On Parenting

It’s been a long time since I have written anything here and now I’m wondering what to write and where to start. Hmmm… lets see… Dawood is now one and a half years old mashAllah and is the cutest thing on earth. I know I’m his mom and I know that I can’t be partial on that. But really, the way he speaks, smiles, eats, sleep and says, “mamma”, and not to mention he even says, “Allahu akbar Allah”. MashaAllah. I have realized in this short/long time that whatever that is I do, he will repeat or he’d want to repeat all those actions- everything. And that puts a lot of responsibilities on your shoulders because here you’d see that you just can’t ask him to do anything until you show him to do it. If you throw trash in the dustbin, he’d do exactly that, if you clean the surface after something’s spilled on it, he’d wipe the surface too after spilling water deliberately there. And I have to hide the broom in a new place every time I use it, because he wants to clean the house all the time. And yes, as soon as you have prayer mat ready, he’d come first and do sujud and sit there moving his fingers up and down and then get distracted and then come back after sometime and then do the same. And the most amazing thing is when he knows that I have finished my prayer, he’d sit on my lap and point in the direction of Quran and would ask me read it aloud to him. Sometimes, he sits there until I’ve finished reading and sometimes he’d just go and play but as soon as I finish reading it, he’d want to come and kiss it as he sees me doing the same. And all this has made me realize that I have to give up soo many of my bad habits just to make sure that I don’t transfer them consciously or unconsciously into the next generation. It’s not an easy job to raise a child and you can never do it on your own and for this I think we need to pray continuously as we can never be perfect and we will make mistakes and there’s only One Being which is perfect in every sense of the word, and loves us so much that He will forgive us if we have true intentions and have faith in Him.

The other thing I was wondering was the school system. In Pakistan, parents wake their two and a half year old kids early in the morning for school. But how many parents would wake even their teenagers for fajr prayers as religiously, as they wake them up for school or college. How many of us realize that we have prioritize school or other things over namaz for our kids since their childhood, since their toddler-hood! I’m thinking too much on these lines these days, maybe because of Dawood. Anyway, I was just wondering what was the educational system before the colonial system took over. There were medressahs and belief and Truth was the basis of educational system. Do we want nursery rhymes and fantasies to be the basis of our educational system? I’m thinking of homeschooling Dawood for the first few years atleast inshAllah if Allah gives me enough strength.

I know the post is filled with too many things jumbled up together. Almost 2 am. Finally I had time to write something. Naeema, khush ho jao!