Kuwait Parenting Workshop #2

Auto-generated transcript:I want to remind myself and you that as far as children are concerned, the only thing that parents will be questioned about before Allah is how those children were raised, about their tarbiyah. Right? You will not be asked whether your child was a doctor or an engineer or a pilot or an architect and so on. None of which are bad things to have. All good things, I am telling you. But you will not be questioned about that. You will be questioned only about the tarbiyah of the child. What is it that the child did with respect to his beliefs? And with respect to his akhlaq, his dealings? So when you are talking about what is my dream for my child, okay, that's your dream for the child. But you are not the child. At the end of the day, he is the one who is going to or she is the one who is going to have to do what you have dreamt. So where is their commitment in that? So that is very important for you to understand. Okay? So the goal and the goal and the goal and the goal and the goal and the goal and the goal and the goal and the goal and the goal and the goal and the goal and the goal and the goal and the goal and the goal and the goal and the goal and the goal and the goal and the goal and the goal and the goal and the goal and the goal and the goal and the goal and the goal and the goal and the goal and the goal and the goal and the goal and the goal and the goal and the goal and the goal and the goal and the goal and the goal and the goal and the goal and the goal and the goal and the goal and the goal and the goal and the goal and the goal and the goal and the goal and the goal and the goal and the goal and the goal and the goal and the goal and the goal and the goal and the goal and the commitment for the dream comes from within the child, it's not going to happen. It will not happen. So, you have to guide the child to have a kind of dream which also aligns with your own dream. If you don't do that, and it is only your dream, it won't work. And then obviously when I say you, I mean both the mother and the father. So, it has to be a three-way conversation. Sit, three of you sit together and talk about this dream. What is it that motivates you? How will you do this? And so on. So, the dream, your dream for the child really should be the child's dream for herself or himself supported by you. It's not a question, I want my child to be this or that. You may want. You may want. Won't happen. Unless you put the effort. And unless the child also wants that to happen. So, have those conversations. I don't know if you have them yet, but you should have them. Now, parenting as I say is a contact sport. It's not a armchair dialogue. You can't sit and, you know, I want this, I want that. No, it has to be your involvement. And your involvement includes your time. It includes your talent. It includes money. But much more important than money is your time. So, how much time? How much time do you give to your child? And the usual answer we get from people is, Oh, but you see, I'm very busy. I have this job. I have to travel. You're making the choices. It is your child. You have to make the choices. And if you say, I have to do all of this. That's the choice you're making. Then don't expect magic to happen because magic won't happen. Right? Right? Andre Agassi, tennis player, who had the most powerful serve of any tennis player in history. He started, literally, his father started him playing tennis, literally, when he was the highest. He was the height of an adult tennis racket. So, how old is that? Maybe two years old. He just taught us the racket. And his father designed a ball throwing machine. In those days, they didn't have these machines. Nowadays, you can buy them. But in those days, he designed a ball throwing machine which used to throw the ball at a speed of, if I'm not mistaken, about a hundred kilometers an hour. So, like a bullet. And Andre Agassi's father had this rule that he had to, again, if I'm not mistaken with the figures, he had to face one thousand serves. This ball is being fired. He has to face that serve and hit it back one thousand times a day. So, by the time Andre Agassi was like ten or twelve years old, he had already faced a million serves, which no competition, no competitor of his ever did. So, the key is the dream of the father, starting early enough, and then consistent effort on that. Not a day was missed. There was no way, as long as I was not sick in bed, I was not sick. Whether it's Christmas, whether it is this, whether it is that, it doesn't matter. You are going to fire one thousand serves in a day. And there are many such stories about, I'm giving you examples from athletics and sports because they're easy to find. Many such examples. Great sports people don't become great sports people by wishing for it. There is a lot of energy, there is a lot of effort that goes into it. And the same rule applies. So, your commitment as a parent, how committed are you? Parents talk about respect. And they will tell, sometimes they come to me, please tell my children that they should respect me. Please give a lecture on the fact that children should respect their parents. So, my question always is, why is there a need to do that? Why is there a need to do that? I remember once, a teacher, a teacher in a college, he talked about how disrespectful students are towards teachers. He's not talking about America, he's talking about India. How disrespectful teachers are towards children, towards students. He made a very statement which stuck in my mind. He said, teachers don't come to college and go from college by the same route. They take a different route. They keep changing the route they take to their home. Because they are afraid that some student or a group of students will be lying in wait for them to assault them. And I'm thinking to myself, I've been a teacher for 40 years. And all that I ever got from my students, young or old, is respect and love. Nothing else. Alhamdulillah. So, what is it that's happening? If you are a teacher, you are a parent, we blame the younger generation is bad. They are like this, they are like that. These kids. Is it? I mean, I'm not saying, if there are children who are, or students, I don't even call them children. Maybe they're late teeth or something. But if they are assaulting their children, I don't want to say that I'm a teacher, no matter what the teacher did. Certainly, I don't support that. I'm not saying it's a good thing. But there is something involved. It's not one person alone. A child didn't just wake up in the morning and say, today I'm going to beat my teacher. What is it that leads to that? Something leads to it. So, when you say, I want my children to respect you, my question to you is, why do you need to say that? Why do you need to say that? So ask yourself, am I worthy of respect? I know these are hard questions. These are hard questions for me to ask you, hard questions for you to think about. And I'm not saying necessarily that you are not worthy of respect. No, of course not. Alhamdulillah, may Allah bless you and make you worthy of respect. But seriously ask yourself, how do I become worthy of respect? How do I become somebody who has so much dignity that I don't need to tell my children to respect me? I don't have to tell them that. The very fact that you have to tell somebody something shows that there is a problem. Same thing with marital relationships. The wives come to me, Chef, please tell my husband what are the rights of a wife. When the husband comes, he says, please tell my wife what are my rights. Rights of the husband. So I tell them, I will tell you instead what are your duties as a wife. And what are your duties as a husband. Because you will be questioned about your duties. You will not be questioned about your rights. Allah will not say what rights did you have. Allah will say what were your duties. And the beauty is that if you fulfill the duties, the rights get fulfilled automatically. No? My duty towards my wife is her rights. And her duties towards me are my rights. So if I focus on my duties, her rights will automatically get fulfilled. Instead of that, if I say, what are my rights, I must get my rights. It will never happen because it becomes a conflict. And the question I need to ask myself is, why do I need to ask for my rights to be fulfilled? Something is happening here. There is a problem with the relationship. Something is wrong. What is that? Same thing with parents. And in that, it's very important. That's why I say here, children have many friends but only two parents. One of the biggest problems of parenting today is parents are afraid of children. They are afraid of children. Literally. Physically or psychologically frightened of children. Whatever the child wants, the parent will give. You know, you go to somebody's house. And I'm not going to sit here and tell you all about the good old days when I was a child. Forget that. Every time, every period has good things and bad things in it. I was not born and raised in a time when it was all golden and beautiful and you are not in a time when everything is bad. No. There were things in my time also which were nasty and stinky. Same thing here. And there were things which were good and otherwise. But just couple of things I want to point out. When I was a child in our home, the practice that nobody ever, I mean, I don't think anyone ever actually told us to do this. This is how we grew up. It's somehow, you know, part of the culture. If you have a guest in the house, number one, you come and you say salaam. Number two, while the guest is there, you stay in the room. You sit quietly, you listen to the conversation. Then you go and you bring the tea and you bring the whatever is being served. You bring it. Amjala, we grew up with servants. Servants don't do that. Your job. And nobody should do that.