Haneefah Adam

Hello Lola, I am a Muslim, and our spiritual tradition has a very deep approach to raising children. I want to share some tips from our scholars that will be beneficial to you regardless of your faith. First of all, our theology teaches the concept of Fitrah. This means that every child is born with a pure heart. At six years old, she is not a criminal mastermind. She does not have a wicked soul. If she doesn’t have all these, then what is happening? The truth is that she is just lacking impulse control and testing boundaries. By this, if you look at her as a manipulator, you will fight her. However, if you look at her as a pure soul making mistakes, you will be able to guide her. Secondly, for every problem anyone faces today, it has been solved in history. The only problem is how to locate them. A classical scholar named Al-Ghazali wrote about child psychology over 900 years ago in his famous book “Ihya Ulum al-Din.” In his section on disciplining children, he gave a practical rule I want you to adopt going forward. He advised that parents should never push a child into a corner where they are forced to lie. When you ask a question you already know the answer to, her survival instinct kicks in. She cries and she lies to defend herself because she is scared of you. Stop interrogating her. Just look at her and state the fact. Say, I know you took this, and we are going to return it right now. Again, another scholar and sociologist Ibn Khaldun addressed this exact behavior in his masterpiece titled: “Al-Muqaddimah.” He warned that when a child is raised with harsh punishment, they learn deceit, trickery, and lying to protect themselves. This is why she is covering her tracks and crying to manipulate you. The fear of a harsh reaction is making her a better liar. Lola, do not attach a label to her. Do not ever call her a thief. If you attack her identity instead of her action, she will internalize it and grow into that dark label. Tell her the action is wrong but protect her dignity. Make her return the item. Do not fall for the tears. Hold her hand, walk her back to wherever she took it from, and make her hand it back and apologize. The discomfort of returning a stolen item teaches a much better lesson than beating her will ever do. Finally, I don’t know if you are a Muslim, but never underestimate the power of your own words. In our faith, we believe the prayer of a parent for a child goes straight to God without any barrier. Pray over her. Pray for her heart to be content and for her character to be straight. Keep doing this consistently and the habit will break. Allah knows best.

My father never came to a single thing I invited him to. Not my primary school graduation. Not my secondary school prize giving where I collected 3 awards and kept looking at the gate. Not my university matriculation. Not the ceremony when I got called to bar in 2012. I'd send him the date weeks in advance and he'd say I'll try and that was always the full sentence. I'll try. No follow up. No explanation after. My mother would sit in his place and clap loud enough for 2 people. I stopped inviting him after the bar call. Not from anger. Some people love you completely and still cannot show up and after a while you stop making them feel guilty about it. He was not a bad man. I want to be clear about that. He was a mechanic in Mushin for 35 years. Worked 6 days a week. Sent every one of us to school. Never raised his hand. Never left. The lights stayed on and the rent was paid and there was always food and he did all of it quietly without asking to be celebrated. He just could not sit in a plastic chair and watch something. I accepted that and moved on. Last year I bought my first property. A flat in Ojodu. Took 9 years of saving and 2 years of paperwork and a lawyer who nearly finished me. When the keys finally came I sat in the empty flat on the floor for an hour just breathing. I called my mother first. She screamed. My sister cried. I didn't call my father. 3 days later he called me. Said he heard about the flat from my mother. Said he wanted to come and see it. I didn't know what to do with that so I just said okay. Gave him the address. Figured he'd say I'll try and we'd never speak of it again. He showed up on Saturday at 9am. Stood at the door in his good agbada. The one he only wears for serious things. Holding a small nylon bag. I let him in and he walked through every room without speaking. Not quickly. Slowly. Like he was counting something. He checked the pipes under the kitchen sink. Knocked on the walls. Opened and closed the windows twice each. Looked at the ceiling in every room the way only a man who has fixed things his whole life looks at ceilings. Then he came and stood in the sitting room and looked at me. Said the pipework is good. Said the windows seal properly. Said whoever built this knew what they were doing. I nodded. Long silence. Then he opened the nylon bag. Inside was a small framed photo. Me at maybe 7 years old sitting on the bonnet of an old car in his workshop. Grinning. Both legs swinging. He's standing beside me with his hand on my shoulder looking at something outside the frame. I remember that day. I had gone to the workshop after school and he let me sit there while he worked and gave me a Fanta and put a Michael Jackson cassette on the small radio. I didn't know anyone had taken a photo. He said he kept it on his workshop table for 22 years. Said he wanted me to have something for the new place. I held that frame and stood very still. He said he knew he missed things. Said he was not good at the sitting and watching. That crowds made something in him go wrong in a way he never knew how to explain. Then he said the flat was good and he was proud and he asked if there was anything in the kitchen because he hadn't eaten. I laughed. Made him eggs and bread while he sat at my kitchen table in his good agbada like he owned the place. We ate and he told me about a car he was working on. I told him about a case that was giving me trouble. Normal conversation. The kind we should have been having for years. He left at 1pm. At the door he gripped my shoulder the same way he did in that photo. Didn't say anything. Didn't need to. The photo is on my sitting room wall now. First thing I hung in the whole flat. Some fathers cannot sit in the plastic chair. But mine drove to Ojodu in his good agbada on a Saturday morning with a 22 year old photograph in a nylon bag. That was his standing ovation. I just didn't know to look for it in that shape.

I don’t still understand how we picked POP ceiling designs over this