good with selling yeah right every company has that but yet we don't have the differential this modern society's telling the family unit don't have these differential roles everybody's got to play everything and be around you don't want your engineer doing the accounting so right you don't want to invest in a company that would do that and so um you know we have to honor these special abilities that we have and and notice the beauty of them even though everything comes with the double insult so that emotion and that nurturing comes with comes with a negative and are being able to block it out comes with a negative oh my gosh he doesn't see things you know those kinds of things so we're not your girlfriends i mean process yeah that's all we have time for yeah inshallah so we're going to go ahead and take a break for prayer inshallah and then when we come back inshallah we're going to talk about what does going back to the source look like and what does a home with harmony and peace and love and compassion and all these beautiful noble qualities actually look and feel like and get into some of the solutions and some of the ideas and some of the methods that you were talking about because it's really important for us to leave with something tangible for us to be able to implement in our homes and within our children and within our families inshallah so i'm looking forward to the second part of the discussion to get to some of those methods and some of those solutions because just having the knowledge of doing something doesn't necessarily mean that you're going to be able to carry it out and as was suddenly mentioned we definitely need to know the how and i think one of the things that you said in terms of like the three gaps that we have it's not just generational right it's not just like adult's child but so many other factors that we're kind of dealing with so it's important for us to be able to have those tools to to address address our children and and to make sure that our homes are healthy inshallah before we get that one of the things that kind of came up from my discussions during our break was addressing maybe single parents as well in our in our conversations and making sure that we're kind of maybe touching on some points of you know single parent homes and then also like you know when we're talking about roles sometimes like in reality we don't have choices around certain things so it's really great when you have a choice to just be a mom at home and raise your kids and not have to worry about going and supporting your family but sometimes we definitely don't have those choices and so so talking a little bit about that because when it you know when it's ideal you know where everyone everything is defined obviously it makes yeah it makes it a lot easier but sometimes when those you know you might have a mom that's the breadwinner that's the main breadwinner in a home and you might have a dad that's that's not and so these points of conflict sometimes you know our expectations kind of set the tone around and can create additional conflicts so so maybe getting a little bit into that in terms of like not necessarily having a choice around certain things yeah so any going back to our topic what does going back to the source look like what is the what is a home with harmony and presence of Allah swt and remembrance of the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam and all those ideals that that we want in our homes and I agree with the said Mahdi the lack of intention and goodwill is not the issue how do we achieve that how do we begin that how do we begin that journey today and for those of us those of our audience member who may not be you know in that perfect situation yet how do they kind of come to terms and begin a new so some ideas around those things would be great I would touch on something that brother Mahdi had mentioned earlier about you know how the forbidden is desired one of the best pieces of advice I feel I was given by elders she said that for every hadam that you stop your children from you have to give them two halals that they can enjoy so that that awareness that parenting requires a lot of creativity it requires generosity it requires going the extra mile like we were talking about like paying more than you may have wanted to pay for an experience for your children to have a positive association with Islam and so because there's so many things pulling out our kids in society it's really really important that what they're experienced with the deen is that it be very positive and be very joyful and like yeah we teach our children to love Allah spanathala and fear him but the early years the majority of the focus I would say should be on the love there's a time where you make your kids aware of the majesty of Allah and aware of the consequences and repercussions and real fear and awe and that especially has to be there in the teenage years but the early years when they're little preschool you know toddlers preschoolers elementary school the whole approach to the I think what I've seen successful with many families is when it comes from a place of joy and it comes from a place of love oh yeah and so like one example of being creative is like our community I don't know how people here feel but I'll just say that in our community the like-minded families pretty much came to the conclusion that they weren't going to celebrate Halloween and they weren't going to you know support that in their households and so everyone can have their personal opinion on the matter but that's what it was in our community but instead of just telling the kids oh Halloween instead being creative and coming up with an event on October 31st that wasn't called Halloween and but was you know full of joy creativity sang the sheets we were you know on a ranch did bonfire did hay rides did face painting that wasn't morbid or ghoulish or macabre and you know for years that was the alternative that we had for Halloween and then when my son went to high school and then he had he was in public high school and he had friends who were celebrating Halloween and going trick-or-treating I asked him once that do you ever feel that you missed out do you ever feel like this important rite of passage all these kids you know are doing this that you didn't get to experience it and I remember that he actually thought about it he said you know because we used to call that event november's eve so he said you know if I didn't have november's eve then maybe I would have felt that way for sure but I always had some more fun to go and when the neighbors or other kids would ask me what are you doing I was able to say oh I'm going some more fun we're going to be doing something fun so I don't I didn't feel like missed out and what that points to is that because I recently read something that a scholar wrote about having a conversation with his child about Halloween and his emphasis his child's still pretty young his emphasis was on his kid being a strong enough Muslim to talk stand up to everybody and tell them why we don't celebrate Halloween but the truth of what I've seen majority of kids is they don't want to proselytize they don't want to go around trying to convince anybody of that their way is the right way they just want to fit in and they they they want to be doing something fun they want to be able to prove they're doing something fun and so for the most part is like if if we can give our kids alternatives that they can be proud of and feel like they're not missing out on then inshallah hopefully and another piece of advice that was really really good is we actually asked Amruderi Matthew and Amirah Uncle that you know with all the craziness out there everything that's going on how do we protect our kids like the whole world just feels upside down right now and he said you know with every storm that Alas Panathala has created every hurricane every tornado every typhoon he's created the eye of the storm the center which is calm and peaceful and things aren't swirling around and aren't crazy he said you have to make your home the eye of that storm so that no matter what's going on around you like the kids have a solid base where they're seeing things peaceful and they see Islam being practiced they see Islam working they see joy so inshallah if those are the nouns that they're associating with their deem then inshallah inshallah we want them to hold on to the deem because they recognize it as the truth with the capital T but we also want them to see that Islam benefited them and that it worked going off Amruderi and the single parent that because you know we're talking here about parenting and we're assuming that every household has two parents and that's not the reality for many households and Amruderi for my uncle he was married to my mom's identical twin and she passed away when her children were 13, 11, 7 and 8 and 6 and they were raised by a single father for a very long time and Hispana from all the cousins are probably the healthiest most well-adjusted from all of us and what I learned through that experience and what my mother taught me is that first of all parents are just we're like vessels that Allah's Panathana provides for these human beings through us but when He removes a vessel doesn't mean He's not still providing in other ways and I saw that through my cousins the Prophet Sallallahu alayhi was raised by a single mother many of our prophets were some of our greatest scholars were raised by single parents so parent parenting Allah is providing for your children through you and sometimes it's going to be you by yourself sometimes it's going to be you with a partner and sometimes inshallah it's you with a village but to just really remember that you know having that kind of tawakkun on Allah's Panathana and something I learned from Hina is that as much as you do and you do and you do and you do Allah's Panathana he's the turner of hearts all these children they actually belong to God and everything we do can provide can like the outcomes are not in our hands so you know may Allah protect these kids and protect our parents you know protect all of us um and protect these marriages sometimes a single child growing up in a single household is infinitely more healthy than one in a broken marriage so you know protect these marriages protect all of this because you know we have a lot um there's a lot for going against our kids but uh but yeah may Allah protect them so I just wanted to put that out there that being a single parent it's Allah's Panathana his hand is there with you so you might be better off than two two parent households um but yeah so just wanted to add that um so you want to talk about a joyful home yeah um so um so I prepared um uh for this and and so I'm going to share um with your permission and your blessing I'm going to share what what I'm really passionate about sharing it's parenting um and I'm going to share in three or four minutes 20 methods right so really note taker take notes because these are things that are just that I've benefited from tremendously so it's literally 20 different points so uh so uh first of all and then after that and then after that after that and then after that if I just said until the end of the session we would be better off than anything else I'm serious like like the best strategy is before you want to go and help you know and after that because Allah can take care of your child's heart or that flaw or that trigger that thing you want to do is stop doing like it's like a law I can't do it but you can't you know I can't do it you can't you know and the closet and the stuff that would have been so dry is so critical so critical um so number two there's this really cool concept it's called the four quadrants for parenting it's on two axis it's firmness and kindness and so the first quadrant is high kindness high firmness then there's high kindness low firmness there's high firmness low kindness and low firmness low kindness we want to be in high firmness high kindness to develop and make the healthiest happiest children who who who feel loved and who are also mature and have edit if we have high kindness low firmness they're loved but they're spoiled they have no edit we have high firmness low kindness then they're disciplined but they're resentful and they don't have healthy relationships and then low firmness low kindness there's no edit no discipline no love right so that's two so and then number three the child is not the boss this is very important you need to decide that before you even have children or when your child is like one year old my child's not the boss because when they throw a tantrum when they're one year old and one and a half you have to you have to believe my child's not the boss if you don't believe that parenting's going to fail if i don't believe that i'm the boss and i let my child be the boss and i need my child's permission my parenting will fail i cannot teach him anything not when they're two years old not when they're five now they're telling us they're 15 but the child's the boss i failed and i only have like two and a half minutes so i can't be there okay um right they a child if a child number four a child expects no it's healthier than expecting yes why because if they expect no then when you say no then they're expectations and if they if they get yes then they're so excited and happy now if they expect yes then when they get yes okay and if they get no they're unhappy so you set them up if they expect no you set them up for a satisfaction or happiness if they expect no you set them up for a satisfaction or unhappiness disappointment you see so it's strategic so they should expect to know right okay uh next is this whole group uh elders cousins aunts uncles don't get involved you're not i'm not the best parent you're not the best parent let elders do their thing let uncle do their thing let aunts do their thing even if they're going to feed them five pounds of chocolate it's okay okay even if grandparents are going to feed it's okay even if they're going to let them watch something that you don't really love it it's okay these are all convert into teachable moments right and then it shows number one it shows that you're teaching them have ed up to elders because you don't want to undermine that because if you undermine that one day they're going to disrespect you as an outbreak when you're their grandparent right they're pretty grandparent okay like for example at one time we need a video we had a formal baby we were going to Chicago my baby was four months old i looked on the plane i looked at my wife i was like you know what grandpa's gonna do all this baby's had his nursing mother's milk grandpa's gonna feed it the moment we get there at midnight now you know what we're gonna do and we have a deal that we honor grandparents and we don't get involved because we don't want to sever those relationships and build tension and all that so we let them do what they're gonna do we get there at midnight of course grandma cook the feast it's like one a.m there's this feast there's yeah but i don't know you have stuff so my dad's like i had to have to hold on give me give me a hand he takes this four month old off mother's milk he takes the yabra the stuff bravely he's like come here my boy the first thing he ever had was yabra as a four month old right and then he took the piece of line he's like come here come here my son and me and my leader are like right and we didn't say anything and my daughters are all learning my daughters and they're observing us being silent observing us respecting you know and then it's okay the 99% they're at home they're with us 1% they're with others that's fine okay all right number number six okay number number six this is really cool this is about making moments making and nothing making a normal moment into a memorable moment so your your your son is not great at cleaning okay one day he cleans something all of a sudden you make that majestic moment oh my god and then you mention it a week later all of a sudden it builds him it defined him it defines who he is and now all of a sudden a month later now he's i'm i'm i'm a cleaner i clean my room right so you made it into a moment i'm gonna go faster now number seven part of that is to do reinforcing stories what does that mean so we'll be in the car our child's in the back and we'll be talking to each other knowing that they're listening back to my we don't know they're listening and i'll say hey do you know today you know so-and-so they clean their room all by themselves i went in there it was so clean of course they're listening you know but i act like they're not you know and then and then she knows what i'm doing oh wow what did you do yeah the closet was so clean the drawers were impeccable and his clothes were hung up and so all of a sudden you're talking about it in front of him now be careful if you do the opposite and talk about negative characteristics you're doing the same thing you're reinforcing the negative okay so that's seven seven eight okay next is oh yeah the natural poop you already did that uh okay uh one-on-one trips very healthy you have more than one time take it one-on-one go have sushi with them take them out to the park alone if you have to travel to florida to washington take one-on-one trips it's very healthy ability to buy next we talked about this translate your odds these are prophetic prayers they're not from us they were one time i translated uh the doctor clothes for my like five-year-old or something and i was like thank you a lot for giving me this clothes even though i don't deserve it and then she was like i do deserve it and i was like that the nefs you see that he goes that we had a conversation right that a law gives us this we can't we can't so but translating the odds of the car of leaving the house of food everything translating them all before they drop before you sleep they they're from the prophecy so they they shape paradox right okay next we kind of mentioned this a healthy discomfort discomfort is healthy because you're building resilience they don't have this entitlement et cetera we talked about that uh next don't give choices because choices again is disappointing so it relates to help uh healthy discomfort you can go buy a sandwich buy 10 chicken sandwiches don't say this one gets in the lettuce this one extra tomato this one double fried bun this one you know because then basically they have all this criteria to be happy they have 10 criteria to be satisfied with your sandwich instead of one chicken sandwich you know and so you're sending them up i need to customize sandwich to be happy and if i don't get it so what's going to happen when they're 20 years old they don't get what they want you create a monster and then whenever they're uncomfortable with something they want to change it when comfortable with my shoes shoes change it comfortable with my sandwich change it i'm uncomfortable with my jacket change it i'm uncomfortable with my wife i'm uncomfortable with my religion i'm comfortable with my school let's take you to another school i'm going to you know so we don't do that no we embrace discomfort we bring up the best okay uh okay now so and then finally uh they give traditions they give traditions uh they give traditions so in your home do they give traditions Friday before beret do salawaks for two three four minutes we can have together when they're really no okay and when they get older they'll be a part of their house okay now that was number 13 so the seven more that i said 20 the seven remaining have to do with what happens when my child does something wrong the discipline the correcting okay now these are really cool methods on doing that okay number one do our okay number two it's a really cool thing uh it's it's we don't don't do the blame game don't get in the blame game who did this why did you do this why did you do that so for example if you want to teach them how to clean the bathroom don't say why did you do this how many times you have to do this why just just call your children go in the bathroom and say hey guys i want to show you something put the toilet paper roll good fix the towel do the curtain wipe the sink looks nice right okay two days later the same thing happens hey guys i want to show you something go back in the bathroom fix the towel wipe the sink close the curtain put the slippers one week later the same thing happens there's no blaming slow i said i said i serve the profits i said i'm 10 years you never told me why did you do this why didn't you do this 10 years okay okay now number three with discipline is just model it don't play don't correct don't yell so even when they're two years old for example one time my son was in the back of the car he wanted me to open the window open the window and he was like yelling i was like whoa what's that so so what we did was i was just like then i would say thank you and then i would say thank you so yes sure my my darling thank you i'd open the window next day he yelled third day he yelled and i just say it out loud fourth day gets what he said oh the rest of his life he learned that's it i didn't have to give a lecture don't yell ask nicely just don't yell ask nicely why do you do this word just model okay now number four with discipline is this really amazing thing it's called try again and this is so beautiful and so let's say your child does something let's say they they place they serve you a cup and or they give you something when they give it to you they throw it instead of saying option one you can say don't throw it that's bad at them all you have to say try again they come no lecture no blame no negativity and they practiced it and they had to figure out what they needed to try again so it becomes it becomes internal it's such a powerful tool and it can be anything they're running they're noisy they're running down the stairs try again they go upstairs no lecture no yelling no negative how many times did i have to tell you to go down this avoid all of that and maybe they asked you something why don't we have to do this so but they had to number one you avoided the yelling number two they had to figure it out and number three they practiced it so it becomes part of it okay now number five with disciplining there's a really cool thing it's called negative positive principal the way you can do something like one time my like if someone's sitting on something they shouldn't sit on you can say don't sit on that negative you can say can you sit there instead positive or you can say sitting on that might it might cause it to break and don't tell them what to do now all of a sudden they will choose the right thing to do and they'll do it for the rest of their life because you gave them the principal and that applies with everything even in like let's say you want them to start prayer on time you can say don't miss the the first year god why don't you always miss the first year god make it start with the imam positive or you can say the one who starts with the imam gets the most reward a more perfect prayer starts with the imam use planting seeds they'll blossom a year later two years later five years later planting seeds that's number five number six they're disciplining um private time i'll let wait what was five five was trying five was trying yeah number one we're talking about the other one take principal parenting negative positive principal the prophet says to them did that all the time this hadith you'll see it in the hadith you always gave principles when someone did something wrong negative or something you wanted to correct you give a principal and that's why all of his hadith we have all his principles it's amazing and then the person does it from within their heart because they're convinced of the goodness okay my time is up so um we work at entry and one of i think the benefits of being at entry and the benefits of being here is you guys are also a community and you all are going through something have been through something so leaning in and asking what can i learn i'm struggling with this what did you do so i i learned a lot from henna was my predecessor and i've learned so much from her and her friends and they're my role models but i think two things that really changed the way i parent and especially for my daughters and it works for boys too but i've only had experience with my girls because my boys are still younger um what i developed is um i think i started it when my daughter was around the age of seven um i told her i sat her down and i said i i want to tell you about something that you can have with me called private time and what private time is it's a time for you to tell me anything anything whether it's something you heard that you're confused about whether you stole something whether you lied to me about something whether you hurt someone whether you anything anything there is nothing you can tell me during private time that i will be shocked about that you will get in trouble about all we're going to do during private time is give you tools to fix whatever it is that's that's you're struggling with that's it just like even if i tell you that i lied to you and like even if you tell me that you lied to me even if you told me god forbid that you killed someone and you're not going to get in trouble with me it's just here for that and she's like can i call it whenever i want i said you can call it whenever you want and i will give you the time if i'm cooking if i'm in the middle of cooking i will you know make fix that situation and then i will give you my full attention so it started and the things that have come out from that are tremendous um you know what i learned is that kids carry a lot um they have a lot of confusion about themselves they're trying to understand the world there's a lot of guilt there's a lot of lying that happens and it's not like it's somewhat like confession but it's not because they're getting tools it's not just confessing you're forgiven it's more like give me the problem and let's find a solution so my younger daughter started seeing this and of course my four-year-old would start calling private time and her private time was like you know my sister took this from me or like i want to talk about the clouds but i honored it you know and so much has come out of it and sometimes depending on the temperament of your child one of my children private time only works if i'm laying down next to her in bed and the lights are off and we're not making eye contact and that can be especially true for boys boys don't like to make eye contact when they're being disciplined um and i'm treating the role i have um that i inherited from henna um whenever a child has we have to deal with disciplinary issues at entry i'm the one that steps in to to talk to the child and i noticed that if i sit across from a boy i'm going nowhere i have to either walk with them and we're just both looking you know a great time to do this is in the car um but you know just depending on the temperament of your child to just you know make sure that the situation you don't have private time in the middle of the room make sure it's it's it has its um right space um another great tool i learned is the baggage this from aisha um so uh the heavy baggage so heavy luggage sorry so whenever my children want to want to know about something that they're too young to know about um like many topics like uh for now it's like transgender homosexuality maybe your five or six year old is asking about that or or you know intimacy and all that stuff so when they're around six seven years old again i tell them um you know when we're traveling or or when i have a heavy suitcase can you carry it would you carry it down the stairs no you're too young to carry it so who carries it mama or baba do i said just like you're too young to physically carry things your heart and mind are also still growing and they're too young to carry parts of this world and there are parts of this world that you don't know about yet but you're going to know about them and i will tell you about them or they might come to you um but they are heavy parts of this world it doesn't mean they're ugly it just means they're heavy and you're not able to carry them and if they come to you at this age they're going to hurt you because you're too young to to hold them you know these realities so what happens is my daughters will come to me and if they had heard some because of course you can't control what your children get exposed to um they come to you and they say i think i think i've i think part of that world the heavy part of the world has come to me um and maybe i i need to talk to you about it and my daughters will say do you think i'm ready to talk about it and i say well what is it and they'll tell me and i'll be like oh okay you know um one of them is how our baby's made right one of my daughters came to me at nine years old saying can i know how how that happens and i said well it's part of that heavy part of the world and i don't think you're ready to hold it but if you think you're ready what do you think and she's like maybe i'll wait a little bit i'm like yeah so and then when i do introduce that subject to my kids they're around 12 11 12 depending on you know their maturity level it's just i've sit them down and i say okay you're old enough to hold something now so i'm gonna unload something on you and you're about to learn about a new reality of the world and so you know it gives them time to process and the idea behind this is you don't have to be curious about things because you're gonna know it's not like it's a forbidden thing you're never gonna know about and i tell them no matter what it is as crazy as it sounds i know because a lot of kids the thing is they feel that their parents don't know that like um let's say a nine-year-old gets exposed to pornography they might not come to a parent because there's no way my mom knows about this part of the world so i tell them there are parts of the world that are so crazy that you think i'm not going to know about i know so don't be worried and if you get exposed to it don't worry it's not it's not any it's not your fault you know because when a nine-year-old gets exposed to pornography there's no way on earth an adult wasn't a part of that whether an adult put a screen in their hand knowingly or unknowingly whatever it is it is not your fault that you were exposed to something like this it's the society's fault so that really helped so this this heavy luggage really worked and then my last thing is whenever i'm going to talk about any child whether it's my own child or when i'm talking to a child in an entry that you know we're dealing with their struggles we're dealing with their mistake what i realized is what really helps is to approach every mistake of a child with their strength rather than their weakness so what i start with is i say every human is born with strengths and i i like visualize it for them i was like this is your strength but every strength is enveloped in some weaknesses doesn't matter what the strength is and doesn't matter what the weakness is every weakness is attached to a strength and every strength is attached to the weakness this is what temperaments are context personality whatever it is when they say teterbia is the process of getting tools to peel back those weaknesses so that strength can shine so let's say you're a lot you have a child lies a lot i say okay you have a problem of lying usually it comes from fear but i'd say mashaAllah Allah has given you the strength of social awareness you're very socially aware you're so in tune with what people need that you're able to give them exactly what they need to hear part of that strength is the part of the the weakness of that strength is the ability to manipulate which is lying you manipulate the truth you manipulate this you manipulate that so don't be don't waste that strength through its weakness you know so and and you can literally apply this to anything um a child who's always tattletelling that's like the sunnah that's like uh you have the strength of siden musa aleyhisselam he is he was the just prophet people who tattle tell care a lot about justice so but the the the the the weakness of it is that you don't know how to apply it misapply it you compare a lot you're constantly looking at the weaknesses are negative negative others people care about justice right so you have to you give them the tools to be able to deal with that weakness and what happens then is that they internalize the strength not the weakness they don't label themselves as i am this person i'm a liar i'm a thief i'm a i'm a loser i'm a i give up i'm unintelligent you know whatever it is you don't you label it as a strength and and that um with my students and with my own children has really had a profound uh effect it's all from for the most kind of data but may only protect them so those those three things are i'm sure one more sorry no please go ahead that's really nuanced and very important and it's the timing of advice yeah because the timing of advice advice could make the advice fail or succeed you can make what you're advising about seeing that you fall in love with it or hate it like for example you want them to report and like i want to witness this there are these there are these there are these teenagers and they want to go watch a movie you're excited and they found the movie theater it's like you know 10 p.m. and they're all excited they're walking out the door and everything and then the dad comes in and he's like he's like no everyone sit down and report yeah like i was so pretty because now because now they're going to what am i going to detest the quran like stuff like that like they're gonna resent like yeah and then he started mentioning like names of our teacher and scholars why can't you be like so-and-so almost like like not even hate the scholars they're hating the scout yeah and so it killed me so for example flipping them let's say they're doing a chore they're going the lawn they're they're cleaning the house and they're so tired they just want to be done with it they're like okay fine fine fine you know what fine just you know i'll let you go read five yeah you know what i'm saying so the timing of advice can be very critical and how they receive it and accept it and sometimes we have to wait and pause the advice until a moment and say it in a way in a manner and in a timing where it becomes embraced and accepted by them you know our prophecy i said i'm not that long what's up with people why do they do this when they generalize it you say it three weeks later about someone else you tell them a story so you plan it out oh i heard you know such and such person and it has and they're not going to connect the dots but you plan the dots you can even do it six months later three months later they won't connect the dots but you are connecting the dots and it has to do with that exact thing you want to share with them but it's not demeaning them or belittling them so the timing of advice is very important and all of these things we're saying are very nuanced parenting things i think some of the things that are so obvious are not being said like don't give your child an iphone don't give your child a laptop you know beware of public school you know like some of these very obvious things we're not saying them you know because screen danger and iphone's more dangerous than a gun like you know some of these things are more obvious we didn't say them but i just you know yeah no much all right thank you guys for that uh much all a very comprehensive list lots of really great ideas there much all love um i just want to open up to i know we're we're getting to that time when everyone's getting tired and it's been a long tuesday much all about i want to give our audience some time to ask some questions if you guys have any how many thoughts or questions and also if you guys feel like you know there's anything additional to add to the list in chella please go ahead i wish i could redo it iphone battle is increasing yeah when it came in 2007 it seems like it was only 2007 it was a battle for teenagers maybe 16 and then you see 14 year olds have it and now nine year olds are battling like they yeah they feel nine year old feels like they have the right yeah right because it's a comparison thing so your your soba your family you and the extended village has to have those standards yeah yeah and um you know you have to be the unpopular be willing to say the no fight that battle because it's it's like a loaded gun and and moderately as an adult because we're on our we're on our phones a lot too you know don't read your put in on your phone your kids don't know that you're doing that pick up the most huff and like don't read your books on your phone pick up a book go get it from the library kids my mother my elder lives with us my mother lives with us and it's so much easier for her to read Quran on the phone and i actually requested from her i was like mama like i i want i core memory i have is seeing my grandma read Quran just i was playing around that it's like my kids don't know that's what you're doing when you're in the living room on the phone so i asked her please can you read from the must-have so that your your grandkids can see you reading Quran right so so do things get off for us before we tell kids to not have a phone we need to get off our own phones you know have have no screen time in your house have like a no screen below on the table for yourself um before your kids yeah one of the best piece of advice uh imam zade gave when our kids were little and we asked the question back then we didn't have smartphones but we asked about tv and movies and all that and he said expose your children to screen TV in homeopathic doses yeah meaning that if you uh completely tell them absolutely not you're not going to have it at all then when they are around it they go crazy like you know and i've seen that happen with other people kids who aren't allowed it at all um not having self control when they were around it and then if and i i had a friend who wants uh so we would do family movie night in our home so there'd be no tv all week but saturday night as a family we would have a movie that was approved and we would all watch it together and um i remember gradually over time uh zeeshan and i wanted our time to watch a movie so we started like setting the kids up with their movie that we knew was okay for them to watch and then zeeshan and i would watch ours and i remember my eldest son in those days we had borders in san heron like barnes and oboe and they'd be open until you know 11 o'clock at night at night we used to often take the kids there uh to read books and get hot chocolate and so one family movie night shan said to me mama do you think we can go to borders instead and read books and have hot chocolate and i said yeah we could but then you would lose out on your movie night the one movie you get to see during the week don't you want to have your movie night and he said yeah but the whole point of movie night was that we would watch it together but we're not doing that anymore so my soul just let's go to borders and that's when i realized that it wasn't even the movie so much that was so attractive it was the the family bonding the family time together and then the other thing i would say with movies of core memory of mine is a friend that i you know co-parented but she we raised our kids together she one day called me like really upset saying that um you know why do you let your boys watch these pg-13 movies because her kids weren't allowed to and she said and my boys tell me well the muhtars are allowed to why can't we and the muhtars are even younger than us and i was kind of like oh i'm sorry oh and i felt guilty like but then when we talked about it she came to the conclusion herself she said what she realized the key difference was that the pg-13 movies that we allowed our kids to watch at 10 11 was we watched it together so that we forwarded parts that weren't appropriate or explain things that might be to the best where she didn't watch movies for her she just needed a movie she could put on for her kids to watch and it'd be safe so she wasn't there to help them filter it so that was the key difference it wasn't that i just let them watch pg-13 or rated on movies so that's um again getting your voice into your kids heads and allowing them to learn how to decide for the world so i'd actually encourage that even for the movies that are like the non-approved things yeah like watch it with your children talk about it pause it like see what message they just put in your heart you dissect the language the hidden premise you see what they just did to you oh my god i didn't know it was there yeah it's the other control of you which i didn't use it and i think this guy this and i were supporting the other supporting this villain you wanted to do this and it's so hadam and you support it and you love them and support oh my god yeah so then you dissect it you know and then you move forward through these parts so you're modeling it so and then there's a so i encourage that it's a teachable moment and then there's a really cool service called vid angel yes it's a really cool uh filtering service yeah filters movies vid angel and also mindful muslim reader dot com it's a new website that the mirad read her close friends and i'm out with it's an excellent website everybody should be using it to choose books for their children it's called mindful muslim reader dot com and they've gone through years of reading books mashallah and choosing books that are worthy of reading to your children with your children you come up with talking points um and if there's anything problematic mentioning that but not canceling the book out totally they have very high standards for what makes for good reading and so it's finally we have a website i like common sense media as well yes um i think common sense media is a really good tool also for for parents to kind of counter some of the things that might be yeah so any questions it's 14 to like that's when you're a friend of from the other side of the silver like it's never too late it's never too late like watching movies together for example yeah talking about these ideas having one-on-one trips you know together like these you know some tools work at younger ages some tools work at older ages so it's never too late and then you have a lot of the flipper of hearts yeah absolutely you know yeah so if you're kind of midway in the parenting during then there's some people who've done some stuff like obviously amazing advice i'm like instantly want to go and change 10 things but how do you kind of like you just start modeling that then you're nice and practice them and you know hopefully like i hope that that's what over time it's reinforced or do you have a conversation about it yeah i think both so there's two things uh one is uh you model it for you know if you start eating salads your family will start eating salads a year later you know so if you start exercising your kids will start exercising two years later so model it and have trust that it'll happen uh with the model you know so so that's them that that is part of it of course draw draw draw draw draw draw draw um the conversation if there's going to be a shift the conversation can be an initial um depending on you know brain positively and depending on the maturity uh of the child um but the conversation can because um it takes you know it it takes these ideas sometimes to marry and so sometimes when you state the idea it helps the marination process um and you know and that's even a method of you know our shoe our teachers where they will they you know they'll share a thief and they'll share something and they'll they'll wait a year or two or three you know waiting for that to you know the blossom you know so um definitely like you know a conversation of you know what we've been parenting this way where you know um you you know where you were the boss and you know I don't think you know and and you know hand in conversation but finding the right words you know finding the right words so so both are both you know what surprise our kids that sometimes we just say you know what I wanted to do it this way or this is the way I was doing it yeah I'm fallible I messed up and I want to do it better and these are the reasons maybe you let the kids watch an R-rated movie you can use Amir as heavy luggage there's things in there that are part of this world that are going to confuse you and you know and so I'm sorry and I'm going to do better and I want you to help me do better we're all on our journeys and at the end of the day it's not what you did wrong it's it's that I need to guide you right I'm I'm I was not as good a leader and so when they admit that when they realize that you're fallible and you make mistakes and you're human then you know they can excuse they can make the mistakes themselves feel like they can come to you yeah that trust is built so it's it's a it's a really paradigm shifting thing and when you you know when you apologize to your children even for when you lose it or when you don't have good other with somebody else your parent or when you're overly strict you know so I think that's a good thing as long as it doesn't undermine the premise that the parent is a boss yeah yeah that's very important yeah yeah and one of the things we try to do with like a lot is our boss right yes like recognizing that these things don't necessarily come from us right and recognizing that we are on like you said on that journey as well and that that that's where we're trying to align ourselves with as well so it's a higher exactly and I'll say we've been on phone too yeah you know we can all say that and I'm going to be better and I'm going to do it in our our our rule in our house was we don't engage with the internet behind closed doors it's always in public spaces kitchen table whatever even if we're on the phone and there's a limit to it you say yeah it can be better so they'll see that you know come from them it'll be much more regular yeah and as they get older just the question no charging of the phones in private bedrooms and not even using the phones as a long phone get a real long phone so that get their phones out of the bedroom yeah from cvs right they have the old-fashioned digital ones no no I'm I'm one of the older kids I have four I had three younger brothers I was essentially a second mother my daughter she's 14 she has two younger brothers my daughters they're essentially second mothers my older brother was essentially a second father to my three younger brothers and you have to sibling relationship isn't momentary it's a long-term relationship when I had my kids who took care of me my brothers right so it's a give and take there are times in the relationship where the elder is going to be giving to the younger but there are times when the elder is going to be in need and the younger siblings step in and it's really beautiful to watch and they're paying it's not like they're paying their dues but they are but the only reason they're there for me the only reason my brothers were there for me when I needed them as an adult although they were like 15 year old boys is because they remember me doing that for them so it's a long-term relationship it's not a short-term relationship and yeah but birth order is important and it's okay you know there's a lot you don't have to teach your child by the mere fact that they have longer siblings you don't have to teach them service it's just going to happen naturally so that's a blessing in disguise really it is that they have that responsibility the older one takes care of the younger one the other one calls him high yeah so even though they can take and care of they give respect so yeah you know it's part of life there's an hierarchy and and then again I think we don't do it as much what we've seen it is just the one-on-one yeah and asking these questions you know and they'll tell you we ask our kids well what could you could we have done better and you know definitely you know they wanted to do more intramural sports on the weekends it was like they wish they could go football baseball soccer you know outside but we were building ill tree we were working so we didn't have that so they gave us a pass I mean they knew but that these conversations are rule to see what they're going to do with their kids absolutely I love that one because when I moved here from Arizona five years ago my father is in sixth grade here and I realized she was going to first grade and this is when I realized a certain things was changed in her life and she was doing stuff to be very not really what she used to do obviously moving the age thing and then the thing that came to my mind was I need to spend a lot more time with them and we both of us like my husband and I specifically locked some of the time every week just to spend with them I'll come below in the six or seven months I saw yeah I knew different yeah yeah absolutely well thank you all for it oh yes absolutely sure when you're doing the private time and your child confesses they lied to or whatever to share them with your husband so there are times when my daughters will say are you gonna tell baba you know and I will so I do but I don't tell them that I do and now now my if my 14 year old is doing that it might be different you know like if she's talking about a boy for example you know I might not I'll honor that but if my seven year old is she doesn't need to know that I'm telling her dad because the trust here is as long as her dad knows never to mention it in front of her because that'll break because there's nothing more important than trust both ways um but yeah you know I don't I might not necessarily tell him every detail I'll I'll uh hold on hold on what's the drawback of sharing the 14 year old tells you something about a boy oh I did you share it but you don't have to share the details so you do share it because that's yeah yeah yeah because we're the team like like no I'm just I'm sharing this yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah or I mean I think sharing it sharing it with the spouse is is is the healthy move absolutely without the child knowing yeah the child cannot know 17 or 20 or 25 yeah I mean yes like it should know yeah assuming they're intelligent parents of the last parents and they're not gonna mess up with their information yeah yeah yeah yeah no absolutely I think for that that communication obviously is really crucial and then sometimes you do get support from your spouse was you know you find yourself stuck with what type of advice do I give and whenever you're bouncing those ideas off yeah you definitely have but yeah there's definitely times when you know you you mull things over isn't there a story about some girl who used to write in a journal but she knew her mom would read it yeah that was so beautiful because that's where I actually got private time from yeah I for me talking is easier than right yeah but there was a friend of ours she had a teenage daughter who's coming of age and you know she wanted her to feel safe sharing things with her but she knew her daughter had a hard time so she got a journal and she put the journal by her bed and she told her daughter you can write anything you want in this and then I will respond and so she said her daughter would take the journal and she would write pages and pages of like whatever was going on with her what she was struggling with and then she would just put the journal back and then the mom would read it and then the mom would write her response back in it and so she said days went by with the journal just went back and forth they never talked about it in person face to face but it got addressed through this journal I can say that with my sons we've had some really deep conversations via text while being in the same house yeah because they don't feel comfortable yeah talking face to face about something but we you know texting gives you a chance to look at how you're wording it deleting it editing it then sending it you think slower yeah and so yeah that I thought that was a beautiful example and then what Amira was saying with my boy is I saying I saw exactly what you said that some of our deepest conversations happen in the car and neither of us could look at each other and some deep treats came out while staring at the road ahead yeah yeah yeah yeah I think one of the things I'm getting is to kind of like our sense of autonomy as human beings and we forget sometimes that you know our spouses have that autonomy and they make their decisions and that our children have their autonomy and they make their decisions and that as teachers and parents and households all we can really do is create an environment and we create that environment by our words by the little things that we do by the ambience that we create by the conversations that we have by the things that we prioritize above other things and so I think being mindful of like what our practices are you know we start we have our coach at the school is the personal trainer and I was talking about eating healthier and he said are you mindful of what you're eating and now that I'm thinking about it there's so many things that you eat where you're not even thinking about it and so our daily actions are really like an accumulation of all these little things that we do that we're on autopilot where we're not pausing and thinking we might be on our phones without even recognizing that we're on our phones or we might have certain reactions that we might not even think about so I think one of the major things that I'm kind of taking from you know this dialogue is that we all have that sense of autonomy and we all make our decisions and our children are going to make their own decisions and ultimately the thing that we can do as parents and the responsibility that we have is to provide that kind of sense of space for them to um regarding the ambiance like safe space you know the timing of the advice yeah it's prophetic in the sense where Sayyidina Muhammad Sallallahu alayhi wa sallam our Prophet in a beautiful way where um would overlook mistakes and flaws and he would set every excuse of annual engagement excuse yeah even if he knew it was a wrong excuse false excuse for a or a lie because he would accept it yeah why because it maintains the dignity of the relationship which is more important than that specific mistake right yeah so it maintains the relationship overlooking that particular flaw okay and it's called the overlooking and creating that space and like uh if something would break someone made a mistake our Prophet Sallallahu alayhi wa sallam would say yeah that's that's how it was decreed or he would say because this was in a book written so so now I don't know how someone makes a mistake somebody's like the child the four-year-old you slap them and you're like yeah no no slapping but I might I'll love protect them yeah no that's that's absolutely Islam just has to work it has to work in the home yeah has to work in the relationships show them the beautiful aunts and uncles relationships marriages that work absolutely make sure that you're being prophetic and then inshallah that's that's when they have a chance absolutely yeah we have to yeah we have to do it and ask Allah to help you yeah be that person that they can look up absolutely my two sons went to a class a social studies class they tell the story is like the the professor told everyone to raise their hands up they said um put your hands down if your parents are in a happy marriage and half the hands went down okay so if you have the hands off and now put your hands down if your parents uh like what they do for work and all the hands went down except no he put your hands down if your parents don't like what they do don't like what they all put their hands out so that the four hands up it was my my two sons from Allah and then Fatima and Nour another family in San Ramon their two daughters we know their parents but they both have a happy marriage and alhamdulillah the both parents like what they do for work yeah so we're in a society where look how many people are really struggling and these are children college age children making this statement about their parents and their situation the marriages and what they do whether they're happy yeah so this is this is how the odds are against us but mashallah look at this religion and i with that story i'm like mashallah you know two muslim homes and we know the quality of the other two parents and how their parents thought about Nour so it's a very very alhamdulillah we're so blessed to have this religion and the the prophetic example and the parents and how we share each other i learned so much today for having this fireside chat initiative yeah yeah islam we were taught islam is good for our akhira which absolutely is what we forget that it's actually excellent for our dunya islam is for dunya just as much just as much as it is for your akhira it is a it gives you a happy dunya and a happy afterlife happy life and happy afterlife not a difficult life for a happy afterlife that is yeah that's like christ that's christianity right that's their version of religion suffer for that's not ours it's a lot gave us the recipe for a healthy life so we can have a healthy afterlife i mean i'm that no uh you know Priests and they were burying their daughters alive right and i just visited that great place i visited that great garden a few days ago where they buried their daughters alive it's still preserved and then our prophesied something came and his daughter was walking full of men he would stand up walk to her hold her hand kiss her on the head ring her and say sit in my seat sit in my seat sit in my spot and on his way home from a journey he would visit his daughter's home before he would go to his own home you know what i'm saying so yeah these are part of parenting you know where you make your daughter feel special make your son feel special you're my partner you're my buddy i love being with you i love hearing you this so you make them feel like you love their presence you know how special to say to say to pop in the field he would remember her when they had bread and some meat he made a sandwich to take this to pop you know she hasn't had this in a long time he would send her food you know how special did she feel you know and so we can also when we get that you know that doughnut with the ice cream inside and then she'll feel so special i'll only take it out to a doughnut filled ice cream filled doughnut you know and say that sooner and say that we're gonna practice the necklap for ice cream and on the ice cream i know it's nine o'clock so here's my farewell you know if you forget everything else just remember this one day as a parent i want you to have a hock-and-dots in it yeah so i want you to get like 10 kinds of hock-and-dots yeah okay flip them all upside down okay and one big bowl and then i want you to get like all this like chopped up strawberries and the main goal is to use something third on top and then get all these m&m's and nuts and chocolate syrup and caramel and cream and everything third on top and make this mountain of ice cream and then get whoever's there in your house five spoons seven spoons ten spoons and say all right guys dinner time and bring them all and put the spoons all around and say let's have dinner everybody's like what what's the score and then you and you guys all have dinner and everyone gets 2,000 calories you know and it becomes a memory for the family yeah building those moments yes one day take a lot of school early early dismissal yeah trust me it's not going to affect their college yeah take a lot of school early I have to come out early and then take them out and just be like i'm taking a look yeah i have a yeah principal's hot day principal oh where i cut school with my kids one day yeah i mean that's important yeah take them out to one take them out to ice skating yeah i want to thank you guys what one of my strongest memories is i'm from soquel and see is when my my mom drove past our school exit and exited to disneyland i was eight years old yeah you know one thing i'll say is it really does go by so fast and things that i feel like we just did yesterday now our childhood memories for our kids and it really really hit me when i heard them talking to their friends about favorite memories from childhood and to me it's literally like i feel like i could find it on my calendar on my iphone yeah we did that yeah and so it does they say parenting the years are long the days are long but the years are short and it's so true it's so true enjoy it yeah thank you can we do a closing in yellow we can't control their hearts thank you to protect our children from abism and agnosticism and all the other crazy ideas uh we ask y'all to protect our teachers and our scholars y'all and reward them and their families and their children y'all we ask you to take care of our children y'all and give us wisdom y'all wisdom it's from you and y'all don't let it be arrogant y'all to protect those who use our tongue with wisdom y'all to to help our children grow and navigate this world beautifully y'all and surround our children with good friends surround them with righteous companions that take them to generally y'all and give them righteous spouses y'all that take them to generally give them ease in this world and the next world and protect them from the torment of the hellfire y'all y'all here we are gathering y'all and y'all whoever walks to you we want to know who we are walking to for the sake of our children for the sake of their futures and our grandchildren y'all we're scared for our grandchildren y'all we're praying for our grandchildren and their children y'all protect all of our progeny make them happy at this like in the next make it from the old yet make them of that y'all help us reflect the muhammin in care for some of our aleyhi salam y'all we thank you and bless this school y'all and bless this community and bless the organizers and the volunteers and the leaders y'all and the followers and the supporters and the patrons y'all y'all we turn to you and we ask you for everything done to our dear leader sayyidina muhammin sassan and ask you for and seek protection from every heart and self-protection from the