Before having children, I was always concerned about the cultural trend of teenagers drifting away from their parents, getting involved in peer-driven deviation, and just generally moving backwards in their emotional development...
While there is no harm in children looking to peer relationships for social fulfillment, this does not have to be coupled with breaking away from one’s parents. This is an especially damaging trend, as it occurs at a time of rapid physical, emotional, and mental development
Parents wonder how to solidify their bond with their children. The answer is the same as with any relationship — *be present*.
Being emotionally present means investing your heart sincerely, your mind with practical assistance, and your time with physical presence
I hoped that being truly present with my children in all their stages of development, would result in their naturally wishing to be present with me as they grow and mature. I am immensely grateful to Allah to report that the experiment worked (light)...
My children vie for time with me. They want to share everything with me — good and bad. In the course of pouring their hearts out, they express some of the most beautiful human realties that many adults take decades to grasp. They want to be emotionally present with me
It is draining, but I wouldn’t have wished to give the best of myself to anyone more than my children. For this, I left medicine.
Others may operate on the diseased and dysfunctional, but who could preserve the hearts, minds and bodies of the healthy, pure little ones but me.
I won’t be asked about how many surgeries I performed on the Day of Judgement. I’ll be asked about my kids.
Be present with the ones you love, you‘ll find them present with you.
Be present with Allah, the Creator of all things you love. You’ll find Him present with you.
On the morning commute, my daughter asked to review the structure of Arabic verbs. She said,
الفعل المضارع مرفوع أليس كذلك؟
Present tense is marfū’, right?
I said, “Yes. It’s معرب (grammatically variable), as opposed to the past tense…
1/
“…which is مبني (grammatically inherent).” I gave her some examples, then said,
“Do you see the miracle of the Arabic language? It mirrors reality. Can we change the past — no, but we can change the present.”
In her intelligence, she said, “Mama, what about فعل الأمر ?
2/
I said, “The command tense is also مبني (inherent) but appears in different forms. Do you see now, my love, why Allāh chose the Arabic language for the Quran? It mirrors Reality.”
Meanwhile, she was eating breakfast. She said, شبعتُ (I am satiated). We said the masnun du’ā’.
A common sufi metaphor, in reference to the ‘masculine’ trait of generous sovereignty & the feminine trait of humble receptivity. All true believers (male & female), in relation to God, exhibit the ‘female principle’.
…but rather an expression of the relationship with the Divine in it being so beyond words that only the closest of human relationships could approximate it to the limits of the rational mind. Tasawwuf is supra-rational. Spiritual intelligence is the most sophisticated of all…
People are always enemies of what they don’t know, finding more comfort in denial than learning. Such is the curse of ignorance. Tasawwuf is the most courageous of all form of knowledge. The mind can only take one so far. Only cowards limit themselves to it. Those who know, know.
One of the most devalued tools of tarbiya is the spiritual harnessing of family fun.
Children, in their relationships with others, are deeply affected by non-rational influences...
This makes them both vulnerable and impressionable, in heightened sensitivity to their caregivers, who have only to exert the most positive emotions they can conjure to create a loving, lasting bond, stiched in time with the thread of beautiful memories.
The main objective of social media is to use, even manipulate, the evocative to *influence* the ‘public customer’.
That’s why the *rational* hardly has a place in the digital jungle.
There is a fundamental rational problem with any sort of pontification on social media. It’s mutlaq, meaning mentioned ‘in the general’, as a principle, despite it coming from the posters *personal* vantage.
This creates many problems….
1 The illusion of understanding. The reader takes the ‘principle’ and applies it in their mind wherever they see fit and in accordance to their (non-expert) conceptualization of it, when, in reality, they’re processing it through the ego, in accordance to their whims….
2 The illusion of ownership. “Liking” something has implications associated with it, namely that one has grasped the full ramifications of it and can transition it from theory to application. Even among scholarship, it’s an advanced skill. Laymen don’t even have basic skills…
About now, you’re all aware that I’m no fan of social media. I opened an Insta account last year and, well, from ‘how it started’ to ‘how it’s going’…let’s just say that I have a folder entitled #messed_up. On occasion, I’ll share some “goodies”…
Our first exhibit is the ~80% of posts classifying women based on their “mindset” toward men as the determining factor of their “value”. How droll. As women, we’re supposed to be brainwashed into thinking that our intrinsic value is completely dependent on how we attract men?
Do pardon me. When a person’s value is made subservient to another’s actions, we have a word for that in English; it’s called slavery. The intrinsic human value of a woman is exactly as that of a man, because it’s fully dependent on how she relates to God, her (and his) Creator…
1 in 6 U.S. children aged 2–8 years (17.4%) had a diagnosed mental, behavioral, or developmental disorder.
So young. Look at the increase over age bracket.
Reminds me of an incident with my daughter when she was 4 and had observed…
a group of (Muslim) teenagers. She was perplexed by their behavior and asked me one of the most insightful questions I’ve been asked by anyone, including adults.
“Mama, aren’t people supposed to get better when they’re older?”
I smiled, took her into my arms and said…
“Yes. They are.”
Entirety satisfied, she cheerfully jumped off my lap and went to play, and I just stood there, amazed by her intellect and simultaneously frightened because I knew that children, most of them, even Muslims, were not “getting better when they’re older”…