Why Your Child Should Engage with Nature

 

Research says that engaging with nature reduces stress in both adults and children. For children, the added benefit is that it gets them to be physically active and helps them develop cognitively through imagination and dramatic play. There is also social learning through interactions with others. However, the most important reason for Muslim children to engage with the natural world is that they are learning about Allah through His creations.

How to Motivate Your Child

As a teacher, motivation is a question that I'm often asked about from parents. They usually want to know how they can motivate their children to do school work. The truth is that no matter how hard a parent pushes their child, their child will not be motivated to do that thing that their parent want them to do.

Below is a question that I was asked about from a reader concerning motivating children:

My Child is Not What I Want Him to Be

A child sits huddled in a corner of a trampoline play centre, silently crying because he doesn't want to jump on the huge trampolines or climb the rock wall or go through the ninja obstacle course. His father quietly talks to him from time to time, not forcing him but encouraging him. Suddenly the child yells out to someone sitting to his right, "I'm not chicken! You're chicken." From where I'm sitting I cannot see who it is. Please don't let it be the mother. Now he is openly crying. This child is not a young child. He is a young teenager.

It breaks my heart to see this being played in front of me. I tried not to look but it's hard to ignore the dejected figure sitting in the corner. I don't make judgements of the parents, for I assume it was an adult sitting in the shadows where other parents sit and watch their children - another child would have been playing. 

Parents do the best they can with what they know. We think we are helping our child to be fearless and courageous by providing experiences of risk or thrill taking situations. We think we are helping our child get better grades by booking numerous tuition classes. We think we're helping our child become sporty by enrolling them into different sporting activities. Parents do this with the best of intentions. We want our child to be better or become the best.

Why Your Child is Inherently Good

I’ve recently read a post about why we were all not good and that we’re all sinners, even children. I wasn’t going to write anything about it because to each is his own beliefs, right? But I just can’t let it go because it is so wrong and unjust to say that children are born sinners and to look at them as ‘not good’.

It’s so important to your parenting to see your child as good. The way you perceive someone is the way you will act towards him. This is a psychological truth.