Back in my jahiliyah days, I would consider the Amish as weird and nonconforming.

"Why do they isolate themselves and not want to be like everyone else?"

"Why do they restrict themselves and make life harder for themselves?”

I don't believe in their religious beliefs, but I have much respect for them standing up for what they believe in, and there's many lessons we as Muslims can learn from their ability to establish thriving communities among themselves who hold onto their values.

This one really irks me:

Your five-year-old son wanders around his kindergarten classroom distracting other kids. The teacher complains: he can't sit through her scintillating lessons on the two sounds made by the letter e. When the teacher invites all the kids to sit with her on the rug for a song, he stares out the window, watching a squirrel dance along a branch. She'd like you to take him to be evaluated.

And so you do. It's a good school, and you want the teacher and the administration to like you. You take him to a pediatrician, who tells you it sounds like ADHD. You feel relief. At least you finally know what's wrong. Commence the interventions, which will transform your son into the attentive student the teacher wants him to be.

The crazy thing is, this is normal behavior for a 5-year old, especially boys who mature later than girls, and are just more hyperactive compared to girls. To turn him into a docile robot is to do injustice to him if you ask me, especially when you consider the side effects of these drugs because once you have ADHD, you will be medicated.

The classroom has goals to meet, and if kids are making the teacher lose progress because they’re just being normal, they have to be “taken care of.”

It’s like kindergarten mafia, expect you don’t get whacked, you get drugged.

I remember a similar situation reading “The Collapse of Parenting,” where the author (Dr. Leonard Sax), would be surprised by how often parents were trying to find a fix for their teenager with medication, when the problem was the teen had a TV in his room and unlimited access to video games, making him play through the night and consequentially, sleepy and inattentive at school. The medicine did make him more attentive, but he lost that “glint in his eye.” Essentially, what the parents were saying was he lost that thing that made him human.

Sometimes people do have real issues like dyslexia, but don’t go shopping for diagnoses till you get the answer you want. Sounds a lot like fatwa shopping.

But l've also talked to parents who went diagnosis shopping-in one case, for a perfectly normal preschooler who wouldn't listen to his mother. Sometimes, the boy would lash out or hit her. It took him forever to put on his shoes. Several neuropsychologists conducted evaluations and decided he was "within normal range." But the parents kept searching, believing there must be some name for the child's recalcitrance. They never suspected that, by purchasing a diagnosis, they might also be saddling their son with a new, negative understanding of himself.

Quotes from Bad Therapy: Why the Kids Aren’t Growing Up

Too much monitoring isn’t good for a child, but it is also necessary in situations where danger might be present. You have to be strategic where you want monitoring and when you don’t. For example, if the kids are playing out in the yard or at a skate park, let them do their thing and learn their own boundaries. Let them determine what is dangerous and what isn’t based on their environment and skill level. You and I grew up doing some crazy things, and we ended up just fine.

In other situations such as a school environment, you don’t know the behavior patterns of other kids or teenagers, and in this situation, having more monitoring is a good thing. More monitoring can lead to more anxiety (remember that teacher that walks past your desk while working on an assignment?), but schools are also a cesspool of all kinds of insane behavior and habits, especially for practicing Muslims. More monitoring is needed, but it’s because of bad behavior. This is why I highly recommend homeschooling. You can set your own schedule, and you will be doing less monitoring by default.

The whole “surveillance state” is not the solution to problems, both societal and family. What is required is more God consciousness, which is the self-monitoring paradigm that we all need to live by. The more God conscious we are as Muslims and properly instill this in our children, the less they will have to be monitored.

They will be able to monitor themselves.

All Mason will eat is buttered noodles. Harper is afraid of dogs. Would you mind crating your dog during our visit? Or, from the therapist: Sounds like your kiddo has testing anxiety. I'll write her a note, so that the school gives her untimed tests. Sound familiar?

If we pamper kids beyond their diaper age, this is what happens to them. They will continue to be pampered until they have to face the real, and then they are doomed. They won’t know how to deal with life because they never knew the reality of life.

That life is nothing but trials and hardships, with some sprinkles of joy and fulfillment spread throughout.

There is a fine line between accommodating and pushing forward, but if a therapist steps in for you and gives you a golden pass to escape, then it must be OK….right?

Schools are no different with this approach:

School psychologists and counselors so often do the opposite: solidify a child's worry through affirmation and accommodation." They intervene with the teacher, ostensibly on a child's behalf, to lighten the homework load or to provide tailored assignments if the standard curriculum seems to cause too much stress. None of this encourages the development of a child's natural resources for coping with her worries or overcoming stressful situations.

We think as parents that we’re not doing this because we’re immigrant parents and we’re harsher as the stereotype goes, but we are doing this with the religion. How many times does your child not pray on time, or skip jummah because they’re in school?

Is that OK?

Are we accommodating the dunya more than the akhirah?

How many times do we wake up for Fajr, but we let our kids sleep in because they have a long exam today?

Let’s just take the example of Jummah prayer for instance.

The masajid are filled with students when Friday is some sort of holiday, but outside of that, where are the kids, specifically young men the rest of the week? I’ve seen parents who do bring their kids to Jummah, and their sons have been successful in graduating and going to college, so don’t tell me it will ruin their future prospects by taking them out of school every Friday, and it will “create a scene.” Nonsense.

Do you really think Allah subhana wata'aalah will not take care of you if you do what He says? What does He say at the end of Surah Jummah?

Say, “What is with Allah is far better than amusement and merchandise. And Allah is the Best Provider.”

Allah is the Best Provider.

You can read more from the book itself.

Quotes from Bad Therapy:

Hang around families with young children for an afternoon, and you'll hear parents check that their kids are enjoying their ice cream, excited about school the next day, that they had fun at the park. In so many ways, we signal to kids: your happiness is the ultimate goal; it's what we're all livin' for.

According to the best research, we have it all backward. If we wanted our kids to be happy, the last thing we would do is to communicate that happiness is the goal. The more vigorously you hunt happiness, the more likely you are to be disappointed. This is true irrespective of the objective conditions of your life.

This is so true in Islam. We are constantly reminded of how this world is a delusion, a fleeting moment that will only be like a night followed by the day:

On the Day they see it, it will seem they lingered [in this life] an evening [at most,] or its morning. (79:46)

Just look at social media. Everyone seems happy, except you, and it artificially makes you sad and depressed. If social media is doing this to adults, who have a more mature brain and life experience, how about teenagers and youngsters who are not as mature?

By insisting that happiness be their goal, we place kids in a crucible. On the one hand, "chasing positivity" tends to make them more depressed. Then feeling depressed gets socially rewarded.”

Here’s an anecdote from a high school kid regarding being known by your strengths vs being known for your struggles.

Cody, a senior at a public high school in Brooklyn, told me the same. A generation ago, kids might have identified with what Cody calls their "strengths": the jock, the popular kid, the math team member, the beauty queen. But today, that's verboten. "Identifying with your strengths now isn't seen as too cool because some people may manipulate you into thinking that you're privileged because of it."

What's wrong with identifying with your struggles? "Well, I see that they don't try to solve it."

Cody took pains to explain that he wasn't talking about the severely depressed —just the average kid. Once they get the validation from other students for their mental health crises, "they don't break out of that rut," he said.

In conclusion, if you pursue happiness, you will only be more depressed, which is praised and pampered by society, leaving you in that state since it makes you feel “accepted.”

Everlasting happiness is only in Jannah, and to get to Jannah requires struggle and sacrifice.

A good therapist (if you must go to one) should be telling you to stop this cycle of constantly delving into your past problems instead of constantly discussing them.

Constantly discussing them and thinking of them leads to depression:

"...being overly prone to talking about your emotional pain is itself a symptom of depression."

Bad Therapy - pg 48.

Islamically speaking, it is also highly encouraged to not delve into your past problems. Even the Prophet ﷺ when he went to Ta'if and was forced out of the city, the way he mentioned his story was very vague and basic. He didn't get into the details because he didn't want people's sympathy ﷺ.

He only even discussed it because Ayesha RA asked him if there was any day that was worse than Uhud.

All the details that we know of Ta'if? Those details came from other narrators. Once again, the Prophet ﷺ didn't go into those details wanting people's sympathy, and he encouraged us to not delve into past mistakes and errors. Learn from them, realize that it was from the will of Allah, and move on. Don’t let it weaken you.

It was narrated that Abu Hurairah said:

"The Messenger of Allah (ﷺ) said: 'The strong believer is better and more beloved to Allah than the weak believer, although both are good. Strive for that which will benefit you, seek the help of Allah, and do not feel helpless. If anything befalls you, do not say, "if only I had done such and such" rather say "Qaddara Allahu wa ma sha'a fa'ala (Allah has decreed and whatever he wills, He does)." For (saying) 'If' opens (the door) to the deeds of Satan.'"

Sunan Ibn Majah 79

Children's emotions are some of the most if not the most irregular emotions you will come across.

One second they are fighting each other, the next they are laughing with each other.

Their reactions to what they see or how they feel about a situation is very inconsistent from one day to the next.

To tell your kids to constantly focus on their emotions is to destroy them internally.

Most of the time, most people are dealing with minor irritations, fatigue, stress, pain, or other minor discomforts.

Especially if they're in public school.

A kid who is reminded to constantly heed their feelings and evaluate their happiness will always find something wrong, and will think there is something wrong with them, requiring them to get help because they will realize that most of the time, they are not happy.

Even for you and me, are you happy right now? Literally, right now?

No, you're not because you don’t come to my website when you want to be happy!

The reality is, happiness is never the end goal for anything.

You will never find true happiness in this world, and you have to let your kids know that ultimate happiness comes in the afterlife in Jannah.

This life is but a deception that becomes more apparent as each day passes.

"Adults should be telling kids how imperfect and unreliable their emotions can be, Chentsova Dutton says. Very often, kids should be skeptical that their feelings reflect an accurate picture of the world and even ignore their feelings entirely. (Gasp!) You read that right: a healthy emotional life involves a certain amount of daily repression."

Bad Therapy: Why the Kids Aren’t Growing Up

When men stay home and try to be mommy, their testosterone levels decrease.

When women are out there trying to be boss babes, their testosterone goes up.

The man might eventually have trouble performing in the bedroom, and both parties are frustrated with their sexual relationship.

The wife will be frustrated on another level since inherently her fitra will resonate with her and she will be less attracted to a man who is acting more feminine.

Likewise the man will be frustrated on another level since his wife is essentially a man, and he will be less attracted to her due to her lack of femininity.

Can a relationship like this survive?

No.

Numbing your child’s pain with ADHD medications is a form of malpractice.

By the parents.

Heard a quote from a podcast recently, the Jordan Harbinger podcast, episode 1114:

So a hypothetical will make us feel fear in the present. It's not a hypothetical fear. It's like we feel the pain in the moment.

Yeah. And that's the way that our brain works.

But we cannot feel a hypothetical pleasure in the moment. We can have some degree of anticipation. Yeah, you can be paranoid about a car crash, but you can't imagine going to the movies and then get a rush of dopamine.

It doesn't work like that. You actually have to go to the movies.

When we are anticipating something exciting that we want to do, we don't get the pleasure and dopamine of that action.

To give another example, if you anticipating getting married in the near future, you won't get the dopamine hit just from the anticipation itself. You get that high when you actually do meet her, get married, and spend time with her.

On the other hand, if you think you won’t get married, the stress you might feel of not getting married actually does harm your body in the present.

This brings a new angle to the Islamic concept of how this world is not supposed to be Heaven. It’s a temporary place, which is actually a test for us.

And last time I checked, tests are stressful.

Don’t put all your hopes in this world. Take your portion of this world, but strive for the next world.

There is a lot of jahiliya still in our Muslim circles.

Giving birth to a baby girl is considered a setback or a waste of time, instead of a blessing. Compound that with the mental setback daughters can have if the father feels the same way. He gives her no attention, letting her desperately seek male attention through other means, scarring her for life.

The only love she received from her father was when she was just a little child, but that slowly dwindled as she got older because now she is a woman, so she’s almost not a mahram anymore.

No affection, no hugs, no special treatment. Just the typical, “How are you doing?”

After all, when she gets married, she becomes someone else’s “daughter,” right?

Wrong.

Your daughter is still your daughter, and if things go south, she falls back under your protection, dad.

You’re not being a good Muslim by neglecting her, thinking you’re doing the right thing.

Why don’t you follow the example of the Prophet ﷺ and how he treated his daughter Fatima RA?

The Prophet ﷺ was firm when he had to be, and gentle and kind at the same time.

When the Prophet ﷺ gave his famous speech in Makkah at the declaration of Prophethood, he was telling his family to believe in Allah, and save yourselves from the hellfire. He mentioned all the tribes, and started naming individual family members, concluding with Fatima RA where he told her to, “fear Allah, because I won’t be able to save you from the fire of hell. But in this world, ask me for whatever I have and I will give it to you.”

Even in this pivotal moment of his life, he ﷺ was being strict and loving at the same time with his daughter.

He showed his love for his daughter, even in such nerve racking circumstances, and he wasn’t afraid to hide it.

In many other instances, the Prophet ﷺ would outwardly show his love to Fatima RA by standing up to greet her, kissing her forehead and even seating her in his place when she came to visit.

This, my fellow Muslim Dad, is how we treat our daughters.

People cope with their problems in many ways:

• Drugs

• Alcohol

• Stress eating

• Yelling

• Hurting their families

• Excess video game consumption

• Netflix

• Porn

But there's one coping mechanism that people are moving more and more away from:

Prayer.

In in particular:

Salah.

You can't even begin to realize how important Salah is.

Allah is not in need of our Salah, but we are desperately in need of it.

What better feeling can we have when we ask Allah, the Creator of the Heavens and Earth, the One who is able to change everything for you, for our needs?

Never underestimate the importance of Salah!

Just imagine what can happen to us if we substitute any or all of our coping mechanisms with Salah.

Not only will it save your life, it will save your soul.

Hot take:

Poor people buy their kids screens.

Rich people...don't.

I didn't define what rich and poor are, but I'll let you think about it.

When your kids are young, they think you know everything.

They think you’re infallible.

Of course we are not infallible, but this is the time to capitalize on spending time and investing in them with your presence and your knowledge, however little it may be.

Teach them even one ayah, as narrated by the Prophet ﷺ.

They will soak in whatever you say and might even practice it better than you!

People teasing me in a joking manner that I will need a second part time job because I’m having a 4th kid.

That’s the mindset of someone who sees children as a liability, instead of seeing children as wealth and as an asset.

Alhumdulilah I’ve been able to put myself and my family in a position where I live within my means, and can provide for my family comfortably.

The secret isn’t hard.

Bust your butt, spend less than what you make, save and invest, and put your trust in Allah.

The situation in Gaza and the West Bank is another wake up call for the whole world, to let them know that there will be a Day of Judgment.

The whole world is looking and seeing the destruction and mayhem, and should be thinking to themselves:

"How can such an injustice ever be equalized?"

I hope the honest and sincere, who are pondering and thinking, find the truth of Islam and the peace it brings.

Everything else is in the way of salat.

A small but powerful statement from SUNY Potsdam:

"Screen time desensitizes the brain’s reward system.

Many children are “hooked” on electronics, and in fact, gaming releases so much dopamine—the “feel-good” chemical—that on a brain scan it looks the same as cocaine use."

Just because your kid is homeschooled or goes to an Islamic School, that should not be a reason to lower your guard.

Always keep your guard up.

Shaytan doesn’t take days off.

2000: The bigger the screen, the bigger the fitna.

2024: The smaller the screen, the bigger the fitna.

When you get married, you are following a Sunnah of the Prophet ﷺ.

But it is a lot deeper than that.

Deeper than you can imagine.

When you get married, your character changes dramatically.

Your life has so many character transformations that you will not even be aware of.

It will happen organically.

You will become a husband or wife, a parent, a son-in-law, etc, and your character will be molded with every situation under the sun.

You have to learn to deal with another person and sacrifice some of your time for them.

You will have fun,

you will argue,

you will love,

you will sacrifice,

and you will learn what patience really is.

Then you will have children, and now you will be sleep deprived, while loving them more than anything else (after Allah and the Prophet ﷺ).

No single day will ever be routine or the same.

A chaotic blessing.

Your life will be a rollercoaster at times, but you won’t want to get off of it.

It’s hard to explain if you don’t have kids, but the minute you do, it all makes sense.

All these experiences will solidify, strengthen, and make your emotional intelligence more flexible.

You will be molded into a stronger person who is more thankful, and life’s challenges will no longer make you angry and derail you, because you’ve been there and done that countless times now.

That is what a good marriage will do for you.

Did you ever hear of the Prophet ﷺ lose his cool over silly little things? Even for huge obstacles, he kept his composure.

That doesn’t mean he ﷺ didn’t get angry, but he got angry the right way.

Emotional intelligence.

There’s a right and a wrong way to get angry at someone.

When you get married in sha Allah, you will know what I mean.

He ﷺ was faced with challenge after challenge, but he was able to persevere.

Now, what happens if you don’t get married?

It can get ugly.

Your character is more likely to become very rigid.

You have been so used to living a certain way, that small changes aggravate you.

As you get older, your routine settles, and your emotional intelligence declines.

You become one-dimensional.

You become selfish.

You become grumpy.

Too many moving parts causes you to panic.

Your individualism only grows bigger, and sadly, you will be alone.

You never had kids, and now when you see kids being kids, it annoys you.

It might even disgust you.

What did the Prophet ﷺ say about a person’s character?

Aisha reported: The Messenger of Allah ﷺ said:

إِنَّ مِنْ أَكْمَلِ الْمُؤْمِنِينَ إِيمَانًا أَحْسَنُهُمْ خُلُقًا وَأَلْطَفُهُمْ بِأَهْلِهِ

Verily, the most complete of believers in faith are those with the best character and who are most kind to their families.

Sunan al-Tirmidhi 2612

If you really want to perfect your character, your relationships have to be more than just having friends and being an Uncle or Aunty.

You need to be a parent.

You need to be a spouse.

You need to be that rock that your spouse relies on, and your kids rely on.

At the end of the day, it is your family that will care about you the most.

Back in the 80s and 90s, we had less Islamic resources, but we also had less distractions.

Today, we have more Islamic resources Alhumdulilah, but we also have more distractions.

I honestly can’t decide which time was a better time to be in, and it really doesn’t matter.

The point is, Allah subhana wata'aalah put you and me at a specific time on this earth, and it is up to us to make the best out of it.

My wife and I were talking about homeschooling, and she mentioned to me how if she started homeschooling at our oldest's current grade (7th), it would be a lot harder since the subject intensity is just at another level.

When you start early from Pre-K, you can also learn the information along with your child, making it easier for you to digest the material and concepts.

Remember, you will only have to learn the material from scratch once.

Each subsequent child will learn the same subjects from you, but since you have already taught the subject before, it will come back fast.

The only thing that gets challenging is managing more kids.

The material is not the issue.

Start them while they're young, and while you have less of a hill to climb.

s. e. smith from The Verge (paywalled article):

Every few days, I open my inbox to an email from someone asking after an old article of mine that they can’t find. They’re graduate students, activists, teachers setting up their syllabus, researchers, fellow journalists, or simply people with a frequently revisited bookmark, not understanding why a link suddenly goes nowhere. They’re people who searched the internet and found references, but not the article itself, and are trying to track an idea down to its source. They’re readers trying to understand the throughlines of society and culture, ranging from peak feminist blogging of the 2010s to shifts in cultural attitudes about disability, but coming up empty.

This is not a problem unique to me: a recent Pew Research Center study on digital decay found that 38 percent of webpages accessible in 2013 are not accessible today. This happens because pages are taken down, URLs are changed, and entire websites vanish, as in the case of dozens of scientific journals and all the critical research they contained. This is especially acute for news: researchers at Northwestern University estimate we will lose one-third of local news sites by 2025, and the digital-first properties that have risen and fallen are nearly impossible to count. The internet has become a series of lacunas, spaces where content used to be. Sometimes it is me searching for that content, spending an hour reverse-engineering something in the Wayback Machine because I want to cite it, or read the whole article, not just a quote in another publication, an echo of an echo. It’s reached the point where I upload PDFs of my clips to my personal website in addition to linking to them to ensure they’ll remain accessible (until I stop paying my hosting fees, at least), thinking bitterly of the volume of work I’ve lost to shuttered websites, restructured links, hacks that were never repaired, servers disrupted, sometimes accompanied by false promises that an archive would be restored and maintained.

This is why I usually make a PDF of an article and link to that PDF versus the actual article. Not to mention the haram images that might be on there, which I can easily cover up.

FYI, the title quote also belongs to s. e. smith.

Did I get your attention with the title?

Good.

About a month ago, I was watching a clip on YouTube, where a lady was asking whether or not it was worth spending $2,500 for Taylor Swift tickets.

These were not front row seats, but they were nosebleed seats, essentially the furthest seats away from Taylor Swift. 

You would need binoculars to see her.

The host of the show was outraged that these nosebleed seats cost $2,500.

She said for that kind of money, I want some of the “Swifty sweat” to hit me.

(I need to be so close to her that her sweat hits me in the face.)

That same evening, we reached a point in the Seerah where an incident occurred, and the sahaba were gathering the leftover wudu water of the Prophet ﷺ to use for themselves. This went down a tangent where we discussed how the hair, the sweat, and even the saliva of the Prophet ﷺ was considered blessed.

So blessed to the point that they would take some of the sweat and put it in their perfume.

And it was narrated from Anas that Umm Sulaym used to put out a mat of leather for the Prophet ﷺ and he would take a nap in her house. When the Prophet ﷺ fell asleep, she took some of his sweat and hair and kept it in a bottle, then she put it in some sukk (perfume made of musk). He [Thumaamah ibn ‘Abd-Allah ibn Anas] said: When Anas ibn Maalik was dying, he left instructions that some of the sukk should be put in his hunoot (perfumes used in preparation of dead for burial). 

Narrated by al-Bukhaari (6281)

The sahaba would take these things and seek blessings from them, and there was nothing weird or wrong about it.

Naturally the kids thought it was kind of strange, but that is because they’re still kids, and don’t understand how the adult mind and body work…

And that is where we as parents have to bridge the gap, educate, and defend.

So what if the Sahaba sought blessings from the Prophet ﷺ’s sweat? This is something unanimously agreed upon, and the Prophet ﷺ himself approved of it.

As we can see from the Taylor Swift example, people seek some sort of “high" or blessings from other people’s bodily fluids to this day.

It sounds strange when you say it like that, but it’s the truth!

The “Swiftie sweat” is just an example, but it can be applied to many celebrities whose teeth, leftover tissues, and even used underwear sold for thousands of dollars.

I remember watching TV shows where during certain episodes, the main character would meet their favorite celebrity and after shaking their hand, they would say: 

“I’m never washing this hand again.” 

It is because now they have a part of that person on them, which makes them feel special.

Of course no man's sweat or saliva is worth anything today, and the only sweat or saliva that was blessed was that of the Prophet ﷺ.

Now when you talk to your kids about this, they will know how to educate and defend the sahaba and the Prophet ﷺ on this matter.

And most importantly, it will increase their Iman!

As a Muslim parent you don't go to concerts...

But your kids participate in concerts at school.

As a Muslim parent you don't go and dance with strangers...

But your kids participate in dances at school.

Why are Muslim parents so weak, that they can't even opt-out of these dances and concerts?

Your kids will plead and beg, and you will give in out of love.

But that is not love. That is weakness on your part.

Whatever happened to your love for Allah first and foremost?

Whatever happened to, "We hear and we obey?"

Gaby Del Valle from The Verge:

Nearly half of US teens are “almost constantly” online, though the platforms they spend their time on vary significantly, according to a new Pew survey.

Notice how the apps that require you to read (X, Threads, Reddit) are less frequently used compared to YouTube, Instagram, TikTok. Threads is relatively new, but, just a curious observation.

I wonder how this would compare to adults’ usage of social media.

Are we just as likely to watch instead of read?

This is why you have to homeschool.

If you can’t read, you can’t succeed.

Imagine 8 hours of schooling only to find out you need to spend an additional hour to teach your child how to read.