Bad Therapy Step 5: Monitor, Monitor, Monitor

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.