Become an Expert in Your Parenting Journey
Do you consider parenting to be a job?
If you do, I bet you'd want to become the best parent in your industry. Parenting is a job. It is a job of preparing the future of humanity. And this job is more important for you as a Muslim parent.
Thirty years from now, today's children will be representing the Ummah. How well they do so will depend on how well you contribute today as a parent.
But as the Yoruba people do say, “When two irons collide, one of them is bound to bend for the other.”
When your livelihood job collides with your parenting job, it is usually the parenting job that bends for the former. And the Ummah suffers as a result.
Many Muslim teens today remain Muslims because they are still under the care of their parents. Who knows what will happen when they gain their “liberty” from their parents?
A lot of young Muslims are easily swayed by atheist arguments in the media and even the daily misbehaviours of some Muslims.
All these happen because of the preponderance of our occupations over our parenting jobs. Worst, we leave many of our women to face this daunting challenge alone with minimal support. And that is in addition to their occupational jobs or professions.
Aside from the constant reprimands, dos, and don’ts, how often do we sit together with our children to teach them anything at the intellectual or creative level?
How often do we read a book together for discussion? How often do we revise the history of Islam together?
“Your kids require you most of all to love them for who they are, not to spend the whole time trying to correct them.” Bill Ayers
Muslim parents don’t teach their children again. They outsource the education of their children to the mosque imams and the school teachers. Why? They are not sure of their understanding of Islam, yet they have no time to learn. Or they are busy working for a boss instead of their kids.
And don’t forget, with all the funny things happening in the world today, even the so-called Muslim schools may not have the interest of your kids at heart.
If you feel guilty about this, you can remedy the situation. How? By becoming an expert parent.
4 Parenting Tips for Becoming an Expert Parent
You can up your parenting game with a little effort. If you put your mind to it, you will be surprised at how rewarding it is to become an expert parent.
As a Muslim parent, you need to learn how to empower your kids to be love-inspiring, so much so that society volunteers to fight on their behalf.
The following tips will help you create a learning program for improving your parenting skills.
Take Short Courses to Boost Your Parenting Skills
There are many parenting courses you can take online to master some introductory child psychology. A good one is Babies in Mind: Why the Parent's Mind Matters for expectant parents or parents of newborn babies.
Learn to be curious. Let your curiosity be guided by the words “how” and “why.” Asking “why” questions helps you develop profound learning experiences.
For example, when you ask, “Why do children talk back to their parents when they are being rebuked?” What you are actually asking is, “What should I know about the reasons for children talking back to their parents?”
Your job as a learning parent is to find the answer(s) to these types of questions. It is even more critical that you find the answers before your child starts exhibiting such behaviours.
The “how” part of your learning is about discovering the techniques you can use with your newfound knowledge to shape the mind and character of your child. That is your job, as was the job of the Prophet (s.a.w).
The Prophet Muhammad (s.a.w) said, “I was raised as Prophet to perfect the human character.”
You don’t need a certificate for that. Your certificate is the great child that you give to the world.
And the best way you can become a master of what you have learned is to both practice and teach other parents how to influence them.
Find all the opportunities to create a teaching session for other parents. You could champion the idea of a Muslim community parenting network in your neighbourhood to teach other parents. Another approach you can use to do that is to just...
Keep a Parenting Blog
Blogging allows you to learn and share what you have learned. Before you start your blog, though, it is better you keep tabs on other parenting blogs and read as many posts as possible.
When you make it a habit to read parenting blogs regularly, you are not only educating yourself about parenting, but you are also learning how to write about this topic unconsciously.
You also get to know who the influencers in this field of human life are. If you can build rapport with these influencers, your message and teachings will easily get amplified.
Once you have read a lot of blog posts and you have gotten familiar enough with many of the concepts and theories or models related to parenting, you are ready to start sharing what you have learned from all your readings as a Muslim.
There are many resources online that will teach you how to create a free website blog for sharing your ideas and learnings. A few YouTube searches will give you some good tutorials that will guide you through.
The goal is to teach, share, and practice what you have learned until it becomes second nature. And also to build a community of Muslim parents.
The secret to making your parenting blog impactful is to deliver valuable knowledge, skills, and techniques to other Muslim parents.
Above all, your main reason for creating a parenting blog is to build a knowledge base from which every Muslim parent can tap. Google it and see how many Muslim parenting blogs are out there.
It’s a pity. Isn’t?
That’s why every Muslim parent needs to become an expert in parenting, or at least a parenting activist, and share their knowledge and experiences. This is important because the protection and development of the family is the most sacred job of the parent.
Negligence in this regard gives room for the collapse of the family. If every parent gifts morally trained, well-mannered, and God-conscious children to the world, we will have fewer of the social problems we face worldwide today.
Keep a Reading and Re-reading List
To become an expert parent, you will need to master the trends in the parenting field.
As such, you must keep a reading and a re-reading list. You can’t just read some books one time and forget about them.
Because the more you read them, the better you get at parenting your children, the better you become at teaching other parents, and the better you become at solving general parenting problems.
People don’t go to school to learn parenting. And since parenting is the most essential skill you need to run your family, you must document your experiences to exchange with other parents.
This is how the Ummah can build empirical and evidence-based knowledge in this parenting field to ensure the safeguarding and positive growth of the family system.
Some suggested books for Muslim parents
There are some excellent books out there every Muslim Parent should read. Some are by Muslim authors, and others are by non-Muslim authors.
Parent-Child Relations: A Guide to Raising Children by Hisham Altalib et al.
This book was written by three heavyweights in contemporary Muslim Scholarship. They combine knowledge from Islamic heritage and science to develop a fantastic compendium of parenting wisdom for the Muslim community. Although the focus is mostly on Muslims living in the West, America especially, the book is invaluable for Muslims everywhere.
Strengths-Based Parenting: Developing Your Children’s Innate Talents by Mary Reckemeyer, PhD.
This book will help you discover your skills and your children’s. It will teach you how to match your skills with theirs. Apart from knowing your skills and your kids’, it shows you how to use those skills to parent your children better.
Boys Adrift by Dr Leonard Sax
This book will show the causes of unmotivated boys and underachieving young men today. The author identifies five factors leading to this trend. You will understand in this book why there's a need to reevaluate parenting, education, and social attitudes to address the root causes of weaknesses in our boys today.
Girls on the Edge by Dr Leonard Sax
With this book, you will realise how four key factors: environmental toxins, the impact of social media, changing family dynamics, and shifts in the educational system are creating a crisis for our girls.
Outstanding Muslim Parents
This book is a guide focusing on raising righteous Muslim children, outlining three vital parental roles you and I play in the life of our children: Celebrity, Confidant, and Coach. With this book, you will learn how to engage, equip, and empower your kids to adhere to their Islamic values.
Find Your Element by Ken Robinson
This book is not necessarily a parenting book. But it certainly empowers parents to discover their children’s innate capabilities. With this book, you will learn how to nurture your child to achieve their full human potential and be more beneficial for themselves and humanity.
Pick out the gems from these books. Then, convert them into a suitable curriculum for your kids. Compare notes with other parents in your network to improve it. Keep iterating the curriculum until you can see the return on investment in your kids and society.
Here are the books again:
1. Parent-Child Relations: A Guide to Raising Children by Hisham Altalib et al.
2. Strengths-Based Parenting: Developing Your Children’s Innate Talents by Mary Reckemeyer, PhD
3. Boys Adrift by Dr Leonard Sax
4. Girls on the Edge by Dr Leonard Sax
6. Find Your Element by Ken Robinson
Become Trustworthy to Inspire Trust
Being the only reasonable Muslim parent in the block is not a cause for celebration. It does not protect your child from social predators in any way.
When you become an expert in parenting, other parents will trust your wisdom.
This is an opportunity for you to build a community of Muslim parents who are ready to work for the future of their children, not the future of their bosses or companies. Not the whims and caprices of the society. Not the “New World Order” of a few digital neo-capitalists.
This is enormous work.
It requires a lot of sacrifices.
Doesn’t it?
But think about it. Would you instead get busy being a small cog in a large modern capitalist machine?
Or a hero that means everything to your child? Remember your plan for your child as a Muslim parent?
How do you raise a hafiz in this social media age without the conscious parental support they need?
It’s no longer enough to get your child to memorize the Quran. To speak Arabic. To attend Muslim gatherings. They have to achieve all of these plus more.
Would you like to waste your efforts and your child’s time?
Your parental heroism lies in making your child love the true Islam and live by it till they breathe their last.
There are many people out there with good Muslim parents and great Muslim homes. Some have even memorized the whole of the Quran.
But they were left to their own devices to figure out what life is by themselves. The very opportunity the social sharks have been looking for. These children who are now adults are morally and spiritually gone forever.
You don’t want that for your child.
Or do you?
Conclusion
Improving your parenting skills should be part of your continuous personal development curriculum.
The more you learn, the more you should share with other parents. The sharing should be systematic. It should be planned in a way that will not only demonstrate knowledge but also predictively generate impacts, transformation, and planned results.
This is why building a network of active parents in your community is essential. If you can't achieve it physically, which is preferable since you are all in the same community, do it virtually. Never neglect this.
In the next letter, I will share why you must become a da'i parent and why you should be one
In the meantime
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