The Imam’s Daughter

The keys to successfully managing your home lies in creating Master Lists. Read about the importance of managing your home in this previous entry: Benefits of Scheduling. You can create these on paper first, then copy onto the computer so you can print them out as needed, or start off from the beginning on the computer, but don’t forget to print it and put it where you’ll notice it. I wanted to post my files but my blog is not showing the files properly. I can send you some or all the files by email if you need more help than what i’ve explained below.

1. Master Meal List: a list of all possible dinner meals. Group by meat, chicken, fish, vegetarian etc. If you also cook for breakfast and or lunch, you may need a meal list for those meals as well. For me i only cook breakfast on the weekends, during the week it’s cereal and milk. For lunch, i have a weekly schedule where every monday is mac & cheese, every tuesday is pizza, every wed is sandwiches etc. Refer to the Master Meal List when making the menu for the week.

2. Master Grocery List: a list of all the items you buy from the grocery store, grouped by aisle in the supermarket. Then the day before or morning of your grocery shopping day, you just circle the things you need for the week. In the margins, you can write in anything else you need to buy that’s not in the general list. At the bottom, there is a section listing the days of the week where you write in the meals you have planned for that week, and depending on that, you circle what you need above to make those meals. So you are buying only what you need and by the end of the week you have used what you bought and barely anything gets wasted. You always have what you need on hand instead of getting stuck having to run out for one or two things. Btw, i cook for two days, so i only have three lines on the bottom labeled Sun/Mon, Tues/Wed, Thurs/Sat. Print 4 of these out at a time, for the whole month. After your grocery shopping, put it up on the fridge to remind yourself what you’re cooking that week.

3. Master Daily Chore List: a list of all your chores, grouped by time: morning, noon, afternoon, before dinner, after dinner, evening. Think of a strategy to do a little everyday of your laundry work, unloading the dishwasher every morning, cleanup after every meal, dishes, mail sorting, daily prayers, Qur’an reading, journal writing, etc. Try to reward yourself after each section with a cup of tea or time on the computer etc. Unloading the dishwasher in the morning will motivate me to do the dishes after every meal because it will become such an easy task. When lunch time comes i can easily rinse the 4 dishes and spoons and put them in the dishwasher immediately since it’s empty. If it wasn’t empty it would take too long to unload and load all at one time so i would end up putting it off until the next meal, making an even bigger pile of dishes, and leading to the all-to-common depression that often plagues us as mothers.

4. Master Weekend Chore List: a list of things you need to do on saturdays, and a list for sundays. For me, saturdays is meal planning and making the grocery list, grocery shopping, kitchen mopping, bathroom cleaning. Sundays is laundry gather and sort, homeschool prep, cook etc. Making a weekly menu on Saturday helps me a lot in that i don’t need to spend time and energy each day thinking about what i’m going to cook. Sorting the laundry on Sundays sets up my week in a way that makes it easy for me to do one load of laundry a day. And this will in turn ensure that the laundry never piles up and become impossible and depressing. You need to sit and think for yourself the things you could do on the weekend that would make your week go more smoothly.

5. Daily Schedule: this is a rough schedule of your daily activities, and if you completed the daily chore list, just plug those in and then put in your other activities and free time in the remaining slots. There is a column for the mom and each child in the family for every half-hour of the day. Here, it’s best to work on one section at a time. Figure out the morning first, then move on to the noon, then the afternoon, then dinner, then evening. You also begin implementing the schedule the same way - you work on the morning routines until you have them down well, going along with the rest of the day as you did before, then move on to the next section. It can take up to a year or year and a half to get the whole schedule implemented. And of course you change it as you go along, depending on how things work out best, trial and error. Making a schedule doesn’t mean you have to exactly follow it, but it gives you sort of a guideline to work with, instead of going through your days randomly and chaotically. It also frees up emotional energy because you don’t have to spend so much time and energy thinking about what you’re going to do next, which is not just frustrating for you, but especially frustrating for your little ones who thrive on routine.

For more details on managing the dishes and laundry, see this post: Managing the Dishes and Laundry.

In terms of Islam, you can think about parental discipline as da’wah. Your child is doing something wrong and you need to correct it. Here, we can apply the rules of effective da’wah, but with a twist. Allah says in the Qur’an: [003:104] “Let there arise out of you a band of people inviting to all that is good, enjoining what is right, and forbidding what is wrong: They are the ones to attain felicity”.

1- Choose a good time. If the behavior is not a danger to others, you could overlook it for the time being and choose another time to have a discussion about the behavior that concerned you. If however the behavior was aggressive, you need to remove the child from the situation right away and take them to another room. You can hold him until he calms down. In teenagers, this is very important, as it will create a lot of resentment in them if the moment they come home from school you launch your ‘attack’. Choosing another time will also give you time to research the issue in the Qur’an/sunnah etc.

2- Choose a good place. Take the child aside to speak to him privately, if possible in another room. Public humility backfires in that the person becomes angry that you pointed out their wrong in front of others and this anger will not allow them to accept your da’wah. I’m sure you have all experienced this, i have! Even though the person was right, i just felt so bad inside that i didn’t care about what they said.

3- You begin by showing your love, care, and concern, and perhaps some praise for another good thing done during the day or previous good behavior etc, make something up whatever. [016:125] “Invite (all) to the Way of thy Lord with wisdom and beautiful preaching; and argue with them in ways that are best and most gracious: for thy Lord knoweth best, who have strayed from His Path, and who receive guidance.”

4- Then point out the wrong behavior and explain why it is wrong. Use an even tone of voice, not happy but not overly emotionally angry. If you can’t, you should stay silent until you can calm down emotionally. It will also be more effective if you back it up with info from the Qur’an and/or sunnah. ‘Because i said so’ or ‘Because i’m the adult’ just doesn’t mean much to them.

5- Teach them the correct way. It’s not enough to say ‘this is bad, don’t do it again’, we have to teach them the right way. If you can use some role play or some dolls or a story from your own personal experience - whatever fits the situation, it would help to re-enforce the lesson in their minds. Again, here you can use info from the Qur’an, sunnah, Islamic history, lives of the Sahabah/Sahabiyaat etc.

6- Remind them of your love and give them a hug. A lot of times kids act out because they’re not getting enough attention. So maybe this will do the trick to get them to listen to you. This is especially true for when a new sibling enters the family and the older child feels jealousy and they’ll misbehave, all they really want is a hug and kiss and some attention to make sure you still love them.

Now, for toddlers, they won’t understand some of the above points, so distraction is the best way to go. However, they will understand a simple sentence or two if you go down to eye level and look them in the eye, then offer a distraction. Also, minimizing situations of contention, like making sure there are two cars for the two kids to play with, putting away dangerous toys or destructive toys, putting crayons etc out of reach and only for use when a parent is involved, making sure to set aside time each day to just sit and play with them, listen to them and look them in the eye when they talk to you, just the normal common sense stuff to make your life easier.

Now, those are just fire fighting techniques, i.e. what you do after a child misbehaves - the most important parts of effective discipline are actually in trying to prevent too many of these situations from occurring:

1 - Having good role models. Children learn most from the people around them. So make sure they are spending the majority of their time around righteous people. But even if you did teach your child a bad habit, it’s a good opportunity for you to ask your child to help you. Then you both will benefit. My children are quick to remind me that i’m losing rewards whenever i yell :( And actually, as a teen, it was meeting an organizer of the MYNA conferences who became like a role model to me that helped me make the decision to be a practicing Muslimah alhamdulillah. The decision was made easier, but the path still seemed so hard.

This led my thoughts to the current educational system in our day and age. Parents these days aren’t able to be THE role models for their children, as the system has them out of the house for most of the day at school, and it has the father, the supposed leader of the family, out of the house for almost the whole day, which leaves most of the responsibilities of the family for the mother to deal with, which leave her frustrated and emotionally sensitive and impatient.

And the schools suck out all the energy and manners from the children, and they come home mentally exhausted and just want to sit in front of the TV or play video games. Then dinner. Then you have to force them to their HW and for younger kids you have to help them with their HW, in the time of the day where you are both tired. Then bedtime. Then wake up early again the next day.

Then the weekend comes - they are with their parents and siblings, and they don’t know how to spend meaningful time with them. They become accustomed to playing with kids their own age, that they have in their minds that they cannot play with their younger sister or their older brother. Mom asks you to clean your room, and you blow up at her - ‘it’s the weekend, i want to relax, leave me alone’. I remember, because that’s how i was, may Allah forgive me. And the most painful and sad part of all this - is that the kids don’t develop the proper discipline to do the 5 daily prayers. This was the thing i most struggled with, and Allah knows i yearned for it with all my heart from when i was a pre-teen. With all that’s going on in their day, there is no energy or time left for this extremely important obligation. And where is the time to learn Qur’an or Islam? Sundays? Where you wake up early on sunday morning, quickly have them do their HW, and drag them to the mosque to sit in a classroom for three hours, constantly told to be quiet and listen and NOT talk with their Muslim friends whom they haven’t seen all week? This is why i have turned to homeschooling, so that I could be my children’s role model and teacher, so that i can keep my child’s heart, so they won’t have to go through as much pains as i went through inshaAllah, and so that i can have a much easier time of being a mother too.

2 - Prevention through daily halaqas. This is where you specify a certain time in the day to teach them about Islamic values, manners, etc. It’s called character training. This could be by you or your husband. For us, after dinner is good, but at bedtime is good too by whoever puts them to sleep. And it’s best done for children through stories. Stories of the Sahabah, Rasulullah peace and blessings be upon him, stories in the Qur’an, Islamic history, or fictional stories about Muslim children that teach good lessons, etc.

3 - A lesson on good deeds, bad deeds, hasanat/ajr (good reward), sayee’at (bad points). Children can accumulate ajr! And you should emphasize this to them. The more ajr you get, the higher you will be in Jannah. And if you get to the highest level in Jannah, we will be with Rasulullah peace and blessings be upon him. And explain all the different way you can get ajr - prayers, reading and memorizing Qur’an, helping your brother or sister, helping your parents, picking up around the house, putting toys back after you finish playing with them, keeping clean etc.

4 - Deciding on rules for the house and their proper consequences. These will be the issues you will be forceful in disciplining, and consistent with the consequences. Only list major issues. Medium or minor issues can be dealt with by a simple discussion, distraction, or other creative way. This way YOU know exactly where you need to take action, and THE CHILD knows what the limits are. A child is just a child, how is he supposed to know what he is and is not supposed to do, in every situation? How can we punish our children for something they didn’t REALLY know was so important to us? And how much emotional energy does it take from us to have to constantly think and decide numerous times throughout the day when and how we should discipline our children? A LOT. Just like in a classroom, there are rules and consequences for breaking the rules and that’s why kids listen to their teachers and behave well in school, we mothers should also have a rules chart up on the wall and be clear about the consequences.

5 - Making du’a to Allah day and night to guide you and your children to His path, to better your behavior and that of your children, to increase their love of Allah, His messenger, and the Qur’an, for you to be a good role model and for your older children to be good role models for the younger ones, by the grace of Allah.

I ask Allah to grant these for all of us inshaAllah.

Here are some online resources that did the trick for my son who is in KG:

1. Watching videos on You Tube of the letter. In the search box, type ‘letter a’
- Cullen’s abc’s with food
- Sesame Street
- Kid 2020
- Watch how the letter A is written

2. Letter books - print out, fold, and read. Itsy Bitsy Letter books.

For the arabic letters, i make my own letter books since i couldn’t find any online, drawing the pictures myself and pasting them onto small pieces of construction paper, then staple the sides. Then i make up a story about the objects, trying to make it funny somehow. He loves it. I try to emphasize the sound the letter makes and stress that sound while i’m reading the names of the objects that begin with that letter. On you tube, you might find some videos on a certain letter, like Alif, but nothing close to what you can find for the english letters, unfortunately.

Homeschool Schedule 2008 – 2009

Sumayyah – 7 (2nd grade) | Ibrahim – 5 (KG) | Mohamad – 18 mo
_______________________________________________________________________________
9:00 Tutoring One-on-one with Mom | Play with Mohamad | Play with Ibrahim

9:30 Independent work:
Qur’an & Tafseer | Circle Time Discussion
Math | Qur’an & Tafseer
| Arabic & Adiyah | play
10:00 Recess – snack

10:30 Independent work:
Reading & Writing | Math & Reading | play
Arabic & Adiyah | Lunch Helper

12:00 Lunch & Cleanup
Walk outside (put M to sleep)
Wudu – Brush Teeth & Dhuhr prayer
Listen to mom recite Qur’an

1:00 Asmaa ul Husnaa (Ad-duha level A) Nap

1:15 M,F: Art (KG & 2nd)
T,Th: Science & Social Studies (2nd grade curr.)
W: Playgroup Nap

1:45 Games & Activities (KG curr.) Nap

This is the schedule for now, but it’s subject to changes as we see what works and what doesn’t. But let me just quickly say - I love calvert’s KG program, me and Ibrahim are having so much fun alhamdulillah. Basically, i tutor Sumayyah for the main subjects and assign her the pages she is to work on. In that time, Ibrahim is taking care of Mohamad in the playroom and/or outside. When i finish with Sumayyah i go down to the schoolroom/playroom and i start KG with him. Mohamad just plays around us or rather is destroying some part of the room :)

After lunch we go for a walk outside. I stopped nursing during the day (basically for Ramadan) so i kind of didn’t know how to put the baby to sleep for his nap, so i thought of the idea of pushing him in the stroller until he fell asleep, and alhamdulillah it worked. I don’t know what i’ll do when the weather gets cold though. Actually, the daytime weaning has helped homeschooling go smoother too, so i’m glad i did it. He’s 18 months now anyways and he’s eating well and drinking milk.

Once the baby’s asleep and in bed, we pray Duhr together and i read a page of the Qur’an out loud. Then we do one of the 99 names of Allah (for the Ad-duha curriculum). I take advantage of this time that the baby’s sleeping to spend some time with just the two oldest and do Art or Science and Social Studies because those subjects are just too hard with a toddler around. Wednesday after lunch i take them for a fieldtrip or i visit one of my friends so the kids can play with other Muslim kids.

I have a first draft of a schedule for the whole day, but i’m still working on it, it’s so hard to do the whole day. So i try to work on it a little at a time. I think i have the morning schedule down well, the school schedule is starting to flow smoother, and the evening is also pretty much routine, so i have to work on the afternoon, inshaAllah, then i’ll post that. Btw, commenting has been fixed, sorry for any trouble you went through before.

Creating a daily and weekly schedule requires some work and takes a month or two to implement with some efforts, but after that initial time and effort you will have created a peaceful and organized situation for yourself, your children, and your home which is priceless.

Last year, i mentioned that i read the book “Managers of their Homes” by Steve and Teri Maxwell. I happened upon the notebook i used to write some notes on a few of the chapters. Basically, scheduling entails creating an activity worksheet for yourself and each of your children, to add up to 24 hours, and then write each on a piece of paper. Then like a puzzle you try to fit everything into a master weekly schedule. You also create a master grocery list, a master lunch menu list, a master dinner menu list, and a chore list for each member of the family. Here are my notes on the benefits of scheduling chapter. I pray it motivates you and me to strive to organize our time in the way that Allah intended us to.

Scheduling Benefits

- You are taking care of the responsibilities God has entrusted to you, since the key to home management is scheduling.

- You are in charge of your home and children rather than letting them be in charge of you.

- Since God has put schedules and cycles to all his creations (sun, moon, plants, etc.), we should do the same for us and our children.

- Da’wah - non-Muslims will see us organized, clean homes, happy children, not tired, not sinking under the burden of our home workload.

- Become a home manager versus a victim of circumstances.

- When tasks become routine, due to scheduling, they require much less physical and emotional energy. So there is less pressure, stress, discouragement, chaos, and depression.

- The joy and delight of being with your children is returned to you. (That’s why homeschoolers are able to be around their children all day.)

- Allows you to focus on your God-given priorities and you can plan activities everyday that are important to you and that you like to do.

- Your day is freed up from making numerous draining decisions (like what to cook, what to clean, where to go, what to do)

- Gives direction to your children. They know what to do and when. Saves you from having to tell them what they should be doing. So there is less fighting.

- Allows normal routine to continue in your absence. Creates stability when you are gone or ill. Allows others to take over managing your home with ease.

- Your desire for more children can be greatly facilitated by the use of scheduling. No fear of fitting a baby into your lives or the extra work it entails. (You see a baby as an opportunity for your youngest to have someone to play with and an opportunity to teach life lessons to the other children, and you can see how a baby’s needs can be scheduled around your other responsibilities so it is less scary.)

- Provides the framework supporting flexibility when the Lord brings unforeseen events into the day.

- Provides a mother with the availability of spiritual resources to meet these needs because she has daily time with the Lord (She recommends scheduling a time during the day to read and memorize scripture and pray. And that this will give her a storage of spirituality that will in term give her the patience and knowledge to deal with her children.)

- Gives her the emotional energy necessary to deal with unexpected circumstances, since she is not using this energy up in daily decision making.

- Gives her physical energy because she is receiving essential rest while still keeping up with her workload. (Bedtime is scheduled too, and because all her work is scheduled during the day, she can go to sleep on time at night.)

- Children can have a role model to learn how to do scheduling in order to have an organized and planned life. As teens and adults, they will have the skills to be able to schedule their free time (instead of wasting their time on music/TV/movies/computer).