Keys to Prophetic Parenting
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Key #8: Responsibility | Keys to Prophetic Parenting
How do we ensure that our children can grow into well-rounded adults that are self-sufficient? Sh. Ibrahim Hindy discusses the problem with hijacking our children’s decisions and the issues that come from taking the responsibility of self-care from them. Here are some tips that you can begin to apply immediately to set your child up for success.
Transcript
This transcript was auto-generated using AI and may contain misspellings. As parents, one of our main objectives is to raise children that are mature, independent and responsible. Every parent wants to achieve this goal. We all want to grow old while seeing our children become responsible adults, people who take accountability for themselves and their own actions, people who can internally motivate themselves. We want them to be good decision makers, to know how to build good relationships, to be able to deal with the ups and downs of life. So how do we get them there? For a lot of parents, their overwhelming love for their kids leads them to come and dear most of their kids' lives. They think that their kid can only be successful if they're there protecting them at every turn of life. So the parent is there overseeing everything that their child does or has to deal with, hovering over every decision that they make. The parent makes it their personal job to ensure that their child is in the right school, in the right classes, getting the right grades, getting the right awards. If the child is struggling with a school project, the parent is there to help them finish that project and get good grades. If the child gets a bad grade, they'll burst into the teacher's office demanding to know why the grade was so low. I'm sure I'm describing somebody that you know. We end up acting like not only the child's parents but their maid and their secretary and their personal handler. And we think it's so important for them to get good grades, to get into a good school, and the only way you're going to have good future is to get good grades and get into a good university. So you've got to focus on school and maybe a few extracurriculars that will look good on your application for college. Forget about doing chores. Forget about being responsible for anything else. Forget about cleaning your room. Forget about doing your laundry. You drop some milk in the kitchen, forget about it. I'll clean it for you. You just go do your homework. I know what I'm describing is a familiar picture for many people. And I know it's hard for parents to sometimes resist the urge of hijacking all their child's applications. After all, we think we've had so many life experiences. We want to make
sure our children are benefiting from our experiences. Why should they go through things that we had to go through? Stop. You're not helping your child. And I can tell you as a community leader that I've seen the result of this style of parenting, of the don't worry about anything except schoolwork style of parenting. The child might actually do well in school. They might actually get to a good university. They might actually graduate, maybe even with a post-secondary degree, with a master's even, or a PhD. And yet, they grow up as an adult who doesn't really know how to manage their life. Who still, even in their 30s, they might rely on their parents to micromanage their life and make every decision for them. All of a sudden, we expect them to go from doing nothing and just studying to being able to assume the responsibility of getting married, having kids, being responsible. It's overwhelming for them. A lot of people struggle and sometimes fail trying to achieve that. This is setting up our kids for failure. They become adults but unable to become mature, unable to be independent, unable to be responsible for themselves. It's not what we want for our kids. So how do we set them up for success? How do we help them grow into being independent, mature, responsible adults? Number one, give your children responsibility. When Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala speaks about the guardian of an orphan, and when that guardian should give the orphan their inheritance and set them on their way, Allah says, وَابْتَلُوا الْيَتَامَ حَتَّى إِذَا مَا بَلَغُوا النِّكَاحِ فِنْ آنَسْتُمْ مِنْهُمْ رُشْدًا فَادْفَعُوا إِلَيْهِمْ أَمْوَالَهُمْ Allah says, test the competence of the orphan until they reach the marriageable age. Then if you feel that they are capable of sound judgment, return their wealth to them. This verse means that when the orphan reaches the age of puberty or adulthood, that their guardian should test their competence and maturity. Then if the guardian sees that they are of sound judgment, then they should return their wealth to them. So how do they test them? In the tafsir of this verse, scholars mention examples such as the guardian sending the
orphan to go purchase something. Then they evaluate, what did they purchase? Did they purchase the correct item? Did they get ripped off? Did they get a good price? And through these tests, if the guardian sees the orphan is demonstrating maturity and responsibility, then they must give the orphan their inheritance. Why is this important? Because if Allah Subhanahu Ta'ala is telling us to test the maturity, the responsibility of children by giving them tasks, then we can also understand that through task giving, we can also build up a child's sense of maturity and responsibility and competence. According to the Harvard Grant Study, which is the longest study of its kind, an ongoing research program that has been compiling data for over 75 years, it found that there are two very important factors for someone to be happy and successful in their life. First, that they grow up in a loving home. Second, that they learn to do chores from an early age. Yes, professional success is directly correlated with having done chores as a child, and the earlier the better. So when a parent tells their child, don't worry about anything, just focus on studying, you're actually hurting them when it comes to their studying and their professional success. And this is something I noticed anecdotally in my own community. A lot of families didn't think it was important for their daughters to be academically driven, so they expected that their daughters would do chores and cooking and cleaning, and yeah, they would also go to school. And their sons, meanwhile with their sons, they thought it was very important for them to be academically driven. So they raised them with the idea of you focus only on school, don't focus on anything else. You don't have to cook and clean or anything else. They don't have expectations for their chores and other tasks around the house. And again, this is anecdotal, but I did witness that on average, the daughters in our community did well academically and professionally, and personally. They became adults and they had healthy homes, got married,
had children, and many of the sons suffered in many of these ways. And this experience is seen in the raw data. The best way to prepare your kids for life, for them to be successful academically and professionally, is for them to do certain tasks and chores from a young age. It teaches them responsibility. It teaches them the value of hard work. It gifts them with a sense of accomplishment when they complete their tasks. Number two, the second important tool in helping our children become independent, mature, and responsible is that as parents, we need to make it a practice to consult our children and to allow them to make their own decisions. Often as parents, we make every decision for our child. We want our child to benefit from our experience. But in reality, our religion teaches us to seek the consultation of others, including children. When Prophet Ibrahim receives a dream that he is slaughtering his son Ismail, and he knows that the dreams of the prophets are revelation from God, and that what he's being asked to do is a big decision, what does he do? He seeks the advice of his son, even though Ismail is only 12 or 13 years old at the time. فلما بلغ معه السعي قال يا بني إني أرى في المنام أني أذبحك فانظر ماذا ترى Allah says that when the boy reached the age to work with Ibrahim, said to him, Oh my son, I see in a dream that I am sacrificing you. What do you think? He asks his son, what do you think? What do you think about this dream? What do you think it means? What do you think I should do? These are deeply important questions, a literal question of life and death. And Prophet Ibrahim seeks his son's advice for it. He consults him about his opinion. No doubt Prophet Ibrahim must have already been consulting his son on other issues throughout his childhood. And through this Prophet Ismail gains knowledge and insight and decision making capability. This is why his response, even as a young man 12 or 13 years old, is one that is incredibly mature and wise. He says, قال يا أبت فعل ما تؤمر ستجدني
إن شاء الله من الصابرين. He says, Oh my dear father, do as you have been commanded and you will find me God willing to be of those who are steadfast. His answer SubhanAllah is so mature. Not only does he advise his father to follow the commandment of God, but he doesn't even say for sure I'll be able to do this. He says, Inshallah, I will be steadfast, knowing that when the moment comes, it will be very difficult to sacrifice his life. This process of consulting our children is one that our Prophet Muhammad sallallahu alayhi wasallam would also do. Even when there were serious issues, for instance, when claims were made about the family of our Prophet sallallahu alayhi wasallam, the Prophet sat down and consulted Ali ibn Abi Talib and Usama ibn Zayd radiyaAllahu ta'ala anhuma. And he asked their opinion about what he should do. And at this time, Usama ibn Zayd was only 12 years old. But he's growing up in the house of the Prophet. And here's the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wasallam asking his advice about a deeply personal and critically important issue. When it comes to important issues that come up in our lives, should I take this job or not? Should I move from one city or another or not? One house or another or not? Should I invest in this project or not? Do we consult our children? Do we ask their opinion? We should. It gives them a window into our decision making process. And it better prepares them for when they have to make decisions themselves. What we don't want is to not consult them and also to make every decision in their life. Then all of a sudden they become adults and yet they don't know how to make good decisions because they never had the opportunity to do so or the training to do so. They've never learned from a failed decision. They've never learned how to think through decisions. We didn't prepare them for it. Instead look at our Prophet sallallahu alayhi wasallam in a gathering with some elders and tribal leaders and a cup of drink is being passed around. As is the custom, you drink and you pass the cup to the one next to you. Yet the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wasallam is sitting next to a young boy and there are elders in the gathering. The Prophet doesn't, as many adults
would do, skip the boy and give the cup to the adults and the elders. Instead he doesn't pretend like the child doesn't exist and make a decision on his behalf. Rather the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wasallam asks the boy, do you give me permission to give this to the elders? He asks him and allows him to decide for himself. Giving our children the opportunity to make their own decisions, to consult them on decisions that we make. These are powerful opportunities to allow our children to grow into responsible mature adults. We ask Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala to aid us in raising our kids to be responsible, mature and strong adults. Ameen.
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