(2) Primary rational stage requires a strong focus on developing attitudes in a non-judgmental way
Fostering positive attitudes toward the universally good & pure and negative associations toward the universally evil.
Preserving the purity of the innate disposition is key
(3) Second rational phase marks discernment.
Parents should begin teaching critical moral thinking.
Parental warmth coupled with simple explanation establishes parents as a moral reference.
Shaming produces cowardice
Gentleness produces dignity
Honesty produces honesty
(4) In the social stage, children form more influential peer bonds
Parents should honor their kid’s friends out of love & support.
This teaches that love & friendship is about the mutual expression of beautiful character traits
They’ll also realize who isn’t a true friend...
(5) Teenage years. If parents have done their job previous to this phase, then the transition to adulthood is usually not marked by rebellion, because integrity has already been built into the parent- child relationship. This stage is critical in teaching decision-making skills
(6) Young-adult.
Ideally, the natural process of healthy emotional, rational, and spiritual development has taken its course. Parents don’t produce this. Allah created us this way - “in the best of forms”
في أحسن تقويم
Parents are merely custodians of this process
Core problems that arise before the young-adult stage?
(a) parenting for the wrong stage
(b) disciplining without fostering emotional connection
(c) being involved only when problems arise, then creating the false impression that the problem is with the child
worst of all...
...admitting negative influences - at any stage - without training the proper rules of usage
The world is filled with junk. If we don’t teach kids how to filter, we are responsible for throwing their pure hearts into the garbage.
The internet is the world’s largest landfill.
Religious upbringing?
Not prohibitions. Principles. Small ones need limits. Young ones need to understand. Older ones need a friend. Adults need a criterion.
Learning to make taqwa-based decisions is a lived reality, but not an exact science. Habits are just the beginning..
The greatest Mercy you can show your child is to put their footsteps on the road to Paradise.
Problem is, those steps go through dunya.
Prepare their hearts for Paradise and their feet for mud.
If you let them fall in quicksand, its your fault, not theirs.
Allah protect.
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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”…