AMOUNT OF #1💧

Walaikum Salam. Normally, when a man is abroad alone and trying to provide, he often feels like his only value is the money he sends back. If things get hard, he starts to feel like a failure. He feels lonely. He stops being a person and starts to feel broken. My advise for him is to shift from At-Tadbir (trying to control everything) to At-Tafwid (handing the affairs to Allah). The weight he is carrying is not meant for his shoulders. The greatest weapon is knowing that Allah is the Provider, and his family loves the man, not just the money. For more information on what he can do personally, you can check my page for my answer on depression to Victor Bonnyface. Now, how can you as a child or children help him? 1. When you call, don't ask about work or if he has sent anything. Even when you mean well, those questions feel like pressure. Talk about mundane things. Tell him about a joke someone made or what you had for lunch. It makes him feel like he is still part of the family circle. It makes him feel valued. 2. Send him a voice note or a text specifically saying: "Dad, we see your hard work. But we want you to know that even if you come back with nothing, you are still our hero. We want you healthy more than we want you wealthy." Men rarely hear that they are enough just for existing. Tell him to his ears that he is more than enough. 3. Ask him for his opinion on small things you are doing. It reminds him that he is still the leader and the father. It gives him back his sense of purpose that the isolation of being abroad tries to take away. 4. Tell him, "We are all praying for you at this specific time." Knowing that a collective energy is backing him up helps break the feeling of being alone. The goal is to provide him with Al-Uns (spiritual comfort and intimacy). He is in a dark place because he feels the world is on his back. You need to show him that you are there to help him carry it, not to wait for what he carries. Allah knows best.

Dear Parents, Let me share a secret with you. I pray it benefits you. After my post on the anatomical psychology of a child yesterday, I received some questions about how to help children who struggle to focus on their studies and what parents can do to help them. If your child or your children is struggling academically, or lose focus easily, then this post is for you. What you are likely seeing is a child who starts a task but wanders off. You might see them staring at a book for an hour without remembering a single line. It is easy to think they are being lazy, but what you ought to see is a mind where the internal powers are not connected. The Almighty God in the Quran mentions the Nasiyah in Surah Al-Alaq (96:15) as the place of decision and control. Science has shown this to be the prefrontal cortex, the part behind the forehead. In Kitab al-Shifa, Ibn Sina identified a power box called Al-Quwwah al-Mutakhayyilah (the Composative Imagination). This power is the pilot of the brain. Its job is to take information and turn it into focused thought. When focus is gone, the bridge is broken. To help them overcome this problem, you can use a mental drill called Reverse Narrating (RN). Reverse Narrating is a modern concept, but, it has root in our religion too. The principle behind RN is deeply anchored in the works of Abu Zayd al-Balkhi. He is considered the father of Islamic psychology. In his book Masalih al-Abdan wa al-Anfus (Sustenance of the Soul), he talked about Riyadat al-Nafs (disciplining the mind). He taught that the mind needs specific "mental rehearsals" to regain control over wandering thoughts. This mental rehearsals through reverse narrating is what you should adopt going forward because it forces the brain to reorganize information in a way that is not natural. Here is how you can do it: 1.Ask your child what they are doing right this moment (when you call them). 2.Ask them what they did ten minutes before that. 3.Keep asking what happened before each step, moving backward through the day. 4.Continue until they reach the moment they woke up in the morning. Do you know what you have done? You have just forced the Mutakhayyilah of your child to work in overdrive to pull data from the memory and flip it. What this does is that It strengthens the pilot seat in their forehead. If you do this for a few minutes every evening, you would be building the mental glue your child needs to stay on a task. This is how struggling children improve their mental power and succeed in their studies. GIVE IT A TRY. Allah knows best.