How to raise young children

Fajr Reminders - Mahmood Habib Masjid and Islamic Center

--- *This transcript was automatically generated by AI and may contain errors. * --- Asalamu alaikum wa rahmatullah wa barakatuhu wa barakatuhu wa barakatuhu. I'm sitting in Homewood in Rockbird. And it's filled with stuff for the Christmas holiday. And I don't think I've ever seen a larger collection of things that have no earthly use whatsoever than I have seen here. Almost all of them are of course sold out of premiums. And then they will be abandoned and junked as the minute the season is over. So I guess some within quotes goods come out of the fact that people are employed and they're making stuff. But I don't see what else. Anyway, that's on the side. My topic today is really looking at one of the problems that many parents complain about, which is children with an entitlement attitude. And especially that starts showing its teeth, sir. When the child enters his or her teens. And so I want to talk about why I think, in my opinion, why this is, why this happens and therefore how it can be avoided because it is not a natural thing, it's a manufactured thing. And it's manufactured out of something which is very nice, which is parent concern, especially mothers. But like all good things, there is a potential for evil which manifests itself pretty quickly. And that concern, very little concern is the issue. That is, if you look at mothers, at least I can say this about our Muslim desi and Arab mothers and African mothers, they are so desperately, I don't think desperate is a good word, they were so completely immersed in their children that they are with them and they have the eye on them literally 24x7 as long as the mother is awake and the child is awake, the mother is looking at the child, physically looking at the child, connected with the child, physically, mentally and so on. Now and responding to every single need of the child, the smallest need, the child doesn't even have to say it, but the mother is jumping to fulfill it. Now when the child is an infant, very small, I suppose some of this makes sense, but as the child grows and is growing, it makes less and less and less sense. However, the issue is that this doesn't change. The behavior of the mother vis-a-vis the child remains constant. Until the child is now in the twins and then almost like you turn a switch off, this attention stops and the child is then sort of forced to almost to say, well, you know, look after yourself, you are now old enough. The problem is psychology doesn't work like an electric switch. You can't turn it off and on. So if you have a child who is used to constant attention and constant demand fulfillment, indiscriminate demand fulfillment and also many times parents succumbing to literally emotional blackmail, which is tantrums. It is very physical as in, you know, screaming and so on. But otherwise it's like getting, you know, expressing signs of disapproval. Parents, children sort of clamping up things like this. It works. The interesting thing is that the cure is pretty simple. The first thing that you need to do is to gradually wean them off the constant attention phenomena. It's like detoxification in a way because instead of weaning them off, if you shut it off, then you have problems. And this is where we have the, you know, teenager syndrome, the teenagers express their disapproval. The problem is that when they were little, they did the same things, but it looked cured. But when they grow older, it doesn't. And that's when you notice it and you say, well, what's wrong with this kid? It doesn't have anything wrong with the kid. It is the same kid and he's behaving the same way except that when he was behaving like at age two, it looked different from how he behaves in the same way at age 12. But the reason is the same, which is that the kid is making a demand and you, mother or father, quite rightly are saying, no, it doesn't work. But and so the kid shows disapproval. Now so what must you do is you must wean them off.