This is the last article in the “Productive Parenting” series. Part 1 and Part 2 spoke about the need for spending productive time with your children and engaging them in reading sessions, respectively.

In this article, we explore how our conversations with our children could be more meaningful and what can be done to ensure we spend quality time with our children and our families.

Parents, especially fathers, tend to postpone quality time and are unable to set a routine to spend more time with their kids. This is also reflected in the conversations that take place between them, which can be likened to traffic lights.

What is common between a parent and traffic lights? Both give instructions, and they’re mostly red!

Our conversations with our children are abrupt and mostly monotonous. This instructional approach to upbringing is the ‘rules of traffic’ model.

Parents explain to their children how to behave, assuming that they taught them rules of behavior as they did the rules of traffic. However, what you try to teach a child doesn’t necessarily get through to them.

For example, a teenager was told countless times that stealing was wrong yet continued to steal. The problem of parenting in this case is not that they tried to teach him the right thing, but that they considered parenting a single, narrow-minded task without fulfilling the range of parental duties.

Be careful not to turn your words into a one-way road, with only you (the parent) speaking and no entry for the children.

Observe and React to Your Child’s Problem

Example: Qasim was always disturbed as a child. His attention span was short. Temper fluctuating. Mood swinging. Friends dwindling.

Mahir, his father, noticed that and saw how helpless his wife would be at times. This is when Mahir decided to intervene. He observed Qasim’s likes and circle of friends. He found Qasim reclusive but would get excited when alone in the woods or garden.

It was then that Mahir struck an idea: Qasim needs channelizing, his energy needs to be re-focused. Qasim first bought a jungle board game for his son. The father and son would be seen playing the game for over an hour. Then came the nature walks. Qasim would speak about his love for trees.

Next, Mahir enrolled his son in a trekking program. Qasim was afraid but excited. The three-day camp saw a new boy emerge. Qasim met others just like him. He spoke endlessly about the trekking program.

Both father and son soon started a group for forest conservation and Qasim’s circle of friends grew. His mood became more predictable and generally calmer, and you could see a smiling and satisfied mother.

Parental advice: Spend time studying your child, their likes and dislikes. Try to divert and channelize the child’s attention instead of highlighting and prohibiting his/her negative actions.

Break Out of the Myth Called ‘Tomorrow’

Much has been said about the mother’s role and that is why I keep talking about fathers. Perhaps you can call it bias, but as a father of three lovely daughters myself, I see an obligation first from myself to my family and would like to encourage other fathers too!

Some studies have estimated that working fathers spend an average of seven minutes a day talking to their children, which is alarming.

Here is a classic scenario: Dad gets up early, takes the long drive to work, gets off late, takes the long drive home, and gets home very tired. He just wants to have dinner, relax a little, and go to bed so that he can repeat the same routine the next day. Every now and then, he tells himself that he will spend more time with his children tomorrow.

How much time will you spend with your children today? Think of all these perks as you decide whether or not to leave work on time:

• Children will begin to enjoy and look forward to your company.
• Your words of advice will become credible.
• They will love to accompany you to the masjid, and not drag their feet like they are forced to.
• They will become more open and willing to share their fears, concerns or dreams.
• The family grows spiritually, with Qur’an tafseer sessions you conduct at home or the new Islamic conference you take them to.

In my parenting workshops, I always recall a song that talks about the sad story of a boy who always tries to spend time with his father, but always finds him too busy. When the boy grows up and the father gets older, the father always wants to spend time with his son, but his son always has other things to do.

The message is: Remember that today is a gift and tomorrow is a myth in the parenting cycle.

Finally, we return to wisdom inherited from Prophet Muhammad . The Prophet described his role simply and elegantly: “I was sent to perfect good character.” [Sahih (Al-Albani)] Is this then not my job as a father then? One needs to think.

Learn the Lessons of Fatherhood in Islam

Prophet Muhammad was a role model as a father. When his own daughter would come to him, he would stand up out of respect for her. This is the magical bond which fathers need to re-create at their homes.

An absentee father spends long hours working or engaged in voluntary community service, at the expense of time with his family. Rather, aim to spend a balanced time at the masjid or da’wah centre and at home.

For example, sit with your child and talk about maths in football. Yes, talk about the new goal line technology or how the speed of Messi is equal to distance and time taken in shooting the goal!

Ali Ibn Abi Talib was raised in the household of the Messenger of Allah and he was Ali’s father figure. Ali accepted Islam at the age of 12, not because he had to, but such was his intellectual upbringing that he knew what to do.

Similarly, Zayd Ibn Harithah was also raised by the Prophet in such a compelling manner that when Zayd’s biological father came to take him back home, he refused to go with him.

When Zayd’s father and uncle came to claim him, Zayd informed them, “I have seen from this man (Muhammad) such amazing things that I could never prefer him over anyone else.” [Ibn Hajar]

In a commonly cited anecdote, Umar Ibnul-Khattab summed up some of the rights of children when a man went to him complaining about his son’s disobedience: “To choose a good mother for him, to select a good name for him and to teach him the Qur’an.” The father hadn’t done any of the three and Umar blamed him instead of blaming his son.

This is a powerful reminder for parents to hold themselves accountable and change, where needed, the way they treat their children.

Messages to Consider While Raising Your Kid

• Have a dialogue with your kids, not a monologue.
• Explain the reasons for a ‘should do’ or ‘should not do’ task.
• Break free of your office routine to spend time with your children.
• The first recipients of your good conduct should be your family.

How to Get Active with Your Kids

• Go cycling, head for the woods, or drive to the nearest masjid with your kids.
• Ensure you call your kids every once in a while for a surprise, “I was missing you” conversation. It would make their day and yours!
• Let Fridays or any one day of the week (depending on where you live) be their school pick-up day with you. They would skip the school bus and you drive them home, but not without stopping over at Baskin Robbins for a lovely father-son ice-cream treat!
• Instead of that one big vacation, take short walks every alternate day. Have a family restaurant day once a week; those stick. Note: the dining together evening should be a no-mobile affair. Switch off phones or at least turn the Wi-Fi off. Look into your child’s eyes as they speak of their dreams and become a child with them once again.

Gem: That night you might get to understand what the poet meant by, ‘the child is the father of the man!’

By all means, this series is not over. As a matter of fact, it is from here that we go ahead and keep learning with our children. In this series, we tried to cement that special bond between families, especially the father and son/daughter relationship.

So, here are four lessons we can sum up from this series and take forward, In sha Allah:

1. Faith: Trust that when Allah has blessed you with an offspring, He will also give you the ability to train, teach and tutor them.

Productive tip: Do tafseers of short surahs with your children at home or tell them stories from the seerah.

2. Dedication: A good father knows that with little effort, family comes closer. Women value acknowledgement and men value accomplishment. Keep that in mind and you will have a successful family.

Productive tip: Appreciate the small things your child does like learning to speak new vocabulary and soon he will amaze you with greater achievements like learning an entire language.

3. Time: Quality time and quantity time are both necessary, so while we want quality time with our children, remember that taking them out for a short grocery trip or a long drive are equally important.

Productive tip: Give your children ‘time cheques’ which they can cash in exchange for 15 minutes, 30 minutes or 45 minutes of quality time together. The children will then learn to feel in control of their time and they will grow more appreciative to the value of time.

4. Perseverance: Successful parents, especially fathers, are the ones who have shown persistence as they sought to fulfill their children’s dreams. It could not have been an easy task, but they persevered and succeeded.

Productive tip: Know that you too can do that, In sha Allah!

After reading this series, what have you decided to change in the relationship between you and your child/children? What are some tips that have worked for you and techniques that you feel were not as successful? Please share your ideas for the benefit of other parents.

Read the other parts of this series: Part 1 | Part 2

The post [Productive Parenting – Part 3] Practical Engagement with Your Child appeared first on ProductiveMuslim.com.

In Part 1 of this series, we discussed some tools to develop the parent in you. In this article, we want to explore the power of storytelling. Stories are very powerful means to convey messages to children. This is one excellent tool of healthy parenting, helping you connect with your children and instilling a sense of knowledge and exploration in them.

The stories in the Qur’an are brilliant learning tools to delve into with your child. Can you, as a parent, name a story from the Qur’an and highlight a key message to derive from it?

Let us consider the following stories, for example:

1. From Surat Al-Kahf, the story of the man with two gardens (Morale: Don’t be greedy and conceited).
2. Story of Prophet Dawud and Jalut (David and Goliath) (Morale: Be brave).
3. Story of Prophet Musa and Khidr (Morale: Allah gives wisdom to whom He wills).
4. Story of Prophet Sulaiman and the hoopoe (Morale: Be humble and you can learn from even the smallest creatures of Allah ).
5. Story of Surat Al-Fil (Morale: Allah has power over all things. Small birds can defeat an army of elephants, if Allah wills it).

As you can see, every story teaches us a value or number of values. Through stories, we can derive morals that stick with our children throughout their lives.

Read aloud to your children

“The single most important activity for building the knowledge required for eventual success in reading is reading aloud to children,” according to the Commission on Reading Report released by the US Department of Reading.

The benefits of doing so are profound. Kids form much of their intelligence potential during the early years of their life, so much so that experts recommend reading aloud to your child as soon as he/she is born.

Also, an amazing insight is that Allah says in the noble Qur’an that the faculty of hearing comes before sight while the child is still in the womb:

“And Allah has extracted you from the wombs of your mothers not knowing a thing, and He made for you hearing and vision and intellect that perhaps you would be grateful” [Qur’an: Chapter 16, Verse 78].

Reading to your children can actually help them with language and speech development. Here are some tips for reading to your child:

1. Use the “five-finger-rule”

Ask your children to open the book to any page and read that page. Each time they come across a word they do not know, they should hold up a finger. If they get to five fingers before they finish reading the page, the book is too hard. If they don’t hold up any fingers, the book is probably easy and can be used to build reading fluency. If they hold up two or three fingers, the book is likely to be at a good level for reading to grow.

2. Pick stories that develop curiosity, creativity and imagination

Consider reading the story of Isra’ and Mi’raj (the miraculous night journey of the Prophet ) with your child. You will come across stories of the peculiar animal, the buraaq, you will read how he visited Al-Aqsa Mosque and met all the prophets and led them in prayer. You will also read about sidratul muntaha (the remote lote-tree whose leaves are as big as an elephant’s ears!) and angel Jibreel with the 600 wings embedded with gems and jewels, etc. All of this will serve in rejuvenating your child’s curiosity and imagination.

3. Reflect on the story together

Try to reflect on important day-to-day life matters from the stories in the seerah of the Prophet . For example, you could reflect on the great bonds of friendship between the Prophet and his best companion Abu Bakr .

4. Reading aloud to enhance vocabulary

When researchers counted the words we use most often, the total number came out as 10,000 words. The most often repeated one is ‘the’. Beyond the 10,000, however, you encounter rare words that can only be developed when you read. So, reading to your children helps them accept those rare words as familiar words in their own vocabulary, thus enriching your child’s ability to express, experience and reflect upon life.

Try to stay off TV and video games

While many children and parents today prefer a babysitter called “TV”, the effects of reading are without a doubt far more beneficial and lasting than a diet of cartoons and soaps. TV is not necessarily wrong in totality. With control and monitoring, you can use it to explore certain things or initiate curiosity in your child. Here’s how you can do so:

Action Tips:

1. Watch a cartoon from Tokyo, for example, and then challenge your child to find five new things about this city. It can be how their homes are different from yours, or the different language they speak, etc.

2. Have a book in hand that gives information about the respective TV soap you watch with your children.

3. Know that TV, unlike film or video games, is fundamentally a sponsor-driven medium paid for by advertisers that buy commercial space during a particular show. With this in hindsight, remember that your child is being ‘fed’ products while watching his/her most favorite shows. A book on the other hand, gives him/her the freedom to express and come up with their own thoughts. One can then claim that watching TV makes one ‘programmed’ while reading a book gives one ‘freedom’.

Exploring realities of life through stories

Children can be taught deep life matters like death, divorce and greed through stories. For example, you can teach your children numerous lessons by sharing the story that Allah’s Messenger narrated about the leper, the blind man and the bald-headed man [Sahih al-Bukhari].

You can have long discussions with your child after learning about or reading a story together. You can continue to ask him/her what they’ve learned or whether they’ve encountered similar situations in their lives and what they would have done. This will all engage your child and develop a sense of morality in him/her.

Read-a-thon: Making reading a daily practice

Get a membership in a library or a book club. There is no better way of reading than to engage in peer learning. Here are a few tips:

• The best way to utilize a library membership is to schedule a weekly exercise. Challenge your child to pick up a book and make it an evening task to read together.
• Prepare a quiz or a puzzle on what you’ve read to keep the child excited.
• Have badges for every book that you read.
• Organize a cake party after 20 badges.
• We’ve all heard of marathons, right? Now try the read-a-thon. This popular concept is all about reading. It is about quantity and as with a marathon, the more you read, the more vocabulary and reading stamina your child will develop. In Ramadan, replace that with Juz’-a-thon!

Storytelling cultivates good listeners

Reading aloud to your child also works to develop in him/her a sense of being good listeners. The way they listen to your story, try to see the message in it and then interact with you develop crucial qualities that live with them for life.

It is equally important to understand that children have different reading and listening levels. For example, a fourth-grader may be reading fourth-grade level materials, but he/she can listen to sixth-grade level stories.

Finally, remember the precious Qur’anic concept of “…“We hear and we obey”…” [Qur’an: Chapter 2, Verse 285]. Reading aloud to your children can help them actualize the noble concept of obeying and acting upon sermons that call to goodness. This can help children get even closer to Allah by being avid and discerning listeners to His words, inshaAllah.

Reading with your child not only educates them but enhances their abilities, intelligence and imagination. Most importantly, read with your child with the aim of reviving a culture that has long been abandoned by our ummah. Every time you read with your child, you are enriching him with knowledge and an array of skills, and consequently the ummah as well!

What other activities do you plan with your little ones to enhance their reading experience? Share them in a comment below.

Read the other parts of this series: Part 1 | Part 3

The post [Productive Parenting – Part 2] Reading with Your Child appeared first on ProductiveMuslim.com.

[This is a series of three parts on parenting from a father’s perspective.]

I have three children. If I were to encapsulate what I learned about parenting from a father’s perspective in one sentence, I would say: “A child needs ‘a loving father’, not ‘a successful businessman!’”

First, we need to realize that despite all the preparations for the delivery day, we never feel fully prepared. It seems as though everything happens really fast: It’s the rush hour, your wife is in pain, you start to panic and wonder if you could drive to the hospital on time. You start wishing this whole process gets over with successfully. When it does, it is as though time has stopped. And like in the movies, you hear the congratulation and a little gift is placed in your arms. But you wonder while looking at this little precious gift: Can I even hold her properly? Even if it’s your third child, you still think the same; trust me, I have three daughters.

All parents need a little advice now and then. This is what we attempt to do in this series, in sha Allah. The series will cover parenting basics: discipline, homework help, how to talk to your child about subjects like pocket money, peer pressure and friends. We also attempt to cover cooperation between spouses.

One of the things I wanted to start with is this interesting thought I came to realize while travelling around the country and asking parents, “What do you do for your child?”

The peculiar thing is that parents respond in a way that suggests that what they do for their children is like “administrative work”. The most common answers I receive are “we pick and drop our children to school”, or “we pack their lunch boxes and revise their homework.” Fair enough. But doesn’t this sound like an administrative job?

This is something any project manager can do as well.

The question is: what is it that you are doing for your child as “parents”?

In this article, we’ll try to explore a few points that will help you discover the parent in you, In sha Allah.

Consider the Parenting Tips from Surah Luqman

In surat Luqman [Qur’an: Chapter 31], Allah shows us how Luqman wisely speaks to/advises his son [Qur’an: Chapter 31, Verse 12-19]. It is indeed a very beautiful and compelling way to share life’s wisdom with one’s child, in a way that teaches him/her the gist of what this whole life is about, and the gist of being an honorable person.

Here is some interesting background of surat Luqman: this surah was revealed in Makkah. Now, what was happening in Makkah? Were Muslims safe and secure? No. Consider the fact that Allah was sending down verses on the father-son relationship to a place where it was almost criminal to be Muslim.” So, despite the tough life, family comes first in the sight of Allah .

Another very interesting aspect is that Allah speaks about a father’s conversation with his son. The father goes to length explaining a wide range of matters from not associating partners with Allah to not speaking loudly. So, inner and outer mannerisms have been dealt with eloquently in a sophisticated, wise manner.

This shows that fathers need to be more involved. While holding workshops on parenting, we always notice that mothers are always more eager to learn, while fathers are not even present.

The father, however, needs to realize his importance in the parenting process.

Abu Hurairah reported, the Messenger of Allah said: “Three supplications are answered without doubt. The supplication of the oppressed, the supplication of the traveler, and the supplication of the parent for his son” [At- Tirmidhi and Abu Dawud].

Action Tip: Make a 10-point-list of things you want for your son or daughter, like what you want them to be when they grow up. Stick this list on your fridge and make sure you ask Allah in your duas constantly and convey those wishes to your child, letting him/her know that you’re involved and always thinking about what’s best for them.

Fathers, Support the Mothers Please

If a mother can count on her husband to help with keeping the house clean, caring for the children, paying the bills and planning for the future, she will probably be a happier, more efficient parent.

Your support for your wife would result in her being an even better mother to your child. Don’t be disengaged. We came to realize that the support a mother receives from her child’s father can even help her be more competent and sensitive when feeding her baby.

Action Tip: Tick off the grocery list, order food once in a while or even cook for her. The least you can do is talk to her without looking at your mobile phone!

Pay Attention to How You Play With Your Child

When fathers play with their toddlers, they are not just entertaining them. They are providing a safe, yet challenging arena for toddlers to learn how to interact with the world and with others. Through rough-and-tumble play, fathers create obstacles for their children and demand respect for limits and boundaries. At the same time, they challenge their children and encourage them to explore their own strength, their ability to do new things and their impact on the world around them.

Few Gems and Tips to Wrap Up

It is indeed such a big blessing to be a parent. Ask those who are not blessed with children or who lost their child to an illness or accident, and you would realize that being blessed with a child is a n’imah (blessing) and even if we spend all our life thanking Allah in sujood, we would not be able to thank Him enough!

Gems:

• Parenting is not an administrative job.
• A strong father-son relationship is the basis of a confident child.
• Qur’anic examples for successful fathers are brilliant and enlightening; from Ibrahim to Ismail , Dawood to Sulaiman and Zakaria to Yahya . So, learn about them.
• Despite a difficult life, the family comes first for Allah .
• The most important thing a father can do for his children is to love their mother!”

Action Tips:

Children require ‘quantity time’ and not just ‘quality time’. Begin by blocking 15 minutes every day with your kids. ‘Every day’!

My 15-minutes bucket list with my children includes:

• Nurture a hobby with your child like gardening, painting or puzzles (I love working on puzzles with my daughters!).
• Have clear goals for your child and consider your 10-points dream goal for him/her.
• Spend time at home helping your spouse and surprise her once in a while by ordering.
• Ask your child what he/she did at school. This leads to more open-ended conversations.
• Read a book or a story together. I am currently reading Prophet’s Hijrah and Suraqah bin Malik’s horse falling down and we are talking about courage. So choose a virtue you want to instil in your child, find a good read and go ahead enjoying quality time spent with your child reading together.

Please let us know your thoughts, gems and tips on the subject in the comments section below.

Read the other parts of this series: Part 2 | Part 3

The post [Productive Parenting – Part 1] “I Have Become a Father! What’s Next?” appeared first on ProductiveMuslim.com.