Control Your Thoughts, Control Your Actions

Quarantine may be the biggest blessing in disguise! All the time we are spending at home has helped us discover a lot of great things, but has also brought to light some not too great things (which is not necessarily bad!). 

To an extent, it is relatively easy to teach kids what they need to do like prayers, fasting and so on but what is really difficult is tazkiya or purifying their characters. How do you teach them to control their anger? How do you teach them to become more thoughtful of others? How do you teach them to give others the benefit of the doubt? A lot of parenting experts and books will tell you that there is nothing better than being a role model and so on. I believe though that that it is not enough, and with some children you may need to put more effort than others.

I came across a great book called 'Mind over Mood' which explains how our thoughts influence our behaviors, and that sometimes we are not aware of how these thoughts are affecting our behaviour. Knowing that our thoughts help define the moods that we experience, and that our thoughts influence how we behave and what we choose to do can really help us in controlling our actions and changing our behaviour. This can help us to teach our kids to control their anger or frustrations or fighting with a sibling.

How does this work?

I told my daughter to think of this example to help her become less irritated from her younger sister.

Your younger sister has just stepped on your toes, how would you behave if you had thought 1 and how would you behave if you had thought 2?

Thought 1: She stepped on my toes on purpose, she's always doing that, she's so annoying!

Thought 2: She didn't see me and stepped on my toes by accident. I know she didn't mean it.

As you can see with thought 1, you are more likely to get angry, maybe shout and feel frustrated.

With thought 2, you will be more understanding, less frustrated and willing to forgive. Yu can train yourself to become kinder, control your temper by changing your thoughts!

The prophet SAWS taught us this and told us to have hosn Al than with people. The attitude of the Muslim is to think good about everyone. When someone speaks badly about someone you know, and you did not witness what this person is saying, you you need to still think good about your friend. 

What other ways have you found useful to help kids develop good habits?

Always Learning: How do we teach our kids to build their Islamic Knowledge?

Yesterday I was watching all three of my daughters curled around with a book, and completely immersed in their reading. I thanked Allah that they had all learned to love to read and can sit for hours enjoying a good book!

It got me thinking on how I can translate this love for books into love for Islamic books and continuously learning about their deen. I decided to set up a virtual library of Islamic books for them and this is what I did.

1. I created a gmail account for each one of them.

2. I then opened their personal drive and created a folder called 'Islamic books'.

3. I found some authentic Islamic book PDFs online and I uploaded it in their drives. Some ideas include the following: The Stories of the Prophets, Tafseer As Saadi, The fortress of a Muslim. Check out this site for the Islamic books:https://www.kalamullah.com/books.html

4. I encouraged them to read the first 5 pages of Prophet Adam and told them we'd have a competition to see who could answer the most questions on these pages so that they all read the pages carefully.

Obviously this is easier done with kids that can already read, but it is a nice way to get them into a habit of learning and striving to acquire Islamic knowledge on their own. And the great thing is that you can add more books as you go along!

Give it a try and if you come across some great books please share them in the comments!

Teaching Gratitude to Kids

Gratitude 

All around us now people are talking about the importance of gratitude and how just being thankful has a huge amount of positive benefits. It can increase your mood, lower your stress levels and even strengthen your immune system! This is what science is telling us now and this is why so many people are starting to keep gratitude journals!

Allah has given us so much! Look at all the small and big things that Allah has given us. Look at yourself and what is out there in nature. But unfortunately not a lot of people thank Allah.

Look at this ayah and what Allah says:

And He it is Who made for you the ears and the eyes and the hearts; little is it that you give thanks (23:78)

On the other hand, we also know that Allah has promised those who are grateful that they will be given more!

So how do we teach our kids to have gratitude and be thankful:

1. Get your kids to write a thank you note: Teach them to write thank you notes to anyone who has given them a present or done something nice to them. Let them send it or even call the person and read it to them. Make it a habit to send at least one thank you letter a month. In this way they will always remember the positives that others have done, have a great social relationship with them and keep these good things in their memory.

2. Count Allah's blessings (as many as they can!): Pick a time when you can all sit together (at least once a week) and pick three to five things that happened over the week that you are grateful for.

3. Thank someone in your head: Even if you have no time to write (or your kids can't write yet! think about someone you would like to thank. It doesn't even have to be someone you know. It could be someone who made the great toy that they are playing with, the lovely book that they just read or the show they just watched. Encourage them to think about these people that spent their time doing productive things for other people.

4. Make duaa for someone in your prayer: How amazing would it be if kids learned to thank others by doing duaa for them! Why not teach them to say a duaa for someone in one of their sujood and to choose someone different in every prayer.

5. Keep a gratitude journal: The research on keeping a gratitude journal is unbelievable! The more you write things down that you are thankful for the happier you are likely to become! More on journaling and it's great benefits to come :)

6. Take a gratitude walk. Step out of the house with the goal of looking at Allah's creation and thanking Him for it. Look at the trees, flowers, leaves, anything that comes your way and talk about how amazing they make our lives. If you take the time to notice the good things you will feel happier too.

Habit Training: How does it work?

When I first started looking at habit training with my kids, my first thoughts were I like the concept, but how does it actually work?

I found that the key point in habit training is: Take one at a time. 

Choose one habit and focus on it for six to eight weeks. Then just keep an eye on it while you select another habit to focus on.

This is my favourite quote on how we form habits:
You have neurons in your brain. Those neurons talk to each other. And if you have certain neurons repeatedly talk to each other in a certain sequence, your brain starts to make note of that sequence, or route. The more times you mentally travel down that neuron route, the closer your brain gets to running on auto-pilot.”

The more we practice and go through certain actions with our kids, the more it will become an automated habit that they will do unconsciously. I remember starting to teach my daughter the adab of the bathroom when she was about 3 years old. Every time she would enter the bathroom we would stop, put out her left leg and say the duaa. Now at 4 and a half she does it automatically, and even reminds me when I forget :) 

Al Ghazali talked about habit training in his book 'Golden Principles of Raising Children'. He talks about many habits that parents can build in their child through proper training. These include etiquettes of eating, dressing, sleeping, respecting elders, patience and many more. You can find a translation of the book and accompanying note on this blog InshAllah (Jazahom Allah Kheir).

http://alhidayastudent.wordpress.com/2008/02/06/goldren-principles-of-raising-children/


 

Habit Training for Kids

Assalamo Alaikum. 

I'd really like to begin my blog with the topic of habit training. Al ghazali said, “if good habits are ingrained in the child and if he/she is instructed in knowledge, then the child after gaining such excellent upbringing, achieves the real success of this life and of the life hereafter. And if bad habits are nurtured in a child and he is left unattended like animals, then he/she gets destroyed after becoming ill mannered.”

The fact is you can train your child by helping him form a habit in anything you want. A well known educator said, “The mother who takes pains to endow her children with good habits secures for herself smooth and easy days; while she who lets their habits take care of themselves has a weary life of endless friction with the children.”

So the more you work on forming habits when they are still young, the easier it will be for you when they get older. The habits that we are forming are an investment that will benefit them in the future InshAllah. Think of all the habits that you wish you had learned as a child and how much they would have made your life easier now.

Now the question is, what do you think are the most important habits we should work on...

Don’t limit your habits to routine acts that you want your kids to perform, brush teeth, comb hair, make the bed etc. Think of habits that will actually better their character.

I will begin the list with some of the most critical for me and would love to hear your ideas.
obedience
Cleanliness
Kindness
Neatness
Generosity
Patience
Respect
Thinking
Personal Initiative
Health

InshAllah I will attach a full document with different habits under different categories that would be beneficial to work on with our children.