Watering the Roots: A 1-2-3 Parent Wellbeing Guide (a Muslim Perspective)

CHAPTER ONE

Parenteering—A Mindset

Children learn more from what you are than what you teach[1]

This Occupation Called Parenting

EVERY STAGE OF a child's development poses different challenges. I am writing this book not because I think I have aced it. Quite the contrary, I am sharing what I have learnt from my innumerable stuff-ups. As harshly as I judge myself, my three children are still willing to confide in me and regularly make time to catch up with me. I guess children are more gracious than parents give them credit for.

However, I still feel my heart constrict on occasion, wishing I had done things differently.

This is because, even with over three decades of being a parent, I am still on my journey. Parenting is an endless evolution of our relationship with our children, and with ourselves.

Have you ever regretted things you did or said to your child/children? If you answered yes you must know that you and I are not the only ones feeling this way. And do you know something else? What you are experiencing is growth. Yes, growth. You are feeling what you are feeling now because you have come to learn that there is a different way, perhaps a better way to do things. Sure, you cannot undo what has already been done, but you certainly can do things differently next time now that you have learnt something else that may be more effective.

For new parents, let this book be your older companion who has traversed the same path not so long before you. Let this book add to your wellbeing development.

You, The Parenteer

I was deeply immersed in collecting and analysing the experiences of parents in my case studies on parenting Muslim children in Australia for my Master's thesis in 2008, when I made up the word 'parenteering' in my head. I saw all of the parents I interviewed like orienteers. They had goals for their children and they were diligent like explorers using whatever tools they had to find their way.

A parenteer is someone who considers his/her parental role like an orienteer. An orienteer sets off with a destination/goal in mind although they have never been on the journey before. I came to the conclusion that the destination for parenteers is to arrive at a state of being—ultimate wellbeing—in this life and in the Hereafter. This state of wellbeing is all encompassing but can be pinpointed to its essence of having attained a tranquil heart. Parenteers need a good road map and compass, with which they work diligently with their children towards their destination.

Map

Parenteers need a map. A map that will help them find their way to their destination—a sound and peaceful heart. Throughout the history of humanity, our Creator has been sending down maps we call holy scriptures to different communities through hand-picked role models we call prophets and messengers of the divine. The road map I recommend my Muslim readers to refer to is the Qur'an. It is the same road map I base my key concepts on life and death and our goals in this book. Readers of other religions may resonate with many of the concepts and values discussed in this book.

Admittedly my husband and I crossed many intersections along our journey where we felt lost. We looked for signs and clues that would help us get out of our roadblocks. Having that good map has been a great help, and it continues to be. Over time, we learned to trust that even if we felt lost at certain points, following the map gave us reassurance that we could get back on track if we kept trying.

Compass

The compass for parenteers is our inbuilt ability to discern right from wrong, our gut feelings, and a sound decision-making process. Do not be defeated by errors you make along the way. Parenting always includes trials and errors that people call 'learning on the job'. We have our predecessors' successes and errors to learn from as well. Value all experiences past and present because all parents are merely parenteers.

Begin With A Growth Mindset

From the outset, this means you as a parenteer do not need to know it all. In truth, who does? Marisa de los Santos says this about parenting:

No one is ever quite ready; everyone is always caught off guard. Parenthood chooses you. And you open your eyes, look at what you've got, say 'Oh, my gosh,' and recognize that of all the balls there ever were, this is the one you should not drop. It's not a question of choice.[2]

Fumbling, stumbling and feeling lost are part and parcel of parenting. I want to reassure you that whatever you have been doing, you need to acknowledge that you have done your best, and, with a growth mindset, you must believe you have the capacity to learn, and you will continue to do better. Value your experiences as building blocks you cannot do without. Acknowledge these feelings but do not dwell on them.

When you appreciate yourself a little, the job becomes more do-able. When you do away with unrealistic expectations, any progress you make becomes your strength. And you will all do better. This has been proven true in the Broaden and Build theory by Barbara Fredrickson, one of the prominent researchers in Positive Psychology in the US. Through her research, Fredrickson has found that positivity literally opens us up. Positivity expands a person's peripheral vision and the conceptual connections one makes. One notices more, comes up with more alternatives and better solutions to problems and one sees other people with new perspectives, which help them to connect with others in more positive ways.[3]

As parenteers, you are literally finding your way. When a growth mindset is applied to our parenting, we will be amazed by what a positive mind will do for us. It opens us up to learn, to care, to see and to connect with our children in an upward spiral.

Your Children As Mystery Seedlings

Consider your children as mystery seedlings. None of us knows what they are like and what they will become except the One who created them. You start off by doing the generally agreed upon things like giving them water, feeding them nutrients and putting them in a sunny and airy area. You learn to develop general caring routines for your seedlings. You wish for this to be the extent of your duty. But God knows you are capable of doing more. He gives you all kinds of trials to make you grow.

Challenges Expand Parenting Knowledge And Skills

You will find that while one seedling thrives in direct sunlight, another seedling is withering. You run straight to the hobby section in the library to see what you can do. You match this seedling's characteristics as best as you can with the ones in the book and come home armed with the new idea to move the seedling into a slightly shady area. A few days later you notice this seedling standing up a little straighter and you say to yourself this little seedling likes the shade. As you breathe a sigh of relief the corner of your eye catches the burnt tips on the leaves of your other seedling in the sun.

You say to yourself with confidence, I know what to do now; I'll just move you under the pergola too. In just a matter of days this stressed seedling puzzles you even more. Now it looks sickly. You think, oh no what have I done? What should I do now? You find the local horticulturist. She asks you to describe this seedling. She tilts her head to think for a while then she says suggestively, 'You wouldn't suppose its leaves are distressed from wind burn?' Your eyes light up. This horticulturist is a genius. Right where this seedling is planted is where you and your spouse love to sit for the beautiful breeze in that passage. Now that you think about it, it has been a little dry of late when the hot wind passes. So you go home to find something that shields the seedling from the draughty wind yet still allows the sunshine to bathe on the seedling.

On goes this process of asking, adjusting, learning, observing and tweaking to care for your mystery seedlings. You learn that each plant has their individual character, idiosyncrasies, likes, dislikes, vulnerabilities and strengths. Sometimes you feel tired from the responsibility and overwhelmed by the problems they present one after another, but you just cannot take your mind off them. They pull on your heartstrings.

Each Seedling Is Unique

Over time your seedlings grow up. One may give you beautiful flowers but you need to be careful with its thorns on the stem; another may give you delicious fruits but you need to be vigilant against the pests that also share your love for the fruits. Some may not give either, quietly growing plainly but when you gently brush over their leaves they give off such invigorating scent that keeps luring you back to touch them. Just when you think you had chosen your favourite another reveals its marvel that gives you joy beyond description. Occasionally you feel like banging your head against the brick wall over one seedling because nothing you do seems to make any difference until one day it suddenly stands green and straight as if to say, look, Mum and Dad, sorry it took me a while but here I am, all grown up! It continues to grow by centimetres rapidly into a tall, strong, delightful bamboo plant! You mutter to yourself, whoa … to think I almost gave up… Such is the job of parenting.

Think Parenteering Makes You Feel Lighter

In many ways all parents are like that gardener with mystery seedlings in their hands. No parent is born to know how best to care for this young living, breathing, kicking bundle in his or her arms. That is part of the challenge! You will continue to strive to do your best because 'of all the balls there ever were, this is the one you should not drop'.

And indeed, if you leave perfection out of your criteria as a parent, and treat this job with all the right intentions as a journey of discovery by trial and error, you may actually fly higher because you are literally lighter in your heart. This lightness is what the content of this book hopes to offer.

In this book I wish to share my experiences and those of others with my fellow parenteers, to help you nurture your children without carrying the burdens of social and self-inflicted expectations. It in no way trivialises the extent of the responsibility of parenting. The objective of this book is for you to implement the practices to nourish yourself as a person, and as a parenteer, with a hidden motive that your wellbeing practices will ripple onto your children to live a flourishing life.

Parenting In The Twenty-First Century

In all fairness parents have legitimate reasons to worry about how best to bring up their children. This occupation of parenting in the twenty-first century is challenging. It worries you how each one of your children will turn out in this increasingly complicated world. Not only are you concerned for their education, their character, their spiritual development, their physical and mental stability, you also have so many external temptations, complex moral issues and foreign ideologies to sort through in the mix.

Then there is cyberbullying which makes you feel on edge. You know well the internet has become an essential part of our modern life yet it is a double-edged sword if misused. Long gone are the days when parents kept their children at home from influences of the big bad world. You remember a time when you fought with your parents over how much television you were allowed to watch. You now wish you could turn back the clock to the days when there were only two channels, or better still, no television at all. Actually, television is no longer the big bad wolf. Thanks to wifi now your adolescent children are ALWAYS wanting to spend more time on their devices. They have access to information about absolutely anything under the sun. Every year they beg for an upgraded gadget that 'all their friends at school have'. You have nightmares about what they will be exposed to when you turn your back on them. Not only that, they want to spend more and more time on their games, and with their friends, online and offline. You cannot help but wonder what their friends are like and what they get up to when they are out of your sight. All the physical and mental stress from ensuring your child's safety perhaps make you wish for a chance to escape from it even for just a moment!

As I draw on theories of scholarly work in preparation for this book, I feel the lightness in what the word parenteering carries. It is just what every parent needs to help them get through some of those worrisome, challenging, head-butting and heart-wrenching times of raising children. As long as one has a clear destination, a solid reference to check back on, and a functional internal compass, one can hope to survive the storms. Parenteering avails parents a strip of psychological space.

If you resonate with what I am saying, this book is for you to see things with new perspectives, and to apply the recommended practices for your own wellbeing. We all need to have a clear mind to steer the ship when the seas are rough. I wish to urge you to start practising looking after your own wellbeing so that you have more to give to your children.

Parenteers, Buckle Up For The Journey!

My struggles when my children were young may be different to yours but they are struggles nonetheless. Sometimes I wish there were some mandatory pre-parental training to at least provide new parents with some baseline preparation. Fortunately there is an abundance of resources on parenting today written by experts for those who are looking for that extra bit of help. They provide a starting point for inexperienced parents. We were living in Jeddah where my husband worked in the first few years of our marriage. When we found out we were expecting our first child, we went out to the only English bookstore there was in Jeddah and came home with a copy of Dr. Spock's Baby and Child Care. That was in the mid-1980s. Together with my nursing background, that book helped me care for our son's physical development in those early years of parenthood.

These days many avenues have availed parents access to information, community initiatives and professional led forums on raising children more effectively. Sometimes too much information can also be confusing, if not overwhelming. What you need is to listen to your own instincts when trawling through the masses of information out there.

Now comes the time where I must break the bad news to you. No matter how much knowledge you have about parenting, I guarantee you plenty of occasions when you will be left to your own devices to figure a way out of your unique challenges. Nothing prepares you sufficiently like real life problems.

Challenges As A Migrant Parent

Let me share one of my parenting experiences with you. Just when I thought I almost survived my son's first two years, I found myself in unchartered waters after we migrated to Australia. I do not think our parents or grandparents could offer much advice on specific issues I faced as a migrant parent then.

With our toddler and a second child on the way, I had to adapt in every aspect. I juggled work, home, learning new rules, social etiquette, resources, etc., not only for myself, but also as a parent.

My Asian Muslim identity in the Australian society was initially met with friendly curiosity. We were met with harmless double takes most of the time. Some brave people would break the ice with a smile and politely ask where we came from, or try to guess where I got my accent from. Within years of our migration this curiosity began to be overshadowed by suspicion and antagonism that came with changing global situations for Muslims.

Viewed from a macro level, this shift continues till today. Since the Gulf War in 1990 followed by the attack on 9/11 a decade later, lives of Muslims have never been the same again. No parenting books could have prepared us for this. Twenty years ago, the comments I received over our identity as Muslims were subtle but benign, such as, 'You have such beautiful girls. What a shame you have to cover them up!'

Then the backlash of terror attacks linked to Muslims cascaded down on Muslim communities like torrential rain especially for those living in the West. Misinformation about Islam, distortions, fear mongering and open attacks on Muslims worsened and continued to spread like wildfire. It was in such climate that my children and other Muslim children had to, and will continue to have to, negotiate for their space to exist. Parenting under these circumstances has not been a cruise to say the least.

On The Receiving End Of Islamophobia

My children and I have been verbally abused at supermarkets, at bus stops, or yelled at from cars that drove past on our walks in our neighbourhood, only because we were identifiable as Muslims. Here is our youngest daughter's experience. While she was completing her undergraduate studies she worked in a rug store. She had to mind the store on her own with access to her manager's support only by phone. Like most sales managers in retail she was alerted to watch out for theft.

She told me what she actually had to watch out for was more than the merchandise in the store. Her obvious 'Muslim-ness', identifiable through her wearing the hijab, meant that she had to look out for her own safety, especially when news reports of terror attacks were aired, regardless of where in the world these incidents took place. This awareness is very much a common reality for Muslims shrouded in the dark clouds of Islamophobia. My daughter had no way of knowing for sure what that something untoward would entail but she had to mentally prepare herself for anything between verbal abuse, physical assault, and possible vicious attacks.

Australia is relatively safe compared to some parts of the world where open discrimination against Muslims is trickled down from the attitude of their leaders. What could parenting experts possibly advise today's young Muslims to manage their wellbeing in this atmosphere if they themselves never knew what it was like to be the target of collective punishment from the society at large?

Living with this undercurrent of covert hostility as well as some people's overt prejudice and the possibility of physical assaults because of our faith is unnerving to most members of the Muslim community especially when some reports of Muslims being spat on, being abused and being attacked involve people we know. It is all too close for comfort.

Being on the alert and using one's common sense are essential. Having the tools and skills to regulate oneself is what I believe to be timely for the wellbeing of young Muslims. Support in this respect can come in many forms, but the most immediate are perspectives and practices they learn from their parents. The question is, to what extent do we as parents know how to regulate our own emotions and reactions in challenging situations?

It has been gradual but over the years I learned that not knowing what to do and getting off track is inevitable for a parenteer because we do not know our way. I learnt that the objective of parenting was never about staying perfectly on course all the time. Rather it is your desire to stay on track, and your effort to keep trying to get back on track that matters.

My task as a parent remains challenging, but I feel so much more positive about my role now because I learnt to stop aiming for results but instead to value the experience and learn from them.

Sometimes I question whether the positive changes have taken place because I have grown older and hopefully wiser, or is it because my children have grown older and wiser? Would I have been receptive to what I know now back then? I do not know. Yet each and every one of my conversations with younger parents where I shared my insights have all been positively received.

What I Hope This Book Will Do For You

Parenting is a journey. I want this book to be a companion for those who care for children to care for themselves. Since parenteering is a journey for growth, I encourage you to keep a journal for your journey. Greater still, I encourage you to share your experiences, references and wisdom with me to enlighten other like-minded parents who consider taking care of their own wellbeing to last the distance.

This book takes its worldview from the Qur'an and Hadith—the teachings of Prophet Muhammad (peace and blessings be upon him). It is a worldview shared by not only Muslims who make up a fifth of the world's population,[4] but also