Hard Core Drilling

Remember when I was lamenting on how difficult it is to help my children memorize the Surah? Well, I voiced those lamentations to some sisters here who have experienced memorizing the whole Quran when they were young. One of them then shared something with me:

"You know, when we were in Duqsi (quran memorization school), if we were slow or got something wrong we get hit. You get hit three times and then you have to go back and learn it again."

I have told myself I'm never going to use force (at least not brutally) with my kids. However, drilling needs to be done at some point, only you have to do it with hikmah. I don't want to associate pain and Quran. I don't want to associate harshness with Islam. I don't want to associate brutal force with our deen.

"Why don't your kids pray with you?"

I relayed my method of introducing prayer one at a time so they acquire the skill gradually. The graduality in my opinion has its own benefits and merits, as we learned in Ulum Al Quran with regard to the revelation of the Quran. One way in which the Jews was different from the sahaba was that the sahaba received Islam gradually, so they were able to acquire it piece by piece thus strengthening their iman considerably.

The usual method would be to teach children to pray the five prayers all at once. I battled with that because I don't want my kids to hate praying.

"But I see kids even since they are small, their parents call them to prayer every time."

I mulled over that, and I see the wisdom, but the prophet SAW specifically told us to teach the children to pray when they are seven. So there must be something about being younger than seven that qualifies you to not be forced to pray each time. Though I can also see how this can be done with hikmah. Maybe I'll rectify my method according to this observation. However maybe it's a little too late because my kids are already praying at their own pace insyaallah.

Yesterday I started reading a book I checked out from the library. It talks about personality type of mothers and children, and how there is no one right way to mother your children. It shed some light on the issue, because I personally sometimes feel like I'm doing such a bad job when I see other mothers handle their children in their own unique way.

What I deduced from that is that I may be a Introvert-Intuitive-Feeling-Judging type. Applying the typing to my children, I would say that S is Introvert-Intuitive-Feeling-Judging too. N on the other hand (my biggest challenge so far) is Introvert-Sensing-Feeling-Perceiving, while H is Extrovert-Sensing-Thinking-Judging.

The Judging mother expects perfection, which is very hard to get since we don't even live in a perfect world. The Judging mother can be very hard on herself and may wear herself out to no avail. The Perceing mother on the other hand knows how to have fun, and enjoy life rather than trying to put everything in order. I have known this all along, but although I have tried loosening the grip I have on myself, I'm still a big mess. N is my opposite because she's the Perceiving type. The Perceiving type stops and smells the flowers, while the Judging type whizzes by to arrive at her destination. I have always known this about N, but it still is so hard for me to adjust to her personality type.

While H may chatter away next to me, sparking up any conversation, as long as he's talking about something, N will be very tight-lipped. Her emotions are not that apparent while H's can be heard a mile away, but when she's angry, you will know it because people around her will suffer.

I struggle every day trying to handle these three personalities. Since I don't particularly like my own (some aspects of it), I tend to be quite hard on S when she displays those very quirks that I myself have.

So, when teaching them anything (Islam or not) to achieve the best result, I should be applying these knowledge in my approaches. One way that works with one kid might not work with the other. If you hit a kid when training them to memorize the Quran, he might hate it, while another kid might take it as something that is customary, and not think that negatively about it. A parent can force prayer on a child in a harsh way, and the same two reactions can occur in two different children.

Just recently, I added another prayer for each of them. N chose Fajr, but when we woke her up she resisted. So I gave her another choice. She chose Zuhr. Then S shared with me her insight,

"When I wake up for Fajr, I try not to think of sleeping so I can just get up. I like Fajr, I think it's easy."

Alhamdulillah. So far she has been waking up for Fajr with no complaints.

H, seeing his sisters acquiring prayers one by one, asked for an addition too, thought he's not even formally given a prayer because he hasn't turned seven yet. He's now doing Asr and Maghrib. Yesterday he missed Asr because he was napping and we didn't want to wake him up because he was lacking a lot of sleep from the night before. Furthermore he just started. So it rather surprised me when he asked me at night,

"Did I pray Asr?"

The condition for these assignment of prayers is that once you choose a prayer, you have to commit to it no matter what. No matter what, unless if they have their period, which I hope is not around the corner, yet. They understand that. I suppose H understood that too, and somewhat questioned why he was given a concession.

I'm still baffled over how different these children can be and how incompetent I am as a mother handling all these different personalities. It's a mental battle, and very draining. I'm sure most mothers(or caregivers) with more than one child can relate. When I first had them, I never thought one child can be so different from the other when they both come from the same set of parents. How very wrong I was.