Shaping Excellent Character - A Manual For Parents (For Non-Muslim)

SHAPING EXCELLENT CHARACTER

A MANUAL FOR PARENTS
(FOR NON-MUSLIM)

PART 4

There are two kinds of punishment:

Doing something to children that they do not like (for example, scolding or hitting them).

Taking something away from children that they do like (for example, not letting them watch TV).

Although punishment is not recommended, this does not mean that parents should be permissive with their children. Being permissive means allowing children to do anything they want, virtually without limits. Permissiveness is even more harmful to a child's positive development than the use of punishment.

Punishment is sometimes necessary (if there aren't any successful positive ways) to stop or reduce serious negative behaviour.

What is the best way to carry out punishment (if there aren't any positive alternatives)?

Explain to your child in a gentle manner how what they have done is wrong, how that wrong behaviour exceeded important limits, and explain the harm that might have come from doing that wrong thing.

It is not always necessary to point out your child's bad behaviour to them; sometimes we can instead just explain to them how much we like the good behaviour that is the opposite of what they did wrong.

Do not pay too much attention to your children's bad behaviour lest it becomes a way for them to get your attention.

Do not embarrass or shame your child in public. It is best to advise children privately of what they have done wrong, and to do so in a warm and caring manner.

When good advice does not seem to affect any positive change, you can take the next step of denying your child the activities that they like. For example, if your child likes to go bicycling in the afternoon, you could perhaps prohibit him from doing so for a week starting from the day he did wrong and explain to him why you did this. This is an example of the second type of punishment - i.e. taking away from your child the opportunity to do something that they like doing.

If all else fails and your child still persists in behaving badly, physical punishment may be necessary. (Remember! This is to be the absolute last resort, and while it is allowed it is certainly not recommended). Among the things that should be noted when administering physical punishment are:

Do not hit your child when you are angry. Anger causes us to exceed acceptable limits in administering punishment.

Do not hit your child's face, chest, or stomach.

Do not hit your child more than about three times.

Do not hit your child so hard that there are wounds, swellings, or marks on the body.

A beating has a largely symbolic effect and should not cause great pain or injury.

To summarise, punishment should be avoided as much as possible, and love for your child should be unconditional, although expressed at the most appropriate times. Importantly, giving lots of sincere love will create a harmonious family environment that will contribute to healthier overall development for your child.

Do not confuse PUNISHMENT with FIRMNESS

We need to be firm with our children. If you say something, then you need to stand by it and not waver. Our children need to know that we are serious and that we will carry out what we have said. But we must be realistic with what we expect from our children. Do not be excessive in the matters on which you wish to be firm.

Examples of such excessiveness:

Totally banned from watching TV.

Totally banned from going shopping.

Totally forbidden from going out with friends.

Examples of more realistic approaches:

Give your child a choice of only one or two TV programmes that they can watch.

If they wish to go out shopping, they must first agree to carry out some household chores before they can go.

They can go out with friends but they must be at home by 6.00 p.m.

Freedom has its limits. Do not be PERMISSIVE!

In the previous chapters, we have seen the advantages of educating children in a gentle manner; that giving rewards has a better effect than chastising or punishing them.

This does not mean pampering them.

Children need to be told very definitely what is right and what is wrong. They should not be allowed to do whatever they like.

Every child must have limits to their freedom in everything they do; this is how God guides us all.

The younger the child, the greater the limits to their freedom.

Parents have to tell their children clearly about the limits to their freedom.

Permissiveness means parents let their children do whatever they like.

Ultimately, the limits to every person's freedom of action are determined by God. Permissiveness will lead children towards breaking the limits of freedom set out for us by God.

Giving freedom without limits will have a negative affect on your child's development, even more so than administering punishment.

Parents should not pamper their children so much that they avoid being firm with their children, or fear to point out their child's bad behaviour.

Children raised permissively will grow up doing whatever they feel like doing because they have never learned the difference between right and wrong.

Raising children permissively will result in a permissive society, which also cannot distinguish between right and wrong. Such a society is characterised by free mixing between sexes, moral decay, drug abuse, dishonesty, and everything else that is concerned purely with pleasure while ignoring that which God has made lawful for us.

Parents should never forget their responsibility to correct their children's wrong behaviour just because they love their children so much.

Forbid your children from doing wrong things with gentle firmness. Your children need to know that you really mean what you say.

Sometimes parents will be permissive and afraid to correct their children for fear that they will be hated by them, but parents must remember that this permissiveness will only cause their children to do more wrong things.

EXAMPLE OF THE SHAPING PROCESS:

THE STORY OF THE GRANDFATHER AND HIS GRANDSON

One day, a grandfather and his grandson were on their way to church. While resting outside the church waiting for the service to begin, a small kitten approached the little boy. At first the little boy just pushed the kitten away with his foot. He looked at this grandfather to find out his reaction. The grandfather just smiled when seeing his beloved grandchild push the kitten away with his foot. The starving kitten approached the little boy again, and this time the boy kicked at the kitten. The grandfather, seeing this, just smiled at his grandson again. When the kitten approached for the third time, the little boy now tried to kick the kitten as hard he could; but he miscued his kick and fell down on his bottom.

This story illustrates how even bad acts can be caused to happen more often by being rewarded. A bad act that is not corrected immediately will only make the child brave enough to do something worse, particularly if it is rewarded.

The grandfather should have corrected his grandson and forbidden him from hurting animals with gentle words right from the start.

Because the grandfather loved his grandson so much, he helped develop negative trait in his grandson even without realizing he was doing so.

It is generally true that if a child's negative behaviour is not corrected immediately, that behaviour will become worse.

There are parents who will just smile if their young child does something wrong. These parents do not understand that this encourages their child to repeat that wrong action again.

It would not be surprising if a child raised permissively, without positive attention for their good behaviour, and without firm guidelines as to what is acceptable or unacceptable behaviour, grew up to be self-centred, arrogant, rude, and disrespectful of his elders.

EFFECTIVE PARENTING
Prof. Dr. Muhammad al'Mahdi

FACTS ABOUT EFFECTIVE PARENTING

The soul of your child is like an uncut precious jewel entrusted into your care by God. To you is given the awesome responsibility of shaping that precious jewel into a beautiful form, pleasing to God. It is your sacred duty to ensure your child grows up to be a good and right human being. Raising your children to be good is a necessary requirement to have a good 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 right world will the conditions exist where children will naturally develop into good human beings desired by God. 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 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.

Actually, these laws of learning in their entirety can be quite complex and to fully comprehend these laws, understand these laws, and utilize their widest application can take years of learning. Nevertheless, anyone hearing a brief and simple explanation of these laws of learning will be able to use most of their incredible power. These easily understood laws of learning are 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 ongoing activities of daily life. To be most effective in helping to 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 successive series of individual points, but made specific for use in effective parenting.

GENERAL LAWS OF DEVELOPMENT

Most basic premise is - that any person or social group who possess both a positive and accurate world view, and a good understanding of the laws of learning will move naturally and inevitably towards all things good and right.

An infant child comes into this 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.

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 (I believe wrongly) made the claim that human nature is basically evil.

The reason so much evil exist in this 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 that which is good and right.

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

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

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

Every individual is subjected to many thousands of influences every day, some of these influences being directed toward evil and some being directed toward God (goodness).

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

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 God and toward evil.

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 always toward God.

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

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

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.

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

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

Any behaviour that is followed by reward (reinforcement) will tend to increase in rate and magnitude in the future, it will happen more often.

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 also reward (for example, when your feeling of shame for some wrong you have done is removed by offering sincere repentance and seeking forgiveness from God).

Any behaviour that is followed by punishment will tend to decrease in rate and magnitude in the future, it will happen less often.

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).

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

The undesirable 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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

Set positive goals that can be achieved through small steps.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

As you teach your child you can learn from the experience. What she/he says or does may be instructive to you.

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

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

For most effective parenting everyone in the family group should be made aware of and help 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 PARENTING

For your parenting to be most effective there must be a truly good and right society, so part of your responsibility as caring parents is to help recreate a right world for your child to go out into.

Right parenting assumes you have a right marriage.

Parental love for their children is a mercy from God not only in humans but also even for animals.

The love of a parent for their child should be so deep that it is often not even thought necessary to state this as a requirement.

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 right and good human being).

There is also a great responsibility on the child regarding their parents requiring the child be kind to their 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 fulfill all these responsibilities with humility.

Every child should be taught from their earliest years about responsibility to God; that is their duty to transform themselves into people living in accord with that which God has said is good and right, that it is their duty to transform all of human society into an right society living in true submission to God, and it is their duty to transform the physical world of space and time into a garden paradise for God.

Raise your child to be a courageous adult, willing to struggle against evil in the great battle of good against evil as this will be necessary to create a good and right world for the future.

Raise your child to fully believe they will successfully create and live in a truly good and right world, because positive beliefs are critical to successfully achieve any goal.

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 prophecy'.

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

If there is a conflict of interest, the requirements of a right spiritual life have priority over the desires of the child (for example, if the child would rather play than pray).

Teach your child to love God, and all that God has said is right for us.

Teach your child to see all things and understand all things from a right spiritual perspective.c

If it becomes necessary to correct your child from some wrongdoing this must be done according to a certain hierarchy; first explain to your child in a gentle way how they have overstepped the limit from rightness into wrong; second if the gentle instruction does not result in the child correcting his/her wrong behaviour you should indicate disapproval of the wrong behaviour by withdrawing your attention (for example do not show affection with smiles, hugs, or kind words at such times). Finally, but only as a last resort, you can physically punish your child if they still do not correct their behaviour.

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 the 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.

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 others when they are angry.

It is important to realize 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.

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 the punishment will outweigh the harm you do to the child.

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

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

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 thing being done.

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

Don't give too much attention to the bad or wrongdoings your child does and says, but give more attention to the good things your child does or says.

You should always, of course, love your child unconditionally but you should express that love at times when it is most beneficial to his/her development.

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

EFFECTIVE PARENTING PLAN (READ EACH MORNING!!)

I am raising my child to be a good person in all ways, who will help create a truly right world.

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

Today I will try my best to help my child to understand the power of negative influences to take him/her away from all the is good and right, and the power of positive influences to take him/her closer to all that is good and right.

Today I will try my best to shield my child from the power of the negative influences to take him/her away from all that is good and right.

Today I will try my best to enhance/increase the power of the positive influences upon my child to take him/her toward all that is good and right.

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 God.

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.

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

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

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

It is best to shape your children's good character from an early age, but it is still not too late to correct the character of children of any age group.

Children should be encouraged to be well behaved through directed positive influence. Reward them immediately when they do good. Gently admonish them immediately when they do wrong. Explain to them what they have done wrong, and clarify why it should not be repeated.

Children need to be educated to observe certain limits in their freedom of action, and these are the limits that have been clearly set out for us by God.

We need to be consistent in encouraging positive values at every time and in every place.The application of good moral values in raising our children is the best way to encourage the development of positive character.

Good behaviour can best be developed through directed positive influence.

For young children:

Parents need to focus on the establishment of good behaviour through the use of positive influence (reward).

Restrain yourself from punishing children.

Gently remind children of what is right and what is wrong.

Be firm, but kind, with children.

For problem children:

Punishment at an early stage might be needed to stop some bad behaviour, but we must ensure that this punishment will not destroy the good relationship between parent and child.

The preferred punishment is to deny the child something that they like.

Try to never shout, nag, or hit your children.

At the same time, it is important to start strengthening good behaviour, through directed positive influence by using reward.

Gradually, more focus should be given to strengthening good behaviour using reward, and eventually punishment can be discontinued.

When children are young, we care much for them, and show them many outward signs of our affection. When they become teenagers, they still need our attention and many outward signs of affection.

Let us together increase our faith in God, do good deeds, and strive hard to educate our children to be successful and good human beings (responsible to God).

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