A wonderful Article I was reading. I thought I;d post it here…I dont know if this is the right forum though:)
Some Excerpts from the article
Children are born in a state of fitra (purity) and then their parents teach them to be believers or unbelievers. According to the Musnad Ibn Hanbal, “The children of the unbelievers are better than you grown-ups. Every living creature is born with a righteous nature.” It is our obligation and duty as parents to teach our children so that they grow up to be believing, practicing Muslims. Sending the child to an Islamic weekend school or to a full-time Islamic school is an important but minor part of their Islamic education. The major ‘institution of learning’ for each child is his family, and the major ‘professors’ of this institution are the parents.
ROLE MODELING:
The most effective way to teach anything to anybody is to be a role model. This is why Allah sent human beings as prophets to all peoples. Whether we willingly accept this job or not, it is a fact that your child learns how to function in life by watching what you do. Even the absent parent is role modeling to the degree that a boy, whose father abandoned his family, will probably treat his own children the same way.
Positive vs Negative Reinforcements
As the above poem indicates, negative comments and treatment result in negative attributes in our children, and positive comments and treatment result in positive results. The term ‘positive and negative reinforcement’ is popular in modern psychology, but it was advocated by the Qu’ran and the actions and sayings of Prophet Muhammad (May Allah’s peace and blessings be upon him), 1400 years ago. How do we use positive reinforcement to teach our children?
Example: Iman is three years old and has a baby brother, Samir, who is one. She gets out her blocks to play with and of course Samir crawls over to get involved. She gives him a red block and then proceeds to build a tower. Samir grows tired of his one block and tries to get more. In the process he knocks down the tower. Iman reacts angrily and grabs all the blocks and tells her brother that he can’t play with any of the blocks. Her mother hears her and shouts at her angrily, "Iman you are a bad girl not to share with your brother. Give him some blocks!
Please read the rest on the website as I cannot post the whole article here:)