How to Teach Your Kids to Read Before They Start School

I actually discovered by accident that anyone can teach a child to read without an educational gadget or any formal training or course; when my part-time nanny showed my 16 month old the letter " A " and told her what it was. I was surprised to find the next day that she had remembered it.

I had read somewhere many years ago before I had children that being a strong reader was a great foundation for overall success at school so on the realisation, that my daughter could recognise letters at such a young age, I made a decision to keep teaching her the alphabet and would eventually teach her to read at the age of 3.5. It could have happened a lot sooner but I made a commitment to make it fun and turn it into a game we would play no more than 5 mins a day.

You can teach your child to read too following my Simple 5 step formula below:

1. Start at 14 months ....Sing the ABC song and get your child to try and repeat it....Keep singing until they are able to sing it back ........(You must commit to doing this daily as a fun playful song....maybe clapping your hands on as you sing if your child prefers this.)

2. When your child can sing the ABC song....you are ready to move on to letter recognition.
Print off the Alphabet with a Capital Letter and lower case letter and a picture that represents the letter .....or just buy alphabet cards if this works better for you.

3. Start with A- G ....making sure your child recognises the capital letter and then the lower case letters. Cover the picture and ask what letter is this, to be sure the child recognises the letter.Then mention the sound which the letter makes and get your child to repeat it after you. You should spend only 10 mins a day....and can only increase it if your child requests it...Remember the whole objective is to have fun with it and make it a game...do not scold the child if they get it wrong....don't tell them off in anyway...just repeat to them what the correct one should be.

4. Repeat the steps above with letters H -P . Q - V, W - Z.......until your child can recognise all capital and lower case letters of the alphabet and can make the sounds of the letters too. YOU must ensure that you are using English phonetics and are sounding out the letters correctly.The correct sounds for English can be found here, http://www.uiowa.edu/~acadtech/phonetics

5. Now that your child can recognise all the letters of the alphabet and their sounds.....you can introduce your child to reading by buying a book from any bookstore for beginner readers. This book must be the first level of the particular reading scheme, (you may want to check with the school that your child will be going to, which reading scheme they will be using at that school and start with that particular one.)

Begin by reading the book to your child first, and then encouraging your child to read the book after you. You child may initially use the pictures as cues for the words but will eventually come to memorise and phonetically sound out words based on the phonetic letter sounds they had learnt from you previously.

Remember to be patient and have fun, spend a small amount of time on this daily and do not increase it unless the child asks you too...the bigger objective outside of teaching them to read, is also to make learning fun...

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Deidre_Longe

Parents As Positive Role Models

Parents are the best people to have a positive impact on the lives of their children. If they want, they can mould the lives of their children in a beautiful and positive way. But for this they will have to put in some effort and will have to make some changes in their own lives.

Children want to be like their parents. This is a known fact. If parents are doctors and lawyers, then their children also want to be doctors and lawyers. So if you want your children to be good and mature human beings, all you have to do is be one yourself. Children look up to their parents as their heroes. Parents show their children the way and path to follow in life, and children follow them.

Usually children would do anything to please their parents and parents can use this to their advantage. Here it is of utmost importance that the parents spend a huge quantity of their time with their children. Children like that. Because the further apart you go from them the lesser you understand them, and harder it is for you to guide them and help them in their lives. Children always know when their parents are not spending time with them, and this always has a negative effect on their lives. Especially in this age of long working hours, television and internet, parents should make sure they spend quality time with their children.

Children emulate their parents' behavior. If the parents have good habits and personal attitudes toward life, then their children emulate them and become like them. If you do not want your children to drink alcohol then you must be a non-drinker yourself. They will copy that. If you want your children to be safe car drivers and keep them away from harms way. Then you must ensure that you drive very safely yourself. If you spend your time and energy in supporting philanthropic work and projects, chances are they will be philanthropists themselves and will be a positive force in serving society.

Can we really understand what the child wants to be; and how can we help and support them to become mature and responsible human beings? Well we can. This takes effort, patience and most importantly time. A parent must be wholly involved in the child's life, not in an annoying and irritating manner, snooping around their rooms, but in a positive and understanding way. You must become their best friends and confidants, understanding their minds and helping them in their journey towards achieving their goals, making them good and successful individuals.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Sanjay_Kak

4 Tips on Teaching Children the Dangers of Strangers

In today's world teaching our children the dangers of befriending strangers it's essential for parents to teach children why it's important to avoid strangers as well as teaching them how to react if they encounter a dangerous situation.

Tip #1: Educate Your Children about the Dangers of Strangers
The first thing you need to do is talk with your children providing as much information as possible about the dangers of stranger contact. Explain as much as possible about staying away from any adults they do not know while focusing your discussion on their the amount of information they are able to understand. Provide safety tips and guidelines and insist they follow them at all times.

Tip #2: Provide rules and guidelines when your children are home alone
Whenever your children are home without an adult it's essential for them to know never to tell a stranger they are home by themselves. If you are able to do so set your answering machine so it will pick up the phone on the first ring or turn the ringer off completely so your child will not attempt to answer the phone. Teach them to never tell a stranger the parents are not home but simply they are unable to come to the phone at the moment.

Lock the house whenever you leave and make sure the children understand not to open the door for anyone. Develop a plan of escape in case anyone ringing the doorbell attempts to break in or just refuses to go away. Make sure they understand how to call 911 to let the police know they are in danger and to immediately leave the house if a stranger breaks in.

Tip #3: Teach your child about public awareness
When you are in a public place with your children make sure they are always by your side. The most effective way to accomplish this is to hold your child's hand and make sure you are there at all times. A baby or toddler is safest in a stroller where the parent can watch him or her at all times-do not turn your back on them for even a second.

Always have a recent photo of your children in case something happens. That will allow you to provide security and law enforcement officers with an accurate view of your child instead of you taking the time to provide a description. Make an eff0rt to remember what your children were wearing to help authorities find them quicker.

Teach your older children the importance of being wary of strangers. Predators may attempt to lure a child with candy or under the pretense of needing help. They may even tell the child they are a friend of the parent or the parent sent them. Make sure they understand it is never safe to take anything from someone they don't know and that you would never send someone to pick them up unless it was a relative or adult friend they knew. Teach them they are never to get into a car with anyone other than a parent or trusted adult.

Tip #4: Online crime prevention
With so many criminals lurking online it's important for your children to understand they should never give out a phone number or agree to meet any strangers they have talked to online. Pedophiles lurk on the Internet and often lie about their age and identity in order to con children into providing personal information such as an address or convincing them to meet somewhere. This could subject your child to abduction, assault and sexual abuse so make sure your children understand the dangers of chatting with people they don't know.

We have made crime prevention our business for over 12 years now. We have learned a lot of practical safety tips and make a point of sharing our knowledge with our supporters. In providing non-lethal self defense weapons online, we have been asked just about every self defense and safety question in the book. We enjoy sharing what we know about protecting your family and keeping kids safe.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Rebecca_M._Jacobs

Parent Vs Person

To be a parent is to be, not only a person, but also an icon. To be an icon means to become a public person, meaning who we are belongs not just to us, but to others as well-particularly our children. Our iconographic identity is created, not just by us, but also by our offspring. We may want to be known as great parents, but only our children can verify that.

As children of parents we want to believe in what they did for us so much, that we will vigorously pretend it was wonderful, for both of our sakes, even when it was the reverse. But whatever the truth may be, its meaning requires the input of both parents and children. That's the nature of an iconographic-public-relationship.

We humans believe vigorously both in making people into icons, and into becoming one our self. Success and fame are both measured, and rewarded, by our ability to become known in public ways. It gives us something to say, a sense of entitlement about each other, defining who and what we are. As icons, others partly belong to us, and we to them. It also makes them, and us, known by more than just our intimates.

Icons include parents, actors, politicians, priests, judges, police, representatives, business people, profiteers, criminals, etc., etc. All public identities make an icon of us. Indeed we believe and understand more about each other as icons, than we do as just one person to another. We trust iconographic identities more easily, because it's hard to get to know each other, and to trust our judgments about each other without public proofs.

What's more, education exists to verify the expertness of our iconographic identity, even more than it exists to educate us to have a mind of our own. Indeed that aspect of going to school has been almost discarded in present day; education has become almost exclusively training for a profession or trade. What classical education used to represent-becoming an enlightened individuated person capable of very independent thinking-has fallen into limbo. Perhaps because we no longer know how to conceptualize it, we're so preoccupied with verifying competence in an age defined by relativity-the loss of certainty.

In sharp contrast, there is one aspect of learning about which we are very sure-a child's right to form an independent sense of their personal identity. We've finally begun to give, in spades, this valuable opportunity to our children, though we haven't learned to give it to ourselves with such vigorous support. But that's probably only a matter of time, though nothing's any longer for certain.

In the meantime we adults must continue living primarily in a public world in which icons are more dominant than the individuality of specific people. Though we don't admit it, we prefer it that way. Even in our intimate circles, including our families, everyone is icono-graphized. We are parents, wives, husbands, lovers far more prominently than we are individual people. We most often perceive these shared roles as personally determined. But they are not defined just by us; they're also defined by the people with whom we have these public relationships. In effect, public means not to be alone; though being alone is the only vivid way to experience one's self.

Family has not traditionally been perceived as a public place, nor is intimacy a public event. But they are. That's what reputation is all about, defining how we're known by others, an issue that is usually one of our most important and vulnerable concerns; how are people listening and interpreting what we do or are with them? That includes our reputation with our spouse, both positive and negative parts of which may or may not be justified if the internal truth about every individual is known with vivid clarity. Everyone in a divorce makes the claim that they are being unfairly described.

Thus, as we try and teach our children nowadays, only inside of each one of us can we seek to define our identity in our own unique, and exclusive way. So we vigorously encourage them to think and act for themselves.

So where are we going with all of this? That as parents we have no right to claim righteousness about how we functioned as caretakers without first consulting the unconscious of our children. We can't trust their conscious mind, because we may have-probably did-unwittingly for sure, teach them to lie about what really happened when we had lapses of parenting skill of one kind or another. Losing it is what we usually call it, thinking children will recover from its ill effects. When instead, because such lapses always repeat themselves, children make the laws of their life out of such experience. In the sense of avoiding things their parents can't handle, even if it means giving up huge portions of their own identity by this partial self-burial. So lets not pretend we have no negative effects upon our children, most of which we know nothing about.

All psychic symptoms of dysfunction have this collaboration of fabricating the truth, put there in order to protect comfort, stability and the status quo of our parental assumptions about how to raise kids. All of these with time and progress will be judged as partly erroneous; such is the inevitable fate relativity has thrust us into.

In our child-centered society, there is a vigorous effort to deny that we ever make mistakes as parents. We try and pretend that psychic distress can be easily educated out, that it's just a hormonal or biochemical imbalance, that science has given us easy steps to slice symptoms out of a person's life. When, after such superficial treatment, next year the symptoms will be right back where they started. Fathoming the problems and distress of human experience requires far more effort and accomplishment, over aspects of experience that cannot be controlled-just influenced over time with great effort. So it is with anything human wrought. Nature didn't make growing up a few easy steps, or living life a piece of cake. So what makes us think we can change our self just by applying the right kind of short-term objectivity?

We seem to feel safer living in an iconographic reality. Some people call it religion. But it's more functional to call relating to each other as symbols, iconographic; it includes all the ways in which we do it, not just with God, but also with each other. Somehow these larger than life definitions of who we are, appears to make everything more valid and believable. We don't very well understand, or entirely trust, each other, or ourselves, as individuals.

What's our favorite antidote to this uncertainty? Be famous, making one's self somebody big, even if we're really small, and need somebody else's dialogue to make us real. Hollywood and Washington DC are full of such people.

It's as parents that we feel the biggest sense of liability in being icons, because all of us make mistakes. Nobody's got it right yet, and most likely never will. Perfection is a delusional concept, born out of a desperate and fearful need to feel justified in our lifetime. Yet imperfection is nature's way. But if in understanding all of this as parents, we have to experience the criticism or shame of our caretaking lapses, it's another question. We need respite from a steady diet that painful.

There is only one way for us, as beleaguered parents, to restore our reputation. That is to insist that we are two very distinct people-a parent, and an individual; and each identity must be conceptualized separately. It's only fair. To be judged in life by only the way we parented, denies any legitimacy to our life as an individual. A great many of my patients have been gifted people, whose parents were equally talented-as individuals. But as the parents of my patients, many of them were rotten! Mostly it's not their fault because they had no psychology, no sense of who a child is. We're just beginning to get that now. But in all truthfulness, they were terrible parents. Their appropriately angry children would call them abusive neglectful bastards.

But to address them exclusively in that way trashes what is a basically decent, even exemplary life. That is at least for those who regard other non-family achievements as equal to parenting. Some don't.

The problem is we're not used to regarding someone in more than one way, as both very individual as well as iconographic. We jumble it all together in the same bag, letting our preferences and prejudices determine how we interpret the mix, instead of giving each other our due-a better chance for respect from others, even if we weren't such great parents.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Don_Fenn

Managing Lying: What To Do And What To Say

I. Responding to Lying

A. Ask yourself the following questions:

1. What might be the reason for lying?
2. What need(s) might the child be attempting to meet?
3. Are there certain situations in which this behavior seems to occur?
4. Are my feelings/responses a clue to why the child might behave this way?
5. Should I gather more information about the situation before I react?
6. Are my actions encouraging the child to lie?

• Am I overprotective?
• Are the rules too strict?
• Am I invading the child's privacy?
• Do I tell lies in front of the child?

B. In response to the reason for lying, consider doing one or more of the following:

1. Explain how lying affects trust and how hard it is for people who live together to get along without trust.

2. Use reflective listening to show your understanding of the child's underlying needs.

3. Assist the child in meeting underlying needs without addressing the lie (e.g., by exploring alternatives, problem-solving, etc.).

4. Ignore the lie and show appreciation when the child does not lie to meet a specific need.

5. Use an I-message to share your feelings about his or her behavior and to describe the effects of it on you and others.

6. Give the child accurate information so the child won't have to rely on imagination to fill in any gaps.

7. Set rules and be consistent in enforcing them if the child is testing your response to certain behaviors.

8. Don't overreact to the behavior by calling the child a liar.

9. Focus on solutions to problems instead of blame.

10. Respect children's privacy when they don't want to share it with you.

11. Help children to understand that mistakes are opportunities to learn so that they won't believe they are bad and need to conceal their mistakes.

12. Use consequences related to the original wrongdoing.

II. Planning Ahead to Prevent /Reduce Future Problems

A. Don't ask set-up questions that invite lying.

B. Remember that who the child is now is not who he or she will be forever. Don't overreact and expect that the child will lead a life filled with antisocial behavior. Remember that children will behave as they are expected to.

C. Set an example in telling the truth. Talk about times when it may have been difficult for you to tell the truth, but you decided it was more important to deal with the consequences and to maintain your self-respect.

D. Let children know they are unconditionally loved.

E. Show appreciation when the child tells the truth. For example, "Thanks for telling me the truth. I know it must be hard. I like the courage you show in being willing to face the consequences. I know you can handle them and learn form them too."

F. Focus on building closeness, openness and trust in your relationships instead of on the problem behaviors.

G. Look at lying as a developmental phenomenon.

H. Be certain the child understands that you do not accept lying and the reasons why.

I. Distinguish between what you would like to know about the child's behavior and what you have to know.

J. Rather than focusing on trapping the child in a lie, develop a trusting relationship by focusing on the reason for the lie.

K. Model honesty.

L. Build and help maintain the conditions for positive self-esteem.

M. Establish and clearly communicate expectations, limits and rules and make sure you enforce them.

9 Steps To More Effective Parenting

Raising children is one of the toughest and most fulfilling jobs in the world and the one for which you may be the least prepared. Learning "on the job" how to be a parent can be fraught with pitfalls. As advocates for children , we at the Dupont Hospital for Children want to help you raise healthy and happy children. Here are some ways to tackle your child-rearing responsibilities that will help you feel more fulfilled as a parent, and enjoy your children more, too.

Children start developing their sense of self as babies when they see themselves through your eyes. Your tone of voice, your body language, and your every expression is absorbed by your child. Your words and actions as parents affect your child’s developing self-image more than anything else in his world. Consequently, praising your child for his accomplishment, however small, will make him feel proud; letting him to do things for himself will make him feel capable and independent. By contrast, belittling your child or comparing him unfavorably to another will make him feel worthless.

Avoid making loaded statement or using words as a weapons: "What a stupid thing to do!" or "You act more like a baby than your little brother!" Comments like these bruise the inside of a child as much as blows the outside. Choose your words carefully and be compassionate. Let your child know that everyone makes and that while you may not like his behavior. You still love him.

Have you ever stopped to think about how many times you react negatively to your child in a given day? You may find that you are criticizing far more than you are complimenting. How would you feel about a boss who treated you with that much negative guidance?

The more effective approach is to catch your child doing something right, and praise her to the skies. "You made your bed without being asked-that’s terrific!" or "I was watching you play with your sister and you were very patient!" These statements will do more to encourage good behavior over the long run than repeated scolding. Make a point of finding something to praise every day. Be generous with rewards-your love, hugs and compliments can work wonders and are often rewards enough. Soon you will find you are "growing" more of the behavior you would like to see.

Discipline is necessary in every household. The goal of discipline is to help children choose acceptable behaviors. Children may test the limits you establish for them but they need limits to grow into responsible adults. Establishing house rules might include: homework is to be done before any television privileges are granted, or hitting, name-calling and hurtful teasing are unacceptable.

You may want to have a system in place: one warning, followed by consequences such as "time out" or loss of privileges. A common mistake parents makes is failure to follow through with consequence when rules are broken. A rule without consequences is not a rule at all-it’s a threat. You can’t discipline a child for talking back one day, and ignore it the next. Being consistent sets an example of what expect from our children.

With so many demands on your time, it’s often difficult for parents and children to get together for a family meal, let alone spend some quality time together. However, there is probably nothing your child would like more. Get up 10 minutes earlier in the morning so you can eat breakfast with your child or leave the dishes in the sink and take a walk after dinner. Children who are not getting the attention they want from their parents often act out or misbehave because they are assured of being noticed. Many parents find it mutually rewarding to have prescheduled time with their child on a regular basis. For instance, tell your child Tuesday is her special night with Mommy and let her help decide how you will spend your time together. Look for ways to connect with your child without actually being there-put a note or something special in her lunchbox.

Adolescents seem to need the undivided attention of their parents less than younger children. Since there are fewer windows of opportunity for parents and teen to get together, parents should do their best to be available when their teen does express a desire to talk or participate in family activities.

Don’t feel too guilty if you’re a working parent. Quantity is not nearly as important as what you do with the bits and pieces of time you have with your child. It is the many little things you do together-making popcorn playing cards and window-shopping that your child will remember.

Young children learn a great deal about how to act by watching you. The younger they are, the more cues they take from you. Before you lash out or blow your top in front of your child, think about this: Is that how you want him to behave when he’s angry? Be constantly aware that you are being observed by your children. Studies have shown that children who hit usually have a role model for aggression at home.

Instead, model the traits you whish to cultivate in your child; respect, friendliness, honesty, kindness. Exhibit unselfish behavior. Do things for other people without expecting a reward, such as taking dinner to sick neighbor. Express thanks; offer compliments. Above all, treat your children the way you expect other people to treat you.

You can’t expect children to do everything simply because you, as parents, "say so." Children want and deserve explanations as much as adults do. If we don’t take time to explain, children will begin to wonder about our values and motives and whether they have any basis. Parents who reason with their children allow them to understand and learn in a non-judgmental way.

Make your expectations clear. If there is a problem, describe it to your child, express your feelings about it and invite your child to work on a solution with you. Be sure to include consequences. Make suggestions and offer choice. Be open to your child’s suggestions as well. Negotiate with her. Children who participate in decisions are more motivated to carry them out.

If you frequently feel "let down" by your child’s behavior, it may be because you have unrealistic expectations for her. Parents who think in "should", e.g., "She should be potty-trained by now", may find it helpful to do more reading on the matter or talk to other parents or child development specialists. This may enable you to adjust your expectations to a more realistic level.

The environment in which your child moves also has an impact on her behavior. For example, you may be able to modify your 2-year-old’s behavior by changing her environment. If you find yourself constantly saying "NO" to her, there are surely ways to restructure her surroundings so that fewer things are off-limits. This will cause les frustration for both of you.

As your child changes, you will probably have to change your parenting style, too. Many parents find it helpful at some point to draw up a "kiddie contract" to encourage good behavior and motivate their child. This can be as simple as a weekly list of chores and responsibilities posted on the refrigerator. Chances are, what works with your child now won’t work forever.

Teenagers tend to look less to their parents and more to their peers for examples of how to be. Continue to provide guidance and appropriate discipline while allowing your child to earn more independence. And seize every available moment to make a connection!

As a parent, you are responsible for correcting and guiding your child. But how you express your corrective guidance makes all the difference in how your child receives it. When you have to confront your child, avoid blaming, criticizing or faultfinding, which undermine his self-esteem and can lead to resentment. Instead, strive to nurture and encourage even when you are disciplining your child. Make sure he knows that while you want and expect him to do better next time, you love him-no matter what.

Face it you are an imperfect parent. You have strengths and weaknesses as a family leader. Recognize your abilities, "I’m loving and dedicated". Vow to work on your weaknesses. "I need to be more consistent with discipline". Try to have realistic expectations of yourself, your spouse and your children. You don’t have to have all the answers be forgiving of yourself. And try to make parenting a manageable job. Focus on the areas that need the most attention rather than trying to address everything all at once. Admit it when you’re burned out. Take time out from parenting to do thing that will make you happy as a person and as a couple. Focusing on your needs does not make you selfish. It simply means you care about your own well-being. Which is another important value to model for your children.

10 Keys To Succesful Parenting

It is important that we discipline in a way that teaches responsibility by motivating our children internally, to build their self-esteem and make them feel loved. If our children are disciplined in this respect, they will not have a need to turn to gangs, drugs, or sex to feel powerful or belong.

The following ten keys will help parents use methods that have been proven to provide children with a sense of well-being and security.

Your child's self-esteem is greatly influenced by the quality of time you spend with him-not the amount of time that you spend. With our busy lives, we are often thinking about the next thing that we have to do, instead of putting 100% focused attention on what our child is saying to us. We often pretend to listen or ignore our child's attempts to communicate with us. If we don't give our child GEMS throughout the day, he will often start to misbehave. Negative attention in a child's mind is better than being ignored.

It is also important to recognize that feelings are neither right nor wrong. They just are. So when your child says to you, "Mommy, you never spend time with me" (even though you just played with her) she is expressing what she feels. It is best at these times just to validate her feelings by saying, "Yeah, I bet it does feel like a long time since we spent time together."

Statistics say that we give our children over 2000 compliance requests a day! No wonder our children become "parent deaf!" Instead of nagging or yelling, ask yourself, "What action could I take?" For example, if you have nagged your child about unrolling his socks when he takes them off, then only wash socks that are unrolled. Action speaks louder than words.

If you don't, they will find inappropriate ways to feel their power. Ways to help them feel powerful and valuable are to ask their advice, give them choices, let them help you balance your check book, cook all our part of a meal, or help you shop. A two-year-old can wash plastic dishes, wash vegetables, or put silverware away. Often we do the job for them because we can do it with less hassle, but the result is they feel unimportant.

Ask yourself what would happen if I didn't interfere in this situation? If we interfere when we don't need to, we rob children of the chance to learn from the consequences of their actions. By allowing consequences to do the talking, we avoid disturbing our relationships by nagging or reminding too much. For example, if your child forgets her lunch, you don't bring it to her. Allow her to find a solution and learn the importance of remembering.

Often the consequences are too far in the future to practically use a natural consequence. When that is the case, logical consequences are effective. A consequence for the child must be logically related to the behavior in order for it to work. For example, if your child forgets to return his video and you ground him for a week, that punishment will only create resentment within your child. However, if you return the video for him and either deduct the amount from his allowance or allow him to work off the money owed, then your child can see the logic to your discipline.

If your child is testing you through a temper tantrum, or being angry or speaking disrespectfully to you, it is best if you leave the room or tell the child you will be in the next room if he wants to "Try again." Do not leave in anger or defeat.

Never tell a child that he is bad. That tears at his self-esteem. Help your child recognize that it isn't that you don't like him, but it is his behavior that you are unwilling to tolerate. In order for a child to have healthy self-esteem, he must know that he is loved unconditionally no matter what he does. Do not motivate your child by withdrawing your love from him. When in doubt, ask yourself, did my discipline build my child's self-esteem?

Suppose you have told your five-year-old child that if she isn't dressed by the time the timer goes off, you will pick her up and take her to the car. She has been told she can either get dressed either in the car or at school. Make sure that you are loving when you pick her up, yet firm by picking her up as soon as the timer goes off without any more nagging. If in doubt, ask yourself, did I motivate through love or fear?

Most of us parent with the mindset to get the situation under control as soon as possible. We are looking for the expedient solution. This often results in children who feel overpowered. But if we parent in a way that keeps in mind how we want our child to be as an adult, we will be more thoughtful in the way we parent. For example, if we spank our child, he will learn to use acts of aggression to get what he wants when he grows up.

If you have made an agreement that your child cannot buy candy when she gets to the store, do not give in to her pleas, tears, demands or pouting. Your child will learn to respect you more if you mean what you say.

The dilemma of Chinese, Indian parents

Many Malaysian parents, mainly the non-bumiputeras, have a dilemma regarding their children’s education and future. I just met a friend who has this to tell me. He is an engineer earning a decent living but not really rich. He has two children, and he is grateful that he has only two. The eldest is a son who has just finished his studies in engineering in Australia. The second one is a daughter who has just gone to Australia to study business management.

His dilemma is this. He had no choice but to send his son overseas in order to provide him with a good education and at the same time to broaden his perspective. He could have asked his son to study locally but the problem was that his son might not be given the course of his choice since majority of places for medicine and engineering courses are reserved for bumiputera students.

My friend had to work very hard and had to be very thrifty in order to save to send his children overseas. And he is now near retirement age. He wants his son to come back Malaysia to work but he fears that his son may not get a good job and the prospect of promotions may be limited.

So he asked me what to do. I told him this is the dilemma faced by many, many Chinese and Indian Malaysian parents. Who doesn’t want their children to be around them? But at the same time, if the children don’t good job prospects here, what would the parents do?

They would want the children to have the best chances and do something that they are happy with. And that means letting their children work overseas where the employment prospects are better, and where work satisfaction and upward mobility also better.

I asked my friend, ‘Why don’t you join your son Down Under?’ He answered that he loves Malaysia, he was born and bred here, his friends and relatives are all here, and his business is also here. He would feel out of place and it would not be easy for a middle-aged man to start his network and friends all over again in a foreign country.

What can we do about this? When a citizen’s child studies overseas, we lose precious foreign exchange and this is no small sum as an overseas education runs into hundreds of thousands of ringgit for each student. Over the years, how many Malaysians have gone overseas to study? One hundred thousand? Half a million? One million? I don’t have the figure. But Malaysian used to be the biggest group of foreign students in Australia, the UK, etc. How much money was lost?

And how many of these did not come back? I have so many classmates working as consultants in the UK, Singapore and Australia that I have lost count. This is ‘brain drain’ and ‘brain loss’. Human capital is now recognised as the most important asset in this flattening world. Many of these who stay abroad become very famous scientists, doctors, entrepreneurs, etc. How much ‘brain’ was lost? No one can quantify that.

Who knows, Malaysia would have become a First World country by now if we had all these brains realising their potential locally. Everyone, both bumi and non-bumi, would have benefitted more by now. How about the human cost? How many families were separated? How many parents died a lonely death because their children were overseas?

The lists go on and the dilemma is getting more acute. We should in fact be more farsighted. Intake for local tertiary education should be based on merit, with maybe a small proportion reserved for socially-handicapped people. For those studying overseas, try to lure them back, place them in GLCs such as Petronas, TNB, Telekom and government departments and let their promotion be based on merit.

That way, these companies can be much more successful, the country be more prosperous and there will be that much more job prospects. In turn, the economic cake grows bigger and we then have a bigger capacity to offer affirmative action for the less-advantaged groups. By being farsighted, we will be rewarded with every ethnic group getting a bigger share of the economy.

How to be a Better Parent

Being a parent is one of the most important jobs anyone can have. It takes a lot of work and determination to be a loving and supportive parent to any child. There are a few things that you can do to become a better parent and produce happier and healthier children. Some of the following tips will help you through some very tough situations with any child.

The one thing to remember is that all parents get frustrated. Children can take a lot of time and energy. Parenting is so hard when you have problems in your life like worrying about your job, your bills or problems with your relationships. It is even worse when there are problems like drugs or alcohol. Being a good parent depends on taking care of you even if it means getting help with certain problems.

It is always good to take a break when you are frustrated. Everyone needs to take a break from being a parent occasionally. If you have someone else in your family that can help out, take turns getting away from it for a while. Take turns with your spouse or other family members with things like sleeping late on weekends, or running errands.

There is not just one way to be a good parent. There is no such thing as a perfect parent or a perfect child for that matter. You should show your love to your children. Tell them how you feel and that they are special to you. That is the most important part of being a good parent.

Make sure that you listen when your children are talking. Tell them that they are important and that you are interested in what they are saying. Another part of being a good parent is to make your child feel safe. Comfort them when they are scared. Do not say things to scare them or let them in on family troubles. This could only frighten them and make them worry.

Good parenting also requires you to praise your children. When your children learn something new or achieve certain goals, you should tell them how proud you are of them. When your child makes a mistake, you should never say they were bad. Being a good parent means that you should explain what they did and why it was wrong.

Be consistent with your child and keep your rules clear to them. If you have more than one child, treat them equally and do not favor one child over another. Being a good parent means all of the above and so much more. Take your time and enjoy each moment that you have with your child.

PARENT-CHILD RELATIONSHIP IN ISLAM

(1) Rights of Parents (and Duties of children)

Islam recognises family as a basic social unit. Along with the husband-wife relationship the Parent-child relationship is the most important one. To maintain any social relationship both parties must have some clear-cut Rights as well as obligations. The relationships are reciprocal. Duties of one side are the Rights of the other side. So in Parent-child relationship the Rights of parents are the obligations (duties) of the children and vice versa, the Rights of children are obligations (duties) of parents. Islam clearly defines the Rights of Parents (which mean duties of children) and obligations of parents (which means Rights of children).

It is clear that after Allah parents are the persons who give us innumerable favors. They provide protection, food and clothing to the newly born. The mother sacrifices her comforts and sleep to provide comfort to her children. The father works hard to provide for their physical, educational and psychological (and spiritual) needs. It is a matter of common courtesy that if a person does you some favor you feel obliged to him. Verbally you say ‘thank you’ to him. You try to repay and compensate him for his gifts and favors. You feel a sense of gratitude towards him. So it is with Allah and with parents. Allah’s favors cannot be counted or repaid except by thanking Him and obeying His orders. After Allah our parents deserve our thanks and obedience for the favors they had done us. That’s why Quran lays stress on feeling grateful to parents, and doing good to them. "And your Lord has ordained that you shall worship none save Him and shall do your parents a good turn." What does a ‘good turn’ mean? It includes obeying them, speaking softly, avoiding harsh words or harsh tone, giving them company when they are lonely, caring for their physical and psychological needs (especially in their old age), and praying to Allah that He may bless them and have mercy on them.

As between parents the mother has more rights than the father. The reason is apparent. Mother has borne the child’s burden during pregnancy, has undergone birth pains in delivering the baby, has sacrificed her own comforts to provide comfort to her children, has looked after them and felt worried for their well-being. That is why mother deserves our good treatment more than the father. A Tradition of the Prophet (PBUH) tells us that a Companion asked the Prophet, " Who deserves my good treatment most?" "Your mother", said the Prophet. "Who next?" "Your mother". "Who next?" "Your mother". "Who after that?" "Your father". This means that the mother deserves three times more good treatment from her children than the father deserves. Another Tradition wants us to extend kind treatment to close relations on the mother’s side also (even to her friends). A famous Hadith (Tradition) says, "Paradise lies under the feet of the mother". This means doing good to our mother lead us to Paradise.

As to the reward for doing good to our parents a Hadith mentions the following story: "Three persons of ancient days were once travelling in a mountaneous region. The rain, thunder and lightning made them take refuge in a cave. Mudslide made a stone block the opening to the cave. The persons were entrapped inside. When the storm stopped they tried to push back the heavy stone to get out of the cave but they could not. They wondered ‘what to do now’. At last seeing that their joint efforts also cannot move the stone they decided to pray to Allah sincerely. One of them suggested, ‘each one of us should relate one good thing he has done in his life and beg Allah to move the stone. One said, "One night my old mother asked me to bring a cup of milk for her. During the time I milched the goat and brought it to her she had gone to sleep. I did not think it proper to disturb her. So I stood by her bedside for the whole night till she got up in the morning and then I offered her the cup of milk. O God, if this act of mine was approved by You please shift this stone." The stone slipped a little but not enough to let them get out. Similarly, the second and the third man mentioned an act of goodness and prayed to God to shift the stone. The stone slipped down and the entry to the cave opened up. So the men got out. This story shows how service to one’s parents leads to blessings from God and rescue from troubles. Now let us summarize the Rights of Parents (Duties of children):

(1) Right to be respected and obeyed:

Parents have a right to be respected and obeyed by children. All parents are well wishers of children. They issue orders and instructions that are in the best interest of children (though children might think ottherwise). So it is the duty of children to obey their orders and act accordingly. Some children listen to parental orders but do not act upon these or show laziness in carrying out these orders. This causes annoyance to parents. Children should remember that annoying one’s parents can lead to God’s wrath.

(2) Right to scold and rebuke:

It is instinctive obligation of parents to protect their children from physical and moral harm. If a small child puts its hand in fire it is natural urge for you to push the child back, even if the child does not want. It is in child’s interest. So it is with parents. They are duty bound to protect their children in every way, physical, intellectual, moral. If the children have a temptation to do an act that is not in their long-term interest it is the duty of the parents to keep them back from that act or behavior. To this end they may resort to advice, rebuke, scolding, even hitting them. Good children should take all this ‘harshness’ in their own interest. If parents scold them they should bear it calmly. No rude replies, no arguing, no explanations, no comments unless asked for. Parental advice should be listened to and acted upon, even if against children’s own wishes.

(3) Right to be looked after.

Parents have looked after the children for decades. So it is the duty of grown-up children to repay them by way of caring for them and looking to their physical and financial needs. A Quranic verse says: "People ask you (O Prophet) how should they spend. Say, ‘whatever you spend should be spent on Allah (in good cause), on parents, near relatives, on orphans, destitutes and travelers (who fall short of money in foreign lands)".

(4) Right to be helped:

As parents grow old their energies also decline. So it is the duty of children to help their parents in any household chore in which they can help. Sons can help in lifting heavy things, cleaning home, arranging things etc. Daughters can help in mother’s household work—cooking, washing, cleaning, serving food etc. With good children such help should come automatically, not when asked for. Whenever you see your mother or father doing something extend a helping hand to her/him without their asking. This is what Islam expects from children.

(5) Right to kind words/good behaviour:

Quran urges children to be soft-spoken towards parents and show respect and kindness in their behavior towards parents.

Unforunate as it is, the Western societies have forgotten these lessons. Young children are rude towards parents and show disobedience. As the parents grow old they drive them out from their homes and put them in "Senior Citizens Homes". Grown up children cannot spare time to attend to the needs of old parents. The busy Western life has led to a break-up of the family unit (so much upheld in Islam). As Muslims we expect our children to adhere to Islamic values and show respect, obedience, kindness, leniency and care towards parents, especially in their old age. Children must not forget the favors and sacrifices of their parents. As good mannered persons they must feel and remain obliged towards parents and try to repay them by kind words and deeds, even with money and material needs. These are the Rights of Parents due from their children (or the Duties of Children towards parents). These Rights and obligations are not found in Islam only. Such values are to be found in all true religions. Quran mentions Hazrat Yahya (John the Baptist) as "kind towards his parents, not tough and disobedient". Similarly Hazrat Isa (Jesus) is quoted saying to his people, "God made me kind towards my mother (Mary) and did not make me tough and disobedient". Hazrat Yousuf (Joseph), as a royal Minister in Egypt, called his old, poor parents from their far off home and offered them seats on a high platform (he did not feel shy of behaving in a kind manner to poor parents in the presence of his officials).

(2) Rights of Children

Now let us see the other side of the coin. We have mentioned that Parent-child relation is a reciprocal one. The Rights of Parents (discussed above) are the Duties of children. Now let us see what are the Rights of Children (and Duties of Parents) in Islam. These can be summarized as under:

(1) Children have the right:

Children have the right to be fed, clothed and protected till they grow up to adulhood. It is, primarily, the duty of the father to do that. Mother can provide help if necessary. Protection means protection against physical as well as moral and intellectual harm. Parents are duty bound to see that the child’s personality develops in all fields. So if the parents have to resort to strictness for the sake of disciplining the children and protecting them from intellectually, morally and religiously undesirable behaviour, children should not resent their strictness. Let them perform their duty as parents. Children’s duty is not to protest or be rude but to listen and obey. "Their’s not to question why; their’s but to do and die".

(2) Right to education.

In Islam education is not limited to bookish knowledge but includes moral and religious training also. It means healthy all-round growth of child’s personality. Parents must not only provide for children’s education in schools and colleges but should also take personal interest in their studies, helping them if they can. This gives children a feeling of ‘working with the parents’ and encourages them in studies. Parents should sacrifice their own comfort and social activities and must spare some time to take interest in children’s studies, especially when they are young. Leaving children to the mercy of teachers or tutors is not a wise policy. And of course, parents should not forget or neglect imparting religious/moral training to children. A little sacrifice on part of parents will save children from moral disasters. Effective moral training comes not from sermons, advice and precepts but from parents’ personal examples of good behaviour. It is a famous Tradition of the Prophet (PBUH) that acquisition of knowledge is a must for every Muslim boy and girl. Another Hadith says, "The best of you is one who gives a good education (intellectual and moral) to his children". Another Hadith lays stress on education of daughters. The Prophet (PBUH) once said, "He who provides good upbringing to 3 daughters shall go to Paradise". A man asked, "what if one has only two daughters". "He also shall go to Paradise". Another man asked, "and what if one has only one daughter?" "He too", replied the Prophet ().

(3) Right to love and affection:

Children have many psychological needs also. Small children need to be loved, caressed, kissed and hugged. The Prophet loved children greatly. He would allow his grandsons Hassan and Hussain (R.A) to ride his shoulders even during his prayers. In streets he would offer ‘salaam’ to children, play and cut jokes with them. Sometimes he would even kiss small children in the street. Once a Bedouin saw the Prophet kissing a small kid. Out of wonder he said, "I have eight children but I never kiss them". The Prophet remarked, "What can I do if Allah has taken away love and compassion from your heart". The Prophet would show special kindness to orphaned children. Some parents believe that being frank with children is not good from discipline point of view. This is wrong. Love and leniency can do much that fear and strictness cannot do. If leniency leads to rudeness on the part of children it should be mixed with strictness. That will tell the children that parents are basically kind but can be tough if children show rudeness and bad manners. Over-protection and over-care are undesirable. Let the child grow up as a responsible person. Only provide them guidance.

(5) Right to be well provided (materially)

A Hadith says, "It is better for parents to leave their children well provided (financially) than to leave them in poverty". This means that parents should not spend all that they have on their own comforts and luxuries but must make provisions for children’s welfare after the parents die. These are brief outlines of the Rights and Duties of both parties in the Parent-child relationship. If the parents and children act according to these guidelines they can make the family environment most conducive to peace and satisfaction for the parents and healthy personality growth for children. May Allah bless us all. AMEN.

Many Good Parents Choose Daycare

The recent report hit working parents everywhere like a slap in the face: A 10-year-long study financed by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) determined that long hours spent at daycare centers result in "overly aggressive" children who present a host of behavioral problems for their kindergarten teachers.

The resulting publicity has put the potential risks of child care back on the national radar screen. If that makes parents, communities, and the government take a long, hard look at the quality of care that their children are receiving, that's great! Poor-quality child care is a national scandal, or it should be.

But if new research convinces good parents that they are harming their children by putting them in daycare and that the only responsible way to raise a child is for a parent (let's not kid ourselves, a motherin most cases) to stay at home, then it's not doing anyone a service.

Look beyond the headlines
The gist of the research is that 17 percent of kindergarteners who had spent more than 30 hours per week in paid child care were reported as being "overly aggressive" toward other children, while only 6 percent of those who were in paid care for less than 10 hours per week were rated as aggressive.

On the surface, this finding would seem to support the headline that "Daycare Makes Children Aggressive." But there are several reasons to question this conclusion:

1. We don't have the actual published report to look at and critique. The research findings came from a large, federally funded project, and they were presented April 19 at a national meeting of the well-respected Society for Research in Child Development in Minneapolis. But until the details are published-and that could be weeks or months from now--it's impossible to make an independent judgment about possible flaws in the research that could undercut its validity.



2. Even accepting that the study was well done, the claim that child care causes aggression is a stretch. It's rare that a single study proves that there is a cause-and-effect relationship between one thing and another. The best way to do this is through a true experiment, by which I mean a study in which the research exposes one group of randomly chosen children to the proposed cause, while not exposing another randomly chosen group.



3. Of course, that didn't happen in this study. Rather, the children who spent more time in paid care did so because their parents felt that it was necessary or desirable; the children who spent less time in daycare had parents who felt differently. In other words, there were differences in parental attitudes and family situations before the children ever got to child care. How can we be certain that these differences did not account for the reported aggressiveness? I'm not trying to say that I know what the differences were, or how they might have affected the children's behavior, but only that the NICHD study leaves some important questions unanswered.



4. The findings are inconsistent with much previous research that has shown that the important factor is not whether or not a child attends child care, but rather the quality of the care that he receives. The differences between high- and poor-quality care can be dramatic. In one, children are attended by well-trained, sensitive, caring adults who know how to win their trust; support their emotional, social, and cognitive development; and work together with the parents as a team. In the other, children may be all but neglected, if not actively abused. Knowledge of child development, as well as common sense, would lead one to expect rather large differences in aggression, anxiety, and other behavioral and emotional outcomes between these two extremes of child-care quality, and other studies have indeed found this. Yet the recent, highly publicized study apparently found only a small or modest effect related to quality. One has to wonder why.

I do not mean to discount the study altogether. It was large, well funded, and carried out by respected researchers. But I do think that it's a mistake to merely accept the one-line conclusion that child care causes aggressiveness. The truth is sure to be more complex than that.

What you can do
If you're a parent with children in daycare, the news linking longer child-care hours with behavior problems should move you to act, but not necessarily to quit your job and stay home. Instead, take another look at your arrangement: Is your child happy and comfortable in her daycare situation? Does she have caring, sensitive adults to interact with, and (especially for young children) is there one adult with whom she has developed a special, trusting bond?

Is your child showing signs of aggressive or anxious behavior? If so, think broadly about all the possible causes and what you might be able to do to help her feel more comfortable. Simply stopping the child care may not be the best solution (it may not even be possible). On the other hand if your child seems to be having trouble adjusting to long days away from you and you've been feeling that you're missing out on too much of her early life, you may want to consider working fewer hours and having more time at home. (I mean this advice to apply equally whether you are the father or the mother.) In other words, the decision about use of paid child care has to be a personal one, not one dictated by a single research study. Children and families thrive when parents have a full range of options, from high-quality care to staying at home, and choose what they judge to be best for their family overall.

Childcare is key. Good parents are, too

Being a parent has always been about being judged. Way back before any so-called Mommy Wars, there were neighbours and relatives clucking about your child's atrocious manners or the fact you spoiled your kids. Or even occasionally lost track of them.

Now, of course, much of the judgment is ideologically fixated on childcare arrangements, as if everything you need to know about the quality of a child's life is revealed by whether her mother works outside the home.

Some social conservatives wistfully want to return to the land of the child-focused stay-at-home mom. Would those be the mothers I see pushing strollers distractedly while madly texting? Or the ones with kids velcroed to home computers, who are, as Bill Moyers once trenchantly put it, being "raised by appliances"?

Others say that both mothers and children are happier when mom has an "outlet," which often turns into a punishing 9-to-5 (or more) job and an exhausted and stressed parent.

Even contemplating those two stereotypical polarities is a waste of time. The truth is that economic realities have resulted in more Canadian women being in the work force than ever before. So the real question about what's best for our kids has to take in that immutable reality: Women work.

Still, the debate about whether our children are suffering the consequences of this dual working-parent world is legitimate. Are they safe? Emotionally secure? Intellectually thriving?

We need to keep finding new ways to make sure they have the attention, stimulation and emotional security they need to grow into healthy and productive adults and not just hark back to the old ways. For that reason I like the new Ontario government proposal for optional full-day kindergarten.

Many young children would thrive in that kind of stimulating environment. For those who would be overwhelmed, their parents could make other arrangements that suit their finances and family dynamic.

Many parents who now cobble together a complex web of childcare, including babysitters, daycare and family members, would breathe a sigh of relief knowing they have a one-stop, full-day option.

In the best possible scenario, children with learning disabilities would be identified sooner, and those who are more vulnerable at home would have a safe environment in which to play under the supervision of high-quality teachers trained in early childhood development.

One long-term U.S. research project, sponsored by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, showed there are few significant differences between children cared for exclusively by their mothers and those in any form of daycare. And in a longitudinal study reaching even further back - the High/Scope Perry Preschool Study, which followed children living in poverty in Michigan who are now in their 40s - researchers concluded that "high-quality preschool programs" for those kids contributed to "their school success, economic performance and reduced commission of crime in adulthood."

Of course it all depends on the quality of daycare. And the quality of parenting. Just as there are great and terrible daycares and preschools, there are great and terrible parents. (Most of us lie somewhere in between, in what's known in psychological parlance as the "good-enough parent" category.) No matter which childcare arrangement is used, nurturing parents are a key predictor of success.

But we can't make assumptions based only on socioeconomic status. The most poignant thing ever said to me by a teacher when my kids were growing up was that despite their ups and downs, "I don't worry about kids from middle-class homes like yours. They already have what they need."

Yet according to Charles Pascal, the early learning adviser to the Ontario government, that is not quite true: "60 per cent of all vulnerable children (those with learning disabilities or psychological problems) do not live in low-income homes." Mr. Pascal is so loquaciously enthusiastic about what he calls "exciting and fun early education" that he sometimes sounds like a crazed Mr. Rogers. He told me his full-day kindergarten recommendations, which will start being implemented in 2010, are "an enemy of the status quo."

He also pointed out that a large percentage of mothers in France who send their kids to full-day kindergarten are stay-at-home moms. To some, it seems shocking that a school environment, no matter how qualified its early childhood educators are, could replace those halcyon days at home for four- and five-year-olds, who should be building tree forts in the back yard and hanging with mom.

But those halcyon days have to be rejigged. How about sending the kids to full-day kindergarten but being able to leave work, pick them up at 3:30 and build a tree fort with them?

Of course, that would require employers to "rejig" too, and that's a whole other assault on the status quo.

Can Parents Guide Their Children To Better Listening?

According to research on listening skills, being a good listener means focusing attention on the message and reviewing the important information. Parents can model good listening behavior for their children and advise them on ways to listen as an active learner, pick out highlights of a conversation, and ask relevant questions. Sometimes it helps to "show" children that an active listener is one who looks the speaker in the eye and is willing to turn the television off to make sure that the listener is not distracted by outside interference.

Guidelines For Modeling Good Listening Skills

• Be interested and attentive. Children can tell whether they have a parent's interest and attention by the way the parent replies or does not reply. Forget about the telephone and other distractions. Maintain eye contact to show that you really are with the child.
  
  
• Encourage talking. Some children need an invitation to start talking. You might begin with, "Tell me about your day at school." Children are more likely to share their ideas and feelings when others think them important.
  
  
• Listen patiently. People think faster than they speak. With limited vocabulary and experience in talking, children often take longer than adults to find the right word. Listen as though you have plenty of time.
  
  
• Hear children out. Avoid cutting children off before they have finished speaking. It is easy to form an opinion or reject children's views before they finish what they have to say. It may be difficult to listen respectfully and not correct misconceptions, but respect their right to have and express their opinions.
  
  
• Listen to nonverbal messages. Many messages children send are communicated nonverbally by their tone of voice, their facial expressions, their energy level, their posture, or changes in their behavior patterns. You can often tell more from the way a child says something than from what is said. When a child comes in obviously upset, be sure to find a quiet time then or sometime that day to help explore those feelings.

Effective Islamic Parenting

he Soul of your child is like an uncut precious jewel entrusted into your care by Allah. To you is given the awesome responsibility of shaping that precious jewel into a beautiful form, pleasing to the eye of Allah. It is your sacred duty to ensure your child grows up to be a good and right human being (Muslim). The oneness (tawhid) of Allah is also expressed in the unity of Islamic life. Raising your children to be good and right human beings is part of the necessary Islamization of world society. The simple fact is that it is very difficult, perhaps impossible, to raise your children to be truly good and right human beings in the world as it is at present.

Only in a fully Islamic world will the conditions exist where children will naturally develop into the good and right humans beings desired by Allah. That is the beautiful future we can offer our children, but to do this we must do battle with the influences of the present wrong world as we create that promised future for our children. We do this by learning the knowledge and skills it takes to be an effective Islamic parent, and developing in our hearts the unstoppable desire to put these skills and knowledge into practice in our everyday life as we aid our children in their development.

We are greatly blessed by Allah to be Muslims at this particular time in world history. The unique social and historical conditions, combined with new the knowledge and technology now available, make it not only possible but highly likely that within a generation or so we will live in that long unfulfilled dream of all Muslims, a truly Islamic world.

These unique conditions existing today are: the fact that the prevailing dominant world culture, the Western culture, is undergoing a widespread social collapse due to the inherent wrongness within its belief systems and behaviours; that the conclusions of modern science have finally reached a point where one must acknowledge science now supports the traditional beliefs in God and His works; that we have recently come to understand the laws of learning by which all human characteristics are developed; and, that we now have a worldwide communication network so effective that any important new idea could reach virtually every person in the world within days.

The result of these existing conditions is that: those suffering from the collapse of the Western way of life and thought are desperate for some solution to their distress and will see in Islam that much needed answer; atheism and secular materialism will lose their power to take the faith in Islam from our youth; through the spread of the knowledge of learning theory each new generation will come closer to the perfect expression of Islam in the physical existence; and, through the right use of communication technology a unified ummah of 1.2 billion Muslims will be able to effectively offer the traditional scholarship and knowledge of Islam to all the people of the world.

In the coming years there will occur many new opportunities for all Muslims to take an active role in the creation of this truly and fully Islamic world of the future. As a most important beginning to this momentous task it is necessary for every Muslim parent to learn and practice the techniques of effective Islamic parenting. The path to effective Islamic parenting consists of two parts, necessarily inseparable. They are an objective, accurate and positive worldview, combined with a good understanding of the laws of learning by which all human characteristics develop. This is necessary because the laws of learning are much too powerful to be used without a clear positive direction in which to influence the child's development. Islam most certainly provides this clear, correct and positive direction, as Allah would never mislead us.

All laws in this physical universe belong to Allah, and the laws of learning, to the degree we correctly understand them, by which all human development takes place are created by Allah just as are the laws of physics which hold the moon, sun, and stars in place. These laws of learning provide the most powerful tool for directing the development of the individual or any social group that has ever existed. For a Muslim to be a truly effective Islamic parent it is necessary to understand Allah's laws of learning.

Just as Allah has made our religion easy for us, Allah has made the laws of learning easy for us to understand and use. Actually, these laws of learning in their entirety can be quite complex, and to fully comprehend these laws and understand their widest application can take many years of study. Nevertheless, all thanks to His Mercy, Allah has allowed anyone hearing a brief and simple explanation of these laws of learning to be able to use most of their incredible power. This easily understood knowledge of the laws of learning is more than enough to enable a parent to raise their child as a good and right human being.

It is important that knowledge of these laws of learning and their use should never be seen as somehow separate from the unity of Islamic life. To be most effective in helping you raise your children, these laws of learning are not to be 'applied' like some mechanical tool, but they must be incorporated deeply into the innermost reaches of your consciousness until they become a natural part of your unique style of interpersonal communication and interaction with your child.

In order to keep this explanation of the laws of learning both brief and simple it will be presented as a successive series of individual points, but made specific for use in effective Islamic parenting:

GENERAL LAWS OF DEVELOPMENT

1. Most basic premise - That any person or social group who possesses both a positive and accurate world view and an understanding of the laws of learning will move naturally and inevitably toward all things good and right.

2. An infant child comes into the world perfectly good and only becomes other than perfectly good while growing into adulthood due to the influences upon him/her during their years of development.

3. Human society is obviously not perfectly good at this point in history, in fact our world society has become so bad that some philosophers have made the claim that human nature is basically evil.

4. The reason so much evil exists in today's world is not because human nature is basically evil, but because the influences we naturally encounter as physical beings in a material world tend most often to direct our development away from Allah.

5. The influences upon us come from three sources in our environment, the physical, the social(any influence coming either directly or indirectly from other people), and from inner speech(the influence of our own thoughts and feelings).

6. Every influence upon a us will have some effect greater than zero; and, while most of these will be very small, some can be so powerful as to be life changing.

7. The overall impact upon our development of any single influence from any of these three sources can be either negative or positive.

8. Every individual is subjected to many thousands of influences every day, some of these influences being directed toward evil and some being directed toward Allah.

9. To overcome the influence of evil (movement toward the material) and move toward Allah (the spiritual) takes consistent and concentrated effort.

10. If we do not recognize the affect of these influences upon our development we will go whichever way the influences take us, thereby too often moving away from Allah and toward evil.

11. If we can recognize the affect of these influences upon our development we can use the laws of learning to limit the affect of the negative influences upon us and to increase the affect of the positive influences upon us, thereby moving continuously away from evil and moving toward Allah.

12. When we see an influence upon us that we know would push us away from Allah we can say things to ourselves using inner speech that can take away the power of that negative influence.

13. When we see an influence upon us that we know would help us move toward Allah we can say things to ourselves using inner speech that can add greatly to the power of that positive influence.

14. As we learn to recognize all the influences upon us from the inner and outer realms of the environment, when we learn to correctly identify those influences as being either negative or positive upon our development, and when we learn to use our inner speech to say the correct things after each one of those negative or positive influences (which will reduce the power of the negative and increase the power of the positive), then we will begin naturally and inevitably to move away from all that is wrong and harmful, and we will begin to move naturally and inevitably toward all things good and right.

15. An individual who does these things cannot fail to become a good and right human being; and, a society that does these things cannot fail to become a good and right society.

GENERAL LAWS OF LEARNING

1. Basically, all laws of learning involve what is commonly called reward and punishment.

2. Any behaviour that is followed by reward (reinforcement) will tend to increase in the future.

3. There are two classes of reward: when something that is desired is given after a behaviour, that is reward (for example, if you were to smile at your child after he/she says something nice); and, when something that is disliked is removed after a behaviour, that is reward (for example, when your feeling of shame for some wrong you have done is removed by offering sincere repentance and seeking forgiveness from Allah).

4. Any behaviour that is followed by punishment will tend to decrease in the future.

5. There are two classes of punishment: when something that is disliked occurs after a behaviour, that is punishment (for example, if you were to hit your child after he/she says something rude); and, when something that is liked is removed after a behaviour, that is punishment (for example, if your child is not allowed to continue playing after hitting a playmate).

6. Punishment is always harmful to the child even if it seems to achieve the parent's goal.

7. The undesirable side effects of punishment are: the child will sometimes try to escape from or retaliate (fight) against the punishing situation; the child will sometimes have negative feelings toward whoever punishes him/her; and, punishment usually remains effective only when the possibility of punishment is clearly present.

8. The alternative to punishment should not be permissiveness (meaning to let your child do anything they want), if there is anything more harmful to the child's development than punishment it is permissiveness.

9. The right alternative to punishment in raising a child is called directed positive influence.

10. Directed positive influence means to reward (with praise, attention or an occasional small gift) your child after they do things that are good and right, while gently providing correction when your child does wrong.

11. The younger you start using directed positive influence with your child the easier it will be for you and the more effective it will be in helping your child develop into a good and right human being.

12. To provide effective Islamic parenting you must understand the concept of 'shaping'.

13. Shaping is the consistent rewarding of successive small steps toward any desired goal for your child.

14. With the shaping process correctly and consistently in effect there is no positive goal that cannot be achieved.

15. Set every goal at perfection, being rewarding of successful steps along that unending path but never punishing the non-arrival at that perfect goal.

16. The beginning steps in the shaping process should be kept small so they are easily accomplished successfully.

17. If during the shaping process you make any step so large that it cannot be accomplished then the progress toward the desired goal will come to a stop, and often revert back to a much less desired level.

18. Lots of reward should be given at the beginning of the shaping process and then should be gradually reduced in the later stages.

19. If reward is given after every behaviour in the shaping process this is called 'continuous reinforcement'.

20. Continuous reinforcement is very good for getting progress toward some desired goal underway.

21. The problem with continuous reinforcement is that the behaviour can become too dependent on the reward, and could stop quickly if the reward stops.

22. If reward is given not after every behaviour in the shaping process but after only some behaviours this is called 'variable reinforcement'.

23. Variable reinforcement is a good way to maintain progress toward a desired goal without the behaviour becoming too dependent on the reward, so that your child does not always expect to be rewarded for their right behaviour.

24. To make the shaping process most effective you should teach your child how to reward their successful progress with inner speech, their own thoughts and feelings, so reward from others is no longer necessary to maintain good and right behaviour.

25. It is good to always discuss your goals for your child with him/her so that you are consciously working together to achieve goals you both desire.

26. It will help your child greatly in their development if you can teach him/her the specifics of the laws of learning that you are using to help them become good and right human beings.

27. For most effective parenting everyone in the family group should be made aware of and helped to understand these laws of learning, should try to relate to each other on the basis of these laws of learning, and should share, appreciate and work together to achieve the desired goals.

SPECIFICS OF EFFECTIVE ISLAMIC PARENTING

1. For Islamic parenting to be most effective there must be a truly Islamic society, so part of your responsibility as Muslim parents is to help recreate a right Islamic world.

2. Parental love for their children is a Mercy from Allah, not only in humans but even in animals.

3. In Islam the love of a parent for their child is so taken for granted that it is not even thought necessary to state this as a requirement for parents.

4. In Islam the main responsibility the parent has to their child is to provide for their education (this is to be understood in the broadest possible sense, including all things that assist the child to become a good and right human being).

5. The Qur'an also places great responsibility on the child in regard to their parents, requiring the child to be kind to the parents, to help their parents in their old age, to never speak to their parents with contempt, to never reject their parents, to honour their parents, and to fulfil all these responsibilities with humility.

6. Every child should be taught from their earliest years about their responsibility as a vicegerent(khalifah) of Allah; that it is their duty as vicegerent to transform themselves into Muslims living in true submission to the Will of Allah, that it is their duty to transform all of human society into an Islamic society living in true submission to the Will of Allah, and that it their duty to transform the physical world of space and time into a garden paradise for Allah.

7. Raise your child to be a courageous Muslim, willing to struggle against evil in the greater and lesser jihad, as this will be necessary to create a right Islamic world for the future.

8. Raise your child to fully believe they will successfully create and live in a truly Islamic world, because belief is critical to successfully achieving any goal.

9. Anything that you believe will happen is more likely to happen because you will find ways (both consciously and unconsciously) to make sure it happens, and anything that you don't believe will happen is less likely to happen because you will find ways to make sure it doesn't happen; this fact is known as the 'self-fulfilling prophesy'.

10. The parent should never let their love for their child prevent them from doing what is right for their child (for example neglecting to correct the child when he/she does wrong).

11. If there is a conflict of interests, the requirements of Islam have priority over the desires of the child (for example, if the child would rather play than pray).

12. Teach your child to love Allah, The Prophet, Islam, and Islamic values.

13. Teach your child to see all things and understand all things from the perspective of Islam.

14. In Islam if it becomes necessary to correct your child for some wrongdoing this must be done according to a certain hierarchy: first, explain to your child in a gentle way how they have overstepped some limit from rightness into wrong; second, if the gentle instruction does not result in the child correcting that wrong behaviour, you should indicate your disapproval of that wrong behaviour by withdrawing your favour (for example, do not give smiles, hugs or kind words to your child at such times); and third, only as a last resort, your child can be physically punished (beaten) if they do not correct the wrong behaviour.

15. In Islam if it becomes necessary for you to beat your child there are specific rules and limitations: you may not hit your child on the face or stomach, you may not hit your child more than a maximum of three times, and you may not hit your child hard enough to leave a cut or bruise on the skin.

16. You should never hit your child when you are angry, not only are you then more likely to become excessive in your punishment but doing so will teach your child that it is right to hit people when they are angry.

17. It is important to realize that if you reach a point where you feel it is necessary to beat your child then something has gone badly wrong, and you previously have not done all you could have done to avoid this becoming necessary.

18. It is a fact of learning that you cannot punish a child without harming him/her, so punishment can only become necessary if you have no positive alternative, and the good that comes from being punished will outweigh the harm you do to your child.

19. Remember, the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) never once hit a child, a woman or a servant.

20. Do not argue with your child, as there is almost never any benefit in doing so.

21. Although your child might well choose to pray at a younger age, at seven years of age your child should be required to pray through gentle encouragement; and, at ten years of age your child can be beaten for not praying, although this circumstance should never arise with correct Islamic parenting.

22. Your child should be taught to memorize the Qur'an, the benefits are many and much wider in scope than is often believed in these modern times.

23. At every age there must be appropriate rights given to your child and necessary limits set upon your child's behaviour, which will allow your child to fully explore their human potential while not causing harm to themselves, harm to others or damage to their surroundings.

24. If you see your child doing something wrong it is usually not even necessary to mention the thing that is wrong, instead, it is often sufficient (and always more desirable) only to say how much you like the right thing which is the opposite of the wrong being done.

25. You should not expose your child's failings or wrongdoings in front of others, if this must be done it is best if it be done privately.

26. Don't give much attention to the bad or wrong things your child does and says, but give lots of attention to the good or right things your child does and says.

27. You should, of course, always love your child unconditionally, but you should only express that love at times which are most beneficial to your child.

28. You should at all times be a model of a good and right human being (Muslim) for your child.

bismillaahir rahmaanir rahiim EFFECTIVE ISLAMIC PARENTING (Read each morning!!!)

1. I am raising my child to be a successful vicegerent (khalifah) of Allah, who will help create a truly Islamic World.

2. Today I will try my best to know and understand all the influences upon my child's development.

3. Today I will try my best to help my child understand the power of negative influences to take him/her away from Allah, and the power of positive influences to take him/her to Allah.

4. Today I will try my best to shield my child from the power of the negative influences to take him/her away from Allah.

5. Today I will try my best to enhance (increase) the power of the positive influences upon my child to take him/her toward llah.

6. Today I will try my best to notice some positive things my child does or says, and tell him/her how much those things are appreciated by me and by Allah.

7. Today I will try my best to say nothing negative to my child. Even if I have to correct my child's wrong behaviour I will try my best to find some positive way to do so.

8. Today I will love my child unconditionally, but I will try my best to express that love at times which are most beneficial to my child.

9. Today I will try my best to be an example of a good and right human being (Muslim) for my child.

10. Today I will pray for Allah's help that I can be a good parent for my child.