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*This transcript was automatically generated by AI and may contain errors. *
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Asalamu alaikum wa rahmatullah wa barakatuhu wa barakatuhu wa barakatuhu. I’m sitting in Homewood in Rockbird. And it’s filled with stuff for the Christmas holiday. And I don’t think I’ve ever seen a larger collection of things that have no earthly use whatsoever than I have seen here. Almost all of them are of course sold out of premiums. And then they will be abandoned and junked as the minute the season is over. So I guess some within quotes goods come out of the fact that people are employed and they’re making stuff. But I don’t see what else. Anyway, that’s on the side. My topic today is really looking at one of the problems that many parents complain about, which is children with an entitlement attitude. And especially that starts showing its teeth, sir. When the child enters his or her teens. And so I want to talk about why I think, in my opinion, why this is, why this happens and therefore how it can be avoided because it is not a natural thing, it’s a manufactured thing. And it’s manufactured out of something which is very nice, which is parent concern, especially mothers. But like all good things, there is a potential for evil which manifests itself pretty quickly. And that concern, very little concern is the issue. That is, if you look at mothers, at least I can say this about our Muslim desi and Arab mothers and African mothers, they are so desperately, I don’t think desperate is a good word, they were so completely immersed in their children that they are with them and they have the eye on them literally 24×7 as long as the mother is awake and the child is awake, the mother is looking at the child, physically looking at the child, connected with the child, physically, mentally and so on. Now and responding to every single need of the child, the smallest need, the child doesn’t even have to say it, but the mother is jumping to fulfill it. Now when the child is an infant, very small, I suppose some of this makes sense, but as the child grows and is growing, it makes less and less and less sense. However, the issue is that this doesn’t change. The behavior of the mother vis-a-vis the child remains constant. Until the child is now in the twins and then almost like you turn a switch off, this attention stops and the child is then sort of forced to almost to say, well, you know, look after yourself, you are now old enough. The problem is psychology doesn’t work like an electric switch. You can’t turn it off and on. So if you have a child who is used to constant attention and constant demand fulfillment, indiscriminate demand fulfillment and also many times parents succumbing to literally emotional blackmail, which is tantrums. It is very physical as in, you know, screaming and so on. But otherwise it’s like getting, you know, expressing signs of disapproval. Parents, children sort of clamping up things like this. It works. The interesting thing is that the cure is pretty simple. The first thing that you need to do is to gradually wean them off the constant attention phenomena. It’s like detoxification in a way because instead of weaning them off, if you shut it off, then you have problems. And this is where we have the, you know, teenager syndrome, the teenagers express their disapproval. The problem is that when they were little, they did the same things, but it looked cured. But when they grow older, it doesn’t. And that’s when you notice it and you say, well, what’s wrong with this kid? It doesn’t have anything wrong with the kid. It is the same kid and he’s behaving the same way except that when he was behaving like at age two, it looked different from how he behaves in the same way at age 12. But the reason is the same, which is that the kid is making a demand and you, mother or father, quite rightly are saying, no, it doesn’t work. But and so the kid shows disapproval. Now so what must you do is you must wean them off. How do you do that? By giving them graduated tasks. So when the child is now three years old and wants to get, wants you to put on their shoes, he said, no, you’re old enough to put on your shoes, put them on yourself. And he has, there are the shoes, go put them in the shelf, bring them out, put them on yourself. Now if you do it, starting young, if you do it, make it fun, make it like a game, chill and enjoy doing that. Little, little kids love doing little, little chores. So they love doing, you know, bringing things, carrying things, bringing them out, help bomb in the kitchen, all that kind of stuff. They’re very good at it and they get used to it and then you find you have more responsible children. Very interesting study done in NASA to say, to show, to determine how do people become geniuses. And they found a very interesting thing. They said it happens when the child is given chores, they’re given responsibility, they’re given tasks for which they are responsible. Now in farming communities, this happens automatically. So if you go in, if you go to one of the Amish farm, for example, you quite often see little kids. I went to one in Virginia and in Pennsylvania and there was a little one who must have been about five. He was selling horseshoes. So he was sitting there with his little stall and he was selling horseshoes. So I was chatting with him, I said, you know, I bought a horseshoe. He had them all painted silver. I said, do you have one which doesn’t have any paint on it? So he said, just a minute, I’ll get it. So he gets up, he runs, running barefoot. He’s got no shoes on. But having fun, I mean, he’s running through the dust. He went inside a barn and he got me an unpainted one. I paid some $3 or something, which is like phenomenal money for that kind of thing. But anyway, he wanted to help the kids. So I said, oh, fine, fantastic. I said, this is your business. You’re the sole owner. He said, no, I’ve got a partner. I said, who’s your partner? And he points to his little brother who’s about three years old. And this little fellow is pulling around a little cart in which he is bringing stock for the shop. He’s bringing horseshoes and a couple of other nicktacks for his brother’s shop. So the two of them are partners. Now this is normal. So I asked him, I said, what else do you do? He said, oh, I mean, I’m also responsible for these chickens. So his job is to look after the chickens, free range chickens. They don’t really need too much of looking after them. But too much or too little, he is responsible. So is the pen closed at night to make sure that no foxes and stuff get into it and stuff? So they found, the NASA study found that children who have, who grow up with tasks are very intelligent. They end up, you know, many of them end up being geniuses because their whole life is they used to solving problems. They used to planning things. They used to, you know, within courts looking for threats and trying to protect their charges from harm and so on. So they grow up with a sense of responsibility, which is an enormously valuable thing. And lo and behold, they don’t have the entitlement mentality. They don’t have, they don’t throw tantrums. They’re not 12, 13, 14 acting like they are two because they have gone through the phases, phases of growing up. So this is very important to stop treating your kid like a kid. The kid is a young adult. Even if he’s three, four, five years old, he’s still preparing or getting ready to become an adult. And so give them graduated tasks. No matter how small the task is, treat it seriously. Give them the task. Don’t pay them money. Never, never, never pay them money to do work in the house. The house belongs to them. They belong to the house. And to take care of your surroundings is part of your responsibility as an individual, as a human being. There’s no reason why you should want or be paid for it. So never pay them. Never pay them to take out the garbage or to wash the car or something because this is a family car. You’re using the car. The car is beneficial for you. You use it. So therefore you are responsible for taking care of it. So don’t pay them. But give them tasks. That’s their responsibility. And no shortcuts. No shortcuts. Today I’m busy. I got to watch this match. No, you finish your job. You finish your task and then you go watch whatever you want to watch. I think this is the thing I want to say to you that the cure for this entitlement mentality in God help us, it’s a horrible thing. We raise children who with an entitlement mentality, they grow up into adults with an entitlement mentality, everyone suffers. The cure for that is right there in your home in the nursery. Final point is train them to share. That’s very, very important. Train them to share. No competition with your siblings. For example, if there is a toy, two are fighting over it. Don’t ever, ever, ever say, don’t fight, I’ll get you your own. Because fast forward that forty years and you have a fight between two sons over your property, over a family business, over a house, over you know, children, brothers and sisters filing suit and filing cases against each other, against their parents in some cases. I mean how horrible, horrible, horrible it is that children feel no shame in filing a suit against their own mother, own father. I have actually seen this happening and I say shame on you. And that wealth which you get, if you win that case, that wealth that you got out of your mother is fire in your belly from Jahannam. May Allah have mercy on me. Imagine the position of parents in Islam and Muslim children, I say children, they’re not anymore, just that biologically they’re children in their forties filing suits and cases against their own parents. How horrible, how disgraceful, how disgusting, how despicable, how shameless is that? Right? I hope whoever listens to this and if you are one of them, I hope you feel really, really ashamed of yourself and the first thing you do is pick up your phone, call your attorney and say I’m withdrawing the case, no more case. My father is my father, my mother is my mother. So please, my brother, my brother, sister, my sister, have some respect for your own blood. So it really is something to think about. Give them graduated tasks, make them responsible, give them chores, give them responsibilities that they can fulfill, they feel they get a sense of achievement, they get a sense of responsibility and you end up with a child who is a responsible adult and not with a sense of entitlement and with a problem solver, with intelligent, who knows how to plan, who knows how to execute, all the good things in life that you need from any young child and you want to create young adults like that. We ask Allah swt to make it easy and make it a sense of, give a sense of fulfillment to make it possible to raise youngsters that we can be proud of. As-salāla hāna nabīl kareem wa-lālihi wa-sābihat mā yāmi rāmatikār bhāyā.
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