It was one of our evening teh tarek sessions and it was after listening through the discussion about the harms of pornography by Khalid Ajmain and Ustaz Sheikh Farouq on Sout Illahi’s page.
I was discussing with hubby about how can we as parents help curb these exposure of explicit things to our children. That ultimately the home is the first madrasah.
Yet he had a whole argument about this, not that it’s a negative thing, but how can we just look from one angle of nurturing a child from the aspect of the parents only, but everything and everyone around the child.
What does he mean by that? If we say that having this workshop about how we should teach adab to our children when using the social media can help with addressing the pressing issues about cyber bullying as well as explicit content in the web, then secular schools are already teaching about cyber wellness and I’m sure the madrasahs definitely talk about adab and akhlak.
So ultimately it’s not only about teaching the parents, it’s ensuring the teachers also teach these positive values so that whatever positive values taught by the parents are reinforced by the teachers and in turn the child must also practice those positive values with their friends, who will help influence each other and the community/society/environment is so positive that the child will emulate this positivity. However that is what happens in an ideal environment where everyone in the “village” takes the responsibility of looking after the child, but in reality this doesn’t happen.
If ever a child defaulted on this good behavior, what should be done next? That is where all of us should play the part of supporting the defaulted child. Meaning, point out the wrong, guide the child to the right as well as support the parents in helping the child back to the right track instead of just blaming/punishing the child and even blaming the parents for supposedly not nurturing the child properly.
