Dawah Tips

A Project of Al Huda Institute, Canada

http://www.thestar.com/Insight/article/639353#Comments

Personally I believe in the words of Quran ‘As-sulhu-khair’ unless there are inevitable conditions. In that too I believe children would get effected.
Personally I believe as parent we have immense responsibility on us to know and feel our kids’ need. How are they feeling about us? are we communicating with them properly in the way we should? are we concerned how they feel about our reactions? If they are not listening to us then why? Are they trying to tell us something by their actions, reactions and their general behaviour? If they lie then why ? If they do the opposite of what we want them to do then why is it so?
My experience is that when kids get hurt from inside from their parent’s behaviour for example injustice or more love and care for another kid (this more love and care for another sibling could be for any reason). Doing justice is critical for healthy growth of children.
Second thing which make them feel bad is always pointing fingers on them, telling them what they did wrong rather than telling them what was right to do, for e.g. ‘you did not do salam to aunty’ rather than saying please salam aunty or always do salam first when you see aunty. This is a minor example, we make mistakes everyday. Either we are too soft or either too strict, start blaming them. Kids are tender ,when we blame them we do not know how they are feeling inside. I agree sometime we need to be strict to get things done, but we feel bad afterwards and my experience they forget the next day and they are the same.

I am so concerned about raising my kids as healthy individuals, why? Many reasons not going in detail, but one thing for sure, I have many reasons to believe that psychological illnesses especially in girls are due to childhood trauma, In Asian society some factors are a)injustice between siblings, b)divorce, c)or excessive protection from parents due to some kind of fear in them or at least in one parent for which reason kids are not able to make small decisions for themselves. They are not given the chances of making choices for themselves knowing their limitations. d)Either there is excessive love from one parent or sometimes grandparent which prevents them to do islah or if at some stage they do want to do it then the method is not right which again is pointing fingers rather than doing reform. e)In addition, scaring kids with something, not being open to communication or good communication with one sibling and not with other,these are all causes of psychological illnesses.
Here in this article big cause is separation. I know a different scenario in which two close sisters were separated due to some reason which has to happen and both developed the same kind of psychological illness with different symptoms.
In Western society, I have worked as a volunteer at CAMH in Toronto which is a centre for treating mental illnesses and addiction. I was involved in working in a research office and there most of the patients I saw or read their charts (patient history) had some kind of child hood trauma. Some most common are again the divorce of parents, and the second being sexual abuse in childhood. Sexual abuse in childhood was the thing I heard first time in my life. I did not know it can ever exist. It might exist in Asian societies too but may be we never talk about it or nobody has the courage to do it. In most cases childhood abuse was done by step father (again one late consequence of divorce) or mother’s boy friend and this was more common, I believe.
Recent involvement of an 18 year old female in the murder of a little girl in Woodstock,
she also has a history of tough childhood with similar issues as discussed above.

Now Alhamdulillah by gaining the understanding of Quran I am a better mother than before, I think about my attitude towards my kids, I realize the importance of happy marriage or at least a marriage without unnecessary debates and unnecessary confrontations, maintaining good relationshipsfirst with my husband and my family and the most important, Hikmah in the words of Allah. I can remember Ustazah when we were learning surah Baqarah (tafseer2005) it was discussed that to be Ummat-e-wast, Allah Ta’ala first has given us Ma’asharti usool, how to do nikah, maintain family relationships and what to eat .After that a muslim society would develop when muslim homes are developed. Similarly now I realize why divorce is so disliked and the disliked halal according to the meaning of one hadith.