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The Problems Faced by the Young Adults
By: Abdul Adheem al-Muhtadi al-Bahrani
How do we cure drug addiction and how do we deal with the many problems caused by it?
Question: My son is a drug addict. He has troubled us with problems that we never imagined would someday occur with him. What is the cure? What is the required conduct we should follow with him that pleases Allah? And how can we raise our heads before people?!
The answer: It is supposed that you could have managed his affairs before this fall. However, since the calamity has already taken place, the first possible solution is to adapt yourselves to it, but this is not the cure for addiction as you may think. However, what doctors suggest can be tried.
As for dealing with a drug addict, it differs from one to another. Sometimes, it would be better to deal with a drug addict kindly, and sometimes severity is required so that others are not encouraged to walk in the same way. In general, you have to be wise and moderate in dealing with your addicted son, for it is the closest way to righteousness and the reward of Allah.
A manner of suppression or severance does not solve the problem at all; rather, it complicates it. A reasonable person is he who acts according to the reality and limits the area of the calamity that has afflicted him and tries his best to not let others fall. Islam has taught us that “a believer is not stung from the same hole twice”.
Would you please advise me as to how to deal with my children when they make mistakes?
Question: I have four children. I am retired and I cannot tolerate seeing their mistakes. Would you please advise me as to how to deal with them when they make mistakes?
The answer: The mistakes may be intentional or may not be, as when they are committed because of the lack of full experience or immaturity. A successful father has to distinguish between these two kinds of mistakes and react accordingly. In any case, the father should strengthen his children’s personalities by injecting knowledge and intellect in them on every occasion and should make his children understand the consequences of committing mistakes and the suffering of regret. The father should instruct his children in a lenient way full of love and kindness and away from coercion and compulsion. The father has to make friends with his children to gain their love, and then his advices will have a good influence on them.
If you want this, you have to be lenient in dealing with your children. You must give the mistaken one an opportunity to reflect and review his situation and must not attack him severely and in deliberately, for then you will cause him to respond in the same way, turn his back on you, and hate you forever. You should keep in mind that the mentality of the youth is like glass, which if broken, one will have to face many difficulties to mend. Therefore, it is very necessary for you to follow wise manners in advising and criticizing your children. When you want to make them understand that they have committed a mistake, you should talk with them leniently about the harms of mistakes and sins and teach them ways of giving up or avoiding mistakes and sins and the advantages of that. With such a quiet method of blaming, you will make them understand their responsibilities, and they will then give up erring.
If you follow these important points for a short period, you shall not find yourself in need of being angry at your children when they commit mistakes, especially when you remember that Allah becomes angry at you if you commit a sin intentionally, and He forgives you if you repent sincerely. Let your morals towards your children be like the morals of Allah towards sinners in both cases!
Would you please guide me as to what are the most important manners I need in educating my children?
Question: Would you please guide me as to what are the most important manners I need in educating my children? I am very concerned to make them good believers following the true Islam and serving the society. I want to be proud of them in this world and in the afterworld.
The answer: May Allah bless you for this high determination. I pray to Allah to make you successful in achieving your goal and it is not difficult for Him. However, this task has some conditions, such as the following:
1. You have to read about the details you will need in the religious books of education because they will open the doors for your ambition.
2. You have to consult with someone regarding the educational questions and cooperate with him in the tasks that require more than one person.
3. You should try to discover in your children their distinguished talents and then try to direct them in a way that pleases Allah the Almighty.
4. You have to always show your love to your children and regard their wills, and when your will conflicts with theirs, you have to discuss the matter leniently with them, determine the important and the more important things, and then agree with them on the best possible solution.
5. Smiles and cheerfulness have a great influence on man’s success and happiness. Try your best to plant these things in your children, and the best artist is he who wipes away a child’s tear to draw a smile and delight on his countenance.
How can I make my children love reading so that books and knowledge can be an important part of their interests in life?
Question: How can I make my children love reading so that books and knowledge can be an important part of their interests in life?
The answer: First, you should make your children find this interest in you. It means that you should read books before them, bring good books home with you, care for new cultural publications such as religious and scientific books or magazines, and let them notice this clearly in you.
Second, you should tell your children about what you have read and talk to them about the facts, wonders, and attractive tales you have read.
Third, when you reply to their questions, you may refer to books to obtain the answers to their questions, and, at the same time, tell them that they can learn many things by referring to books.
Fourth, you can take your children to the library to see scenes of great volumes in order so that books can take roots in their minds. At the same time, you can talk to them about the great advantages of those books and their roles in achieving the happiness of man and society, and how the authors have strived day and night to present those books to their readers to illuminate their ways towards goodness and happiness.
Fifth, when your children finish reading a book, you can ask them to tell you what they have understood from that book, and you may encourage them by offering them some gifts.
This is if you yourself are interested in reading; otherwise, you can talk to them about the advantages of reading books and show them that you are very sorry because, for certain reasons, you have had no opportunity to read books and you do not want your children to be sorry like yourself in the future.
How do I deal with my teenager having unIslamic behaviors and interests?
Question: My fourteen-year-old son likes listening to songs, watching foreign films, and imitating western fashions. Besides, he is lazy in performing his religious obligations. How should I deal with him?
The answer: Man often, especially in the transitional period from childhood to youth, becomes involved in some slips and sins. Perhaps he does not intend to commit them willingly, but because of the Satan’s incitement, he goes towards those prohibited things just for a change, out of curiosity, or as a new experiment.
If you follow the three steps mentioned below, you will be successful in guiding your son and rescuing him from the swamp of sins; otherwise, you will make him continue his sins if you follow the wrong manner of dealing with him.
To behave wisely, you should tolerate your son’s mistakes in this stage of his life because they will come to an end. You should remember that Allah is merciful to His people and He forgives their sins.
Here are the three steps: First, you have to make friends with him and show him your love and kindness. You can go out with him to buy for him what he needs of clothes and other things. Always smile at him, and consult with him on some affairs with which you entrust him. Continue doing this until you become certain that he trusts you and begins obeying you sincerely.
Second, you have to prepare for him some alternatives, such as religious oratorios instead of songs and Islamic films instead of foreign films. Talk to him about the harms of imitating westerners. Tell him that nowadays many western people have begun imitating Islamic conducts because they find in them gravity, purity, and high morals.
Third, you have to take him with you to the mosque, to religious meetings, and to the meetings of the Ulama’. You have to acquaint him with good youth so he can befriend them.
I feel my teenaged son is argumentative; what do I do?
Question: My son, who is fourteen years old, is too opinionated. He argues over every subject I discuss with him to the extent that sometimes I feel I dislike him, whereas he was not like this before.
The answer: This state is one of the results of adolescence and it will continue in your son until the age of eighteen or after that. You should tolerate him in this period. When you order him to do something or forbid him from something you have to justify your ordering or forbidding with logical reasons. You should not expect him to respond to you immediately. You should leave him free if he is not somehow harming himself or destroying his future. You should give him enough time to ponder over your advices.
In this way, you will win him over in the long range. When he becomes an adult, he will appreciate your wise manner of treating him during his adolescence. Your advices and instructions to him will remain as good lessons in his life with which he can treat his own children correctly in the future.
I have wicked sons who cause problems for neighbors and passers-by; what can I do as their father?
Question: My sons are wicked. Whenever they go out in the street, they cause troubles to the neighbors and passers-by. Would you please instruct me with how to deal with them? I have been ashamed of myself for being their father.
The answer: These phenomena often arise due to previous reasons and previous neglect in educating the children. Now, it is too difficult for the children to change in a short time. However, following these points can help you to decrease the problem:
1. You should talk to them about the religious and worldly rights of people, relate to them some stories, and bring them some social films and cassettes of religious lectures about the subject.
2. You should tell them that evil will return to its doer someday, and surely Allah will punish the wrongdoer.
3. You can ask some notable persons to advise them in a wise way. They may make friends with them gradually through presents, invitations, and picnics to guide them little by little.
4. You have to apologize to whosoever your children may have harmed and pray to Allah to forgive you for being negligent in educating your children.
5. You may arrange with some good boys in your neighborhood to befriend your children and contact them most of the time.
How can I solve my child’s habit of lying?
Question: My child has grown accustomed to lying. He fabricates news as if they are true. Would you please give me a solution to save him from this vice?
The answer: Lying has some reasons. One who lies aims for one of the following:
1. to harm or take revenge on some persons whom he hates or with whom he is angry
2. to escape punishment
3. to show off
There is a kind of lying resulting from imagination, which is the most usual among children. The reason behind lying is sometimes because of TV and bad films, sometimes because of the strained atmosphere in the family, and other times because of the influence of friends who practice lying.
To treat this problem first you have to remove its causes and then teach the child the advantages of being truthful and the disadvantages of lying. In all of this, you should speak with your child respectfully and leniently. You may read some books of ethics about the subject and then mention it to him through stories and attractive statements. You should beware of being severe to him or beating him because this will lead him to be obstinate and obdurate for he will then try to prove that he has a personality that cannot be defeated by beating.
To treat this problem you yourself have to be truthful to him and not let him find any kind of lying in you at all. If you lie and he discovers that, you should either apologize to him or explain the reasons that led you to lie in a persuasive manner.
Whenever my child commits a mistake, I beat him but this method is not working, what should I do?
Question: Whenever my child commits a mistake, I beat him a lot, but he still repeats his mistake obstinately though he suffers the bitter pain of beating and cries. I then punish him more severely than before, and he intentionally commits the mistake again and with more obstinacy, all the while looking at me as if to let me know that he does it intentionally. I do not know how to deal with him! Sometimes I fear that I will not be able to control my nerves when I beat him and I may cause him a permanent handicap in his body, and this will cause me great remorse besides the punishment of my Lord. Would you please tell me what I should do with him and with myself?
The answer: By beating him, you implant the mistakes in him more deeply. Extra beating and punishing do not lead the child to aught but greater obdurateness or physical hindrances and psychological complexes because the child, in return for being beaten and insulted, will defend his dignity and personality with all the physical and mental powers he has. His obduracy will continue until all his powers run out.
Do you want this? Certainly not! However, if you do not control your nerves, you may realize that which you fear, and then regret shall neither restore your child’s soundness nor inspire the soul in him again. Therefore, you should not destroy your child’s personality, dignity, and powers. The mistake he commits, whatever it may be, is less harmful than the harms you cause him. A mistake may disappear by advices or by the passing of time, but the physical and mental damage cannot be treated by advices or by the passing of time.
Besides, severe beating is not lawful in the Islamic Sharia. You have to keep this legal matter and the aforementioned fact in mind to give up your wrong manner of dealing with your child. You can follow another manner in educating him that is closer to the Sharia, reason, and peace of mind.
I remember a story of a young man who beat his father until he was about to die at his hands. One day I asked my father, ‘Why does he do so to his father?’ My father said, ‘He is just reaping what he sowed! He used to always beat his son when he was a child and did not think that some day things would change, that he would be weak and his son would grow stronger and avenge himself on his father in the light of the scenes he had kept in mind since childhood.’
You should give up angriness, severity, and beating. You should adopt the qualities of the true believers as Imam Ali (a.s.) has said, ‘The believers are easy and lenient[231]’.
Dear brother, I would ask you to write down this saying (of Imam Ali) and hang it on every wall of your house so you can remember it whenever you become angry. I would also ask all those who disagree with others to hang this holy tradition before their eyes lest they follow the steps of the Satan when they are in disagreement.
Notes:
[231] Jami’ al-Akhbar, p.217.
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