Before You Get Angry At Your Child, Read This
She is 14 years old; one of those ages when parents and their children start to drift apart more and more. You want her to study hard for her exams, but she’d rather chat with her friends. When the results come in, they’re very poor.
But the results are just one of many problems: she is arrogant, she doesn’t listen to you, she is lazy, she is careless, she is irresponsible, yes!
Her presence irks you, and when she speaks you feel so much rage that you want to slap her, you’re very displeased with her: she’s getting worse by the day.
But what if we told you that you may be the reason she’s getting worse every day, achieving less, wasting more time and getting more and more disrespectful and irritating?
Here is the explanation: In the hadith of Ibn Amr, the Prophet was reported to have said that the pleasure of Allah lies in the pleasure of the parent, and the anger of Allah lies in the anger of the parent.¹
That means, the more displeased you get with your child and the more you hate them, the more Allah distances them from his mercy, from change, from success, from being productive.
Yes, parents are not expected to be saints who do not react when they’re displeased, but they should, at the same time, try to ensure that even if they vent their displeasure with a particular behaviour of their child, they should not allow that behaviour to breed resentment for the child; rather, they should communicate their displeasure, but deep in their hearts, should not stop to love the child and hope and pray for them.
Yes, it is difficult to love a child who is disobeying you, but it will be an endless cycle if you do not suppress your anger and embrace them, in your heart, with love.
The cycle: the child does bad, you get displeased so greatly that you nurse some level of resentment, then Allah is displeased just as you are, and takes that child further from His mercy. And then the child irritates you more and you hate them more, and Allah takes them even further away from His mercy.
It is of course no parent’s joy to have their children taken far away from Allah’s mercy, for what do they gain if this happens? So every parent must strive, that even when their children do bad things and they react in a way that conveys their displeasure, they should strive to not allow resentment or hate a place in their hearts, for this is more destructive than it is helpful.
It is necessary to note though, that before parents are addressed, it is the children who must be first addressed about the grave danger that lies in their parents’ anger and the importance of avoiding it.
It is also necessary for the parent to note, that their anger only weighs on the scales before Allah when they’re not asking the children to disobey Allah; as for the parent who orders his child to disobey Allah, a thousand years of anger would not cause Allah to be angry with the child.
- Tirmidhi 1821, (Graded Hasan by Albaani)
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