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The greatest obligation upon a child
is to be pious,
to be dutiful
and respectful to their parents.
Allah Subhuanaha Wa Ta`la says
Waqada rabbuka alla taAAbudooilla iyyahu
Your lord has decreed that you worship none other than him.
wabilwalidayni ihsana (17:23)
And to have excellent, beautiful, treatment of your parents,
Allah says, WaAAbudoo Allaha walatushrikoo bihi shay-an
wabilwalidayni ihsanan
Worship Allah, associate none with him,
and worship and be excellent,
show excellence and beauty to your parents.
Look at how in both verses
Allah Subhuanaha Wa Ta`la
paired together two meanings.
One, his right as lord and creator
over the creation,
which is his right to be worshiped
alone without partners.
And two, the rights of the parents
over their children.
As beings, as humans,
we would not have existed without Allah.
We would not have been created,
or breathed a single breath,
or tasted a single pleasure,
or lived a single luxury,
without the blessing of Allah Subhuanaha Wa Ta`la,
the provision of Allah,
the sustenance of Allah Subhuanaha Wa Ta`la.
God is the primary cause of our existence,
and Allah chose our parents as the path
to our coming into existence.
Allah is the source of all the mercy
we've experienced in our lives.
He decreed the first touch of mercy
you experienced came from your parents.
And so if a person is ungrateful to their parents,
How can they not be ungrateful to Allah?
If they are dismissive of their parents,
how can they not be considered dismissive
of Allah Subhuanaha Wa Ta`la?
Because of this, Allah Subhuanaha Wa Ta`la says,
ani oshkur lee waliwalidayka (31:14)
Be grateful to me, and to your parents.
Ibn Abbas commented on this verse, He said,
faman shakaraallaha wala mish kur li wallidayhi
lam yuqbul minhu
Whoever is grateful to Allah,
but not grateful to their parents,
it will not be accepted from them.
If we are impious to the first place
of Allah's blessings upon us,
How can we then imagine that we are being pious
to Allah Subhuanaha Wa Ta`la.
And because of this being undutiful to our parents
is one of the greatest sins in our religion.
The prophet said, rida rab firridal walid wassakhatil wallid
The pleasure of your lord,
lies in the pleasure of your parents.
And the anger of your lord,
lies in the anger of your parents.
The prophet Salla'Allahu 'alayhi wa-sallam said,
akbarall kiba'ir al ishraq billah wa aququllwallidayn
washahadiitzur
He said, the greatest of all the great sins,
Is, one, associating in worship with Allah,
being abusive to one's parents,
and giving false testimony.
And there's many other Hadith which carry this meaning.
A warning against abuse or impiety
directed towards one's parents.
Being good to our parents is foundationally important
in our religion.
So how should that fact then effect our parenting?
Some parents use these Ayat and these Hadith
almost like a trump card.
You have to listen to me, because of this Hadith.
They might use it to shut down conversation,
to exert dominance in a situation.
But we want our kids to go to Jannah,
We want them to be good to us.
But we want our kids to go to Jannah,
and them being good to us,
is essentially important for them to enter Jannah.
The pleasure of the law
is found in the pleasure of the parent.
As we mentioned in the previous Hadith.
So we have an obligation to help our kids be good to us.
How can this be achieved?
What can we do to help our children be respectful to us?
How do we help them honor us?
How do we help them treat us with respect
and duty and honor?
Number one, what is our relationship to our parents?
We spoke in a previous video about the idea of modeling.
How children will model their own behavior,
according to yours.
They interpret what we do as being normal.
If we eat our meals at the dinner table,
they consider that to be normal.
If you wear your seatbelt in the car,
they consider that to be normal.
That's just the way that kids are.
If we pray, if we fast, they consider that to be normal.
This how they learn to be humans in the world.
So if we want our kids to learn to be dutiful to us,
to be pious to us, to be respectful to us,
it's pretty important we show them
how to do that with our own parents.
If we are flippant to our parents,
if we don't care for their needs,
if we don't maintain communication with them,
if we don't call them and visit them often,
Guess what? Our kids are observing all of that.
They can see it and they're learning from your actions.
And there's a beautiful Dua in the Quran
which really ties together these meanings.
Allah Subhuanaha Wa Ta`la mentions the Dua,
rabbiawziAAnee an ashkura niAAmataka allatee
anAAamta AAalayya waAAalawalidayya waan
aAAmala salihan tardahuwaaslih lee fee thurriyyatee (46:15)
My Lord, enable me to be grateful, for your favor upon me.
And for my parents.
And to work upon righteousness which you are pleased with.
And to make my children, my offspring, righteous.
Notice in this Dua you are saying,
Oh, Allah, allow me to be grateful
to you and to be grateful to my parents,
and allow me to do good deeds,
and then, and allow my children to be righteous.
This Dua is connecting the idea
that your gratitude to your parents
and the good deeds that you do in your life,
will directly impact the righteousness of your children.
So if we want our kids to get to Jannah,
to be dutiful to you as a parent,
to be respectful to you as a parent,
they need to see you being dutiful
to your own parents.
And even if your parents have passed away
they've left this world,
they can still witness you honoring your parents.
A man came to the prophet salla'Allahu 'alayhi wa-sallam
He said, "Oh messenger of Allah,
do I need to be dutiful to my parents
even after their death?"
The prophet said, "Yes, and you can do so by,
praying for them, supplicating for their forgiveness,
to fulfill their promises after their death.
To maintain their ties of kinship,
and to honor their friends."
So, these are things that we can do
even if our parents have passed away
to help our children witness and see
that we are honoring our own parents, and in turn show them,
that they too should honor their own parents.
The second point which is important to consider as well,
setting reasonable expectations for our children.
Sometimes as parents we set really high
expectations for our children.
And that's because we want them to achieve a lot.
We want them to be successful.
So we load them with expectations of how they need to be
you know, in terms of behavior.
how they need to be in terms of academics,
in terms of religiosity and so on and so forth.
And when they fall short of these expectations,
we get upset with them.
Now, generally speaking, it's not bad to have expectations
for our children.
In fact, it's far better to have,
and preferable to have, expectations
than not to have expectations for them.
But it's important also that the expectations
we set upon our children are reasonable.
If we are setting up unreasonable expectations for our kids,
we're setting them up for failure.
If the expectation is so high,
that no matter what the child achieves,
we tell them, it's not good enough,
or any time they make even the slightest or smallest mistake
we hold it over their heads,
in way we're training our kids to give up on pleasing us.
We're sending them a message
that forget about pleasing us,
because it's actually impossible.
Keeping this in mind, the prophet
Salla'Allahu 'alayhi wa-sallam,
is recorded to have said
In a Hadith which is authentic in meaning,
rahimuallahu waladan aAna waladah wa ala birri
That god has mercy on a parent
who aids their child,
supports their child to be pious to them.
What does it mean that your aid
you help, your child to be pious,
to be dutiful, to be respectful, to you?
In one narration the prophet Salla'Allahu 'alayhi wa-sallam,
was asked, how does one help their child be dutiful to them?
The prophet Salla'Allahu 'alayhi wa-sallam said,
yuqabillu ihsannahu wa yatajawazan isaa atihi
That it's done by accepting their good,
and forgiving their errors.
Some scholars comment on this Hadith,
they say that what it means is that
when a child makes an error which is not a sin,
it's not inherently sinful, that the parent
should overlook some of these mistakes and errors.
If every time your child makes a mistake
and the mistake doesn't involve sinfulness,
You know for instance, they make a mistake,
they broke a plate, or they left the lights on,
they didn't study enough.
You know we can overlook and forgive
some of these mistakes sometimes.
If we can't overlook any of them,
Eventually the child will think, I can't please my parents.
And they might decide to try to stop trying entirely.
Instead look at the example of the prophet
Salla'Allahu 'alayhi wa-sallam,
with Anas bin Malik Allahu A'alam
Who was a young boy, whose mother
wanted him to serve the prophet
in order for him to be close to the prophet.
He later said about his time growing up with the prophet,
He said,
qaala khadimtun nabi SallAllahu Alaihi Wasallam maashrislim
He said, I served the prophet for 10 years,
famaa qala li oof ilqat He never said, oof,
he never expressed frustration to me, not once.
Not once did he blame me and say about something that I did
and say, why did you do this?
Not once did he say to me about something that I didn't do,
Why didn't you do so?
If Anas fell short, if he forgot to do something
if he forgot to bring something,
the prophet was forgiving, he would overlook
some of these shortcomings.
And this is different than sinfulness.
If your child is falling into dishonesty or lewd behavior,
of course we should be more strict.
But in general, our expectations of our children
should be reasonable and attainable,
and help them achieve their responsibility
of being dutiful to you.
May Allah Subhuanaha Wa Ta`la
allow our children to be dutiful to us
and raise them upon dutifulness to their parents. Ameen.