Our Ways in Raising Children, Part 2

Sheikh Ali Hammuda picks up his series “Our Ways” by recalling last week’s introduction, which looked at the protections the religion places around children before they are even born. Now he turns to parenting itself and suggests that most parents fall into one of three types, drawing on the work of a Moroccan specialist in nurturing children. The first is the firefighter, who waits at the station until an alarm goes off, puts out the fire and withdraws. He says you can spot this parent by their questions, which are all about problems: my son is rude, how do I stop him? He adds that some parents, perhaps more often fathers, take pride in handing nurturing to the other parent and stepping in only when something goes wrong. He suggests this partly comes from carrying leadership and management ideas from work into family life, where he says they do not transfer well.

The second is the tamer, who measures success by how completely a child does as told, with no pushback. This can look like success in the early years because it brings peace of mind, he says. But he argues that a child raised for unconditional obedience may come to obey anyone unconditionally, and may find it harder to think for themselves or say no when someone with extreme ideas puts pressure on them. For that reason he urges parents not to erase a child’s stubbornness, which he describes as a quality from Allah that can protect them later, even though it is frustrating to live with. He adds that obedience gained by taming should not be mistaken for respect.

The third style is the one he hopes for, and he gives three signs of it. The first is mutual admiration, since children imitate those they admire, just as the Companions imitated the Prophet ﷺ in everything because they admired him. The second is treating underlying causes rather than only symptoms. With a child who hits siblings, he asks whether the problem is the hitting or the anger behind it, and says that restraining the behavior is sometimes needed but does not reach the root. He compares this to a doctor who looks for stress behind several aches instead of prescribing for each one. The third sign is making the child’s dignity and honor a priority. He asks what use it is for a child to pray and recite well if they lack a sense of honor as a Muslim and as a human being, and points to the Egyptian official who took Prophet Yusuf into his care and told his wife only to make Yusuf’s stay honored and dignified.

Sheikh Ali then describes twelve things that, in his view, chip away at a child’s natural sense of dignity, and covers six of them. The first is shouting. Drawing on the idea that security is among a person’s earliest needs, he says constant raised voices undermine a child’s sense of security, and he cites an Australian study and a study in the Journal of Adolescence that he describes as linking shouting with less responsible behavior and with children seeing parents as less of an authority. He adds that children tune out constant shouting, so the volume has to keep rising, and he points to Luqman’s advice to his son to lower his voice. The second is excessive blame and guilt-tripping. Guilt and regret have a healthy place, he says, but when children are constantly made to feel blameworthy, they may lose self-esteem and fear letting others down. He recalls a Companion who served the Prophet ﷺ for ten years and said he was never once asked why he did or did not do something. The third is threats, which he says work only until children become teenagers and which children learn to ignore when they are not followed through. As alternatives he suggests laying out options with their natural consequences, inspiring the child by explaining the wisdom behind a request, and giving encouragement, comparing it to the cheering a family gives a baby’s first steps. He cautions that the items on his broader list are not all alike: some should be avoided entirely, while others may have an appropriate place but should not become a parent’s default response.

Next come mockery and belittling, which he says hurt most when they come from a parent, whether through comparison, shaming, rejection or name-calling. He cites the Prophet’s ﷺ description of a believer as someone who does not taunt or curse. If a parent has gone too far, he says an apology is needed, followed by holding the child to what still needs fixing, which shows a child that mistakes can be corrected. He then turns to comparison. He says there is a fine line between monitoring a child’s development in order to help early and measuring a child against someone different from them. He gives three reasons comparison backfires: it drains motivation, because the child hears that a parent is thinking about someone else; it is usually inaccurate, because we rarely see the whole picture of another family’s child; and it sows resentment between siblings, as in the story of Yusuf’s brothers. He notes that the Prophet ﷺ gave the Companions different roles suited to them. The sixth is too much corrective advice, which he says makes children tune out, citing a report from the Prophet’s ﷺ wife that he chose his times for advice for fear of boring people, and another that reminders are heavy on the soul. He ends by saying the remaining six will follow next week, along with things parents are encouraged to do.