Ash-Sha’bi رحمه الله said:
The Quraysh used to love ‘Uthman to the extent that a woman would sing for her son, saying:
أُحِبُّــــــكَ وَالرَّحْمَــــنْ ## حُـــــبَّ قُـــــرَيْشٍ عُثْمَــــانْ
I love you, I swear by Ar-Rahman # as Quraysh loved Uthman.
Kitāb Al-‘Iyāl Ibn Abi Dunya No. 277 Page 435
Expressing Love To Children
Writing and singing personalised poems for children is from the greatest ways of showing them love. It makes them feel special, loved and valued. And specifically mentioning that you love them like the Qurayshi woman mentioned to her son crowns it all.
The Prophet ﷺ taught us this important aspect of Tarbiyyah in his relationship with children. In several narrations, the Prophet ﷺ would express his love openly for his children and grandchildren. He was very compassionate with children (to the extent) that he would kiss them, and even he commiserated with a young boy when his pet bird died.
When you express love to children, you make them feel loved and appreciated, you build a strong emotional bond with them that enables them to love imitating you and also listen to whatever you teach them. When you love a (group of) people, you want to talk like they talk, you want to dress like they dress, you would have a strong emotional bond with them that makes you listen to whatever they say. So, you can use this as a good tool to teach your children.
Moreso, when you create a bond of love with your children, it becomes very easy to correct them, it helps you refrain from shouting and nagging, and this helps them more to grow up as positive adults. They grow up with confidence, positive self-image and a high-self esteem. They pass on the positivity to the society, because children who receive love and affection from their parents are more likely to exhibit positive behaviours, such as being helpful, kind, and considerate of others. As for children who grew up with their parents always shouting, nagging and even cursing, these children grow up negative, bitter, less confident and have low-self esteem.
Creating this kind of emotional bond also makes children feel free with you, they feel secure enough to express their feelings and concerns to you, and this will help them a lot from getting into the traps of predators who abuse children sexually and ideologically.
Reading Out Loud
The method of singing poems to children is part of the reading-out-loud culture that is highly encouraged when teaching children.
It is never too early to start reading out loud to your child! Yes, even if he is just a 7-month-old baby. When you read out loud to a baby, you expose the baby to a variety of words and sounds, which can help the baby develop his language skills. It also helps the baby recognize the sounds of language, which is an essential skill for language development. In fact, it encourages him to try speaking if he is not doing that yet.
Generally, reading out loud helps children to develop language skills like pronunciation, vocabulary, grammar, syntax etc. It also introduces them to new words, phrases, structures and concepts, which can help build their vocabulary. The more words a child hears and learns, the more likely they are to use those words themselves in their daily conversations.
As they grow older, this habit helps their cognitive skills by strengthening the child’s attention span, the child’s memory and also his critical thinking skills as he tries to understand what you read and he tries to make connections between the words and pictures.
And importantly, reading out loud to our children makes them develop a love for reading, if they have learnt the habit of reading from their parents at tender ages, they won’t find difficulty in creating a relationship with the library. Khayr In Shaa Allah.
Upbringing Children Upon The Love Of The Salaf
Just like the Qurayshi woman was mentioning the love of the noble companion, ‘Uthman to her child, the Salaf would teach their children the love of the companions. Imām Mālik bn Anas rahimahullah said: The Salaf used to teach their children to love Abū Bakr and ʿUmar like they used to teach them a Sūrah of the Qurān.
Al-Lālakāʾī, Sharḥ ʾUsūl ʾIʿtiqād Ahl Al-Sunnah No. 2325.
Raising our children based on the love of the Salaf makes them love the Salaf (which is a part of Īmān on its own), and also makes them see the Salaf as their role models. Today, many people claim Islām, but they have tied the love of their children to movies and cartoon characters that are known for magnifying magic, killing people, committing Zinā and homosexuality, dressing inappropriately and making all these seem like good traits.
Many Muslim children do not realize the evil of magic because they have been made to believe that Spiderman, Superman, Merlin, Harry Potter all possess harmless superpowers and magic, this has even made some children wish to be like them. Many children are not moved by a killing scene because the movies have done a lot of desensitisation in them. They now see bullying their younger ones, beating them up and creating mischievous traps as fun, since that was what they learnt from the Tom and Jerry cartoons and the Crime movies they watch.
Teaching our children about the Salaf would make them appreciate the history and the way of the Salaf. They would see the era of the Ṣaḥābah as the golden age. They develop a sense of responsibility for their path, they follow and defend it. This will help them against deviant and misguided beliefs and practices.
In a bit of digression from the main point, as the Qurayshi woman was telling her son about Quraysh, I see that the Salafis in the Nigerian community need to narrate to the next generation about our lives before Sunnah and also the persecution we faced before we could practise Islam in its pristine form. We should also narrate to them about the struggles of practising sunnah in our time, how so many people were beaten, locked up, sent away from home just because they wanted to practise the Sunnah. When our children know about our struggles, it makes them value Salafiyyah more. Children who grow up upon Islām without any struggle may not know its worth, they may even think that it is just a family practice and they might not take it serious.
‘Umar ibn al-Khaṭṭāb, may Allāh be pleased with him, said, “Verily, the bonds of Islām will be undone, one by one, if a people arise in Islām and they never knew the time of ignorance.”
Majmū’ al-Fatāwa (Ibn Taymiyyah)
We ask Allāh to ease our affairs.
Baarakallahu Feekum.
Mubaarak Olayemi Ismail
