Subhanallah, what an article!
It’s a little long, but well worth the read – the writer shares all the tips she has picked up on the way about raising children who are on the right path, sometimes despite the odds!
May He give us the tawfeeq to implement them, Inshallah 🙂
Here is an excerpt:
““Assalaamu alaikum,” I whispered to the warm bundle nestled against my chest, “I’m your mommy.” I stroked his face and then asked the rhetorical question that every mother has asked since time immemorial. “Now… how am I going to raise you?”
It’s a question that I have continued to ask since that first magical night in the maternity ward.
I’ve asked it of grandparents, parents, sons, and daughters. I’ve asked it of Pakistanis, Indians, Afghans, Arabs, Americans, Asians, and Africans. I’ve sat people down at parties, emailed friends’ parents, called up aunties on the telephone, and stopped uncles on their way out the door. Any family whose practice of Islam has impressed me, any child whose manners have stunned me, any teenager whose conduct with his or her sibling has given me reason for pause, any adult whose balance of deen (religion) and dunya (world) has wowed me, I have accosted and asked,
“What exactly did your parents do with you?!”
“How did you raise your children?!”
“I beg you, tell me the secret of bringing up Mu’mineen like the ones I see in your home!”
What I have found in my years of “field research” is that nearly all of these families have stumbled upon the same basic secrets to success. While many of them don’t necessarily know one another, time and time again they have given me the same advice, the same tips, the same rules. I would catalogue their stories in my head, thinking I could easily remember them later. So when I was recently approached with the request for an article on Muslim parenting tips, I jumped at the chance to put it all down in writing and thus preserve the valuable insights I have gathered over the course of the past twelve years or so.”
Read the whole article here: http://muslimmatters.org/2010/02/25/raising-children-with-deen-and-dunya/