What If You Die a Day After Your Child Is Born?
You have prepared all you can for parenting: you have read books, learnt from other parents, and attended seminars. But what if you die before you can implement all of those things you learnt? What if you fall ill? Have you also prepared for that?
While books have been written about most aspects of parenting, no book will teach you how to raise a child from the grave, or how to raise a child while you are so ill that you can’t even raise a hand.
Your fear, as a parent, should not only be that you have not read enough books about parenting, rather your biggest fear, in fact, should be about the things you have no control over.
Most times, some of the major factors that determine how our kids turn out are things beyond our control, and while we prepare for the things we can control by learning from books and all, it is more important that we prepare for things beyond our control.
But glad tidings, even those things beyond our control can be prepared for!
The things beyond our control are within Allah’s control, as he demonstrated in Surah 17:82 where He took charge of the upbringing of some orphans and sent their way those who would take good care of those orphans.
Why? Because their parents had prepared well for that.
The best way to prepare for things beyond our control is by praying constantly to Allah for our kids — before and after they are born.
But there is something that should come before the supplications, after all, doesn’t every parent pray for their kids? Why do we still have so many kids turning out bad when Allah has promised to answer the supplication that a parent makes for their kid, as emphasized in the hadith that says: Abu Hurayra reported that the Prophet, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, said, “Three supplications are answered without a doubt: the supplication of someone who is oppressed, the supplication of someone on a journey, and the supplication of parents for their children.”¹
What then could be wrong? Why are the supplications of parents seeming to be rejected these days? The answer is clear in the hadith reported on the authority of Abu Hurayrah (ra):
The Messenger of Allah (ﷺ) said, “Allah the Almighty is Good and accepts only that which is good. And verily Allah has commanded the believers to do that which He has commanded the Messengers. So the Almighty has said: “O (you) Messengers! Eat of the tayyibat [all kinds of halal (legal) foods], and perform righteous deeds.” [23:51] and the Almighty has said: “O you who believe! Eat of the lawful things that We have provided you.” [2:172]” Then he (ﷺ) mentioned [the case] of a man who, having journeyed far, is disheveled and dusty, and who spreads out his hands to the sky saying “O Lord! O Lord!,” while his food is haram (unlawful), his drink is haram, his clothing is haram, and he has been nourished with haram, so how can [his supplication] be answered? ²
The scholars have explained³ that despite the fact that the traveller is from those Allah has promised to accept their prayers as mentioned in the first hadith, the prayer of the traveller in the second hadith would be rejected because his travel was made possible by unlawful means.
That means, for parents too, if we built our marriages on unlawful interaction, our wedding day was garnished with forbidden dressing and music, then we get jobs and take what is not ours; we save millions of unlawful money to spend on our children, should we not wonder then, that “ how would our supplications be answered?”
We are a people who acknowledge that we must strive to learn about parenting, but we also acknowledge, that some of the most decisive things about how our kids turn out are beyond our control, and that, can also be prepared for by ensuring that all foundations we build our marriage on, and everything we spend on our child is from what is good.
When carefulness about Allah’s limits is met with supplications,constant learning about parenting, and implementation of the knowledge, then there is a certainty that Allah would look over our kids where we are powerless.
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1)Al-Adab Al-Mufrad 32
2) 40 Hadith Nawawi 10
3) Ibn Daqiiq Al’eed’s explanation of the hadith
