𝗠𝗮𝗱𝗿𝗮𝘀𝗮𝘁𝘂𝗻𝗮 𝗕𝗲𝗻𝗲𝗳𝗶𝘁𝘀 (14)

Guidance on Raising Children Question: He says, “May Allāh bless you,” and you as well. “Has it been read or known that any of the Companions used to strike their children for the sake of knowledge, memorisation, revision, or learning?” Sheikh Abdulḥamīd Az-Zu'kari hafidahullāh responds: Disciplining a child is permissible when there is a need; however, with regard to memorisation, one is not beaten for memorisation. If he does not memorise, perhaps he is slow and does not memorise, but he should be encouraged. For example, if he plays around and disregard seeking knowledge, he should be disciplined with a discipline that does not make him flee, after offering methods of encouragement. We do not begin with intimidation, nor with beating before encouragement; begin with encouragement. We are in a time in which we need to encourage ourselves, let alone others, and likewise to encourage our wives, to encourage our children, and to encourage our students. Harshness may lead to aversion and may lead to other matters that a person would not wish for. Also, among the causes of dumbness is excessive beating; it causes dumbness, just as among the causes of memorisation is encouragement, among the causes of dumbness is excessive beating. Make him love knowledge so that his aspiration is raised, his desire increases, and his mind becomes clear. Encourage him from time to time. When you see him becoming lazy with regard to knowledge or memorisation, make him review; and when you see that he needs rest, a day or a time for sleep and relaxation for the soul, give him his due. Give him his due and you will obtain your due. There must be care for children, gentleness with them, supplication for them, encouragement for them, and kindness toward them, and their affair is like that of others among the adults and the youth and the like. Then the child grows and reaches a stage in which he no longer accepts from you what he used to accept before. Therefore they say: for seven years, treat him as a son — be gentle with him, be good to him, supplicate for him, encourage him, and so on. From seven years to fourteen years, use him as a servant: make him benefit you — instruct him to go up and down, carry, go out and enter — so that he is busy and expends his energy and you benefit from him. Instead of you going to the shop, let him go to the shop; instead of doing this or that, let him do it, if you trust him, and praise be to Allāh. After fourteen, take him as a friend, because if you use him like a slave it may lead to his weakness. O brothers, the son, if you continue to beat him night and day, he will come out weak. You want your son to be brave, to be generous, to be chivalrous, to be loving and beloved; so instill in him the noble morals. Do not make him a “slave of the back of the head and harshness,” because he gets used to it — if you accustom him to beating, he becomes one who is repeatedly beaten and accustomed to being beaten. But if you accustom him to courage, chivalry, generosity, nobility, and goodness, that is a good matter. Also, society now may not assist some of what people were upon before. In the earlier time, a father’s beating was not looked down upon, perhaps a father would beat you, and you would go to another and he would say, “Did your father beat you?” You would say, “Let my father discipline me.” But now people may say (about the father after beating his child), “He beat you — this one is complexed, this one has no good in him, leave him,” and so on. They may oppose him and bring him drugs, or bring him phones, or bring him corrupting games, and you then lose your son. The issue is not one of him becoming a scholar; you would be fighting him just to get him to pray. So protect him from the beginning.