One Thing That Never Goes With Successful Parenting
Two things almost never go together: prioritizing a good connection with your child, and at the same time using the child to prove some points to the people.
When you care so much about proving a point to people, and about how people view you and your family, you will overreact to things and deal with your children in a very wrong manner. You will be quickly angered. You will use insultive words on your child when there is no need for that.
A parent whose concern is proving a point, when his child fails, he would be easily tempted to overreact and dwell more on the child’s failure than on the child improving; he would feel like the child has brought some disgrace upon him, and this would make it hard for him to carefully analyze the failure and point out the child’s mistake and draw out a map to help the child improve.
Such a parent, if his child were to get caught watching pornography or having undue relationships with the opposite sex, the parent will be more concerned about their tarnished image rather than solving the problem and helping the child overcome the issue; such parent may transfer aggression to the child and it would be hard to see the child as a kid who needs help, they will instead see the child as an evil kid bringing shame upon them, and this opens the door to all form of strained relationships and unhappy family.
On the other hand, a parent whose concern is the welfare of his family and not ‘what the people think of us’ will be able to handle the delicate situations in the way that would be most helpful to the child: they would focus on helping the child and not on venting their pain and disappointment.
When parents prioritize proving a point to outsiders over the inner happiness of the family, they often create a robotic family where the esteem and happiness of the children is based on what people think of them. And how dangerous this is!
Many families lack connection, they share no good time together, they rarely sit together to talk and laugh, they rarely confide in each other, the parents do not even know about the struggles of the children — maybe one parent works in one state and the other parent works in another state and the children are in boarding schools. They know what they lack, but they are pleased with lacking inner connection within the family as long as people perceive them as a successful family due to their material achievements.
And why would you make the society’s praise determine your happiness? Do you not understand that we are slaves to everything powerful enough to control our happiness and tamper with it how it wishes?
Should you ever give your happiness, your family connection and your daughter’s mental health up to prove a point to a few people who would turn away from your grave at the expense of the child whose prayers will continue to affect you in your grave, as it has been reported in the authentic hadith?
You are a shepherd, and you will be asked about your children, about their mental health, but you will never be asked about the society’s thought of you.
Every time you want to make a decision, and you find yourself prioritizing what the people think over what would actually bring fulfilment for your family, it is advised that you remember the advice of the prophet to his companions that “…And you should remember death and how one becomes like a piece of rag”(Tirmidhi 2458), how all of the praises of the people cease to affect you, but the good child you raised continues to benefit you.
You must remember that when you lay this foundation of not prioritizing the thoughts of the people, you are not only building a happy, confident and independent child who can face the world and say the truth irrespective of what the people would think of them, but you are also raising a child whose consciousness of the religion will not be affected by the thoughts of the people.
The Prophet has said: “This religion started as a strange affair, and it shall return to being strange, so glad tidings to those who are (comfortable with being) strangers”.
When the strangeness returns, the child that would survive is one who has always been comfortable being strange, and has been raised upon that principle worth more than gold “Don’t care what people think.”
This article is an excerpt from Naas Educators’ forthcoming book on Mistakes Parents and Homeschoolers should avoid.
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