A Society of Victims

The nine-year-old girl turned into a young mother, and another girl,
who is under eleven years of age, became a clever housewife!
The two children, by means of fate, went through a unique experience.
The first had to care for her sister, aged one year and a few months,
due to the absence of her mother. After the working mother had tried
to take her young girl to the workplace, she found herself faced with
two options: either to do her work, or to care for her young child.
She also found that temperature changes were harmful to the girl who
was to leave the thick duvets for the severe coldness of winter, or
tolerate the scorching heat of summer. The mother's workmates
suggested that she leave the young girl with her elder sister. She
tried it, and it worked. The elder sister gained reasonable experience
in caring for the baby as well as changing her clothes and playing
with her sister.
As for the other girl, her mother had to travel for family reasons.
Therefore, she left her with her younger brothers and sisters giving
her the broad tasks of managing the household affairs during her
absence. She would communicate with her regularly to make sure that
everything was in order. The young child took her mother's place
willingly and in a manner that would impress anyone who knew how old
she was.
On the other hand, there are mothers who ask their girls to do
something once. If the girls carry out her orders, then it is fine.
However, if they refrain and defer, the mother finds it easier to do
it herself, thus saving herself the trouble of repetition and
deferring. Hence, the girls realize this weak point in their mother,
the girls take advantage of it; later on in life, the mother becomes
exasperated with the carelessness of her daughters and their
incompetence to shoulder responsibility. The mother does not realize
that her indecisive attitude and lack of insistence on her daughter
doing what she is asked to do, and her not encouraging a positive
attitude toward her chores are the causes of the girls' current
suffering. A girl like this grows up, gets married and becomes
responsible for an entire household. She stumbles, fails, rebels and
the disagreements with her husband are aggravated. She gets divorced
and the mother is filled with regret when she realizes the reason, but
by then it is too late.
We have two situations: children who are overburdened, and others who
lead a luxurious life and grumble for having to raise their feet off
the floor so that the mother can clean.
These two extreme situations are both far from the moderation of
Islam. We are not required to deny our children the rights of their
childhood and the requirements of their age, and burden them with
responsibilities that we ourselves sometimes find overburdening. Also,
it is illogical to pamper them to the extent of looseness, and find it
easier that we do what we asked them to do just because they are too
slack to do it.
We need to understand how to raise our children to shoulder
responsibilities, to understand the characteristics of each age group
and the extent of responsibilities that the children can bear. We need
to be more daring in delegating some of our chores to our little ones,
while we monitor their work from afar, overlook their casual mistakes,
encourage their small achievements and not make them feel any
inability or negligence.
We need to be more patient with our children's slackening response
when we ask them to do something and find ourselves compelled to
repeat our request more than once. We have to ask them in different
ways and with different expressions on our faces, like an encouraging
smile, a blaming glance, or a frown.
We also need to suppress our anger when our children provoke us by not
taking our requests seriously and not implementing them immediately.
We should overlook their annoying conduct that indicates their
inability to shoulder responsibility and to magnify any conduct, no
matter how simple, that reflects a spirit of initiative and
achievement.
Those who fail in their marriage because of their inability to assume
responsibility are the victims of an "irresponsible" upbringing, while
those who overburden themselves because of the negligence of those
around them are also victims. Is it logical to expect a good Islamic
society to emerge while we are part of a state that is witness to the
fact that many of its people are victims?