Rindu ku...

Love is the flower you've got to let grow... Sollu 'alan-nabi!

Gardening anyone?

Alhamdulillah, we made it.  Teacher's training is over and teachers has gone - driving back to their respected 'kampung' for a week to celebrate life with family.  After a day-and-a-half camping out at Fatima Hall, everyone seems to 'get it' this time around that training is no longer a 'stressful' experience after all.  100% participants gave two thumbs up and majority loved the format this time around.  Alhamdulillah again.  For I myself am learning and observing the "what and how" best to design teacher's training that will be suitable to majority of Sri Ayesha teachers nowadays.  I guess we just hit the 'sweet spot'!  Thanks teachers for the active and frank participation during all sessions.  I can't imagine that most of you love the team-work session which I purposely delayed it to the last agenda!  Since you really like it and had learned a lot from it, I will introduce few more interesting team-work activities in our future training, insyaAllah.

Our invited trainer - Ust Md Noor & Dr Zanatun were totally superb!  We finally start to understand who we really are...  We shall be able to work on areas that we're considered under-perform.  It's so important to do self-analysis to become the great educator - Murabbi. 

One of my enjoyable moment is the talk-show on Gardening!  I enjoyed much the way Azmir has handled the show - purely professional!  Congratulation.  It made me alert and had the audience given a greater attention.  No monotonous one-way lecturing & mumbling by...(me).

Essentially, the Gardening theme was in my mind for quite a while.  Perhaps, this is the best moment to introduce this theme for reasons I shared during the session itself.  Allah has made in many places in the Quran the resemblance of garden to the paradise!  Home sweet home is my paradise! My school, my paradise...

Having our own garden and turning it into a "super-garden" is very much similar to having our own classroom (children) and shaping them into becoming the meaningful person when they grow up.  So teachers, get this straight:
1) Get our intention right at all times! NAWAITU.
2) Get to know the type of seeds you're dealing with;
3) Deter the outsiders from encroaching into our garden freely - grasshopper, parasite;
4) Have the complete picture clearly displayed in our mind right from the beginning;
5) Synergy. Identify strength in each child and pair them properly. 1+1 is equal to 2 and more!
and few more that I'm sure you've noted during our discussion.

A question raised, what if... we have done all the right things...then disaster strikes? I told you that this is what differentiate us from the rest of the 'worldly-gardeners'.  Allah is a better judgement on everything.  We just simply know, able, willing and act (TAHU, MAHU, LAKU) on the understanding and having the right desire.  The result is totally up to the Creator Allah swt. 

And as a continuation, all teachers got a privilege to be the mini-gardener.  So teachers, start planting! The one-month-observation is crucial to see if we can be a gardener on this temporary world.  The best garden is the real Garden that Allah has promised us...
Jannatul-Firdausil-A'la!  Don't miss that out...

Native Deen!

Some of you got a "once-in-a-lifetime" chance to experience the life performance of Native Deen - singing the welcoming nasyid to our beloved Rasulullah Sallahu 'alaihi waSallam.  Those who had missed it, listen to the beautiful words and imagine the Muslimin welcoming the final prophet of Allah to Madinah...

Bikini or Headscarf, the choice of a nine year old girl.

Krista Bremer & her daughter Aliya in the scarf the child
decided she wanted to wear.

This story came out in one of The Oprah Show few years back.  I thought this is a good story to share with readers (as told by the Mother - Krista Bremer)

Nine years ago, I danced my newborn daughter around my North Carolina living room to the music of "Free to Be...You and Me", the '70s children's classic whose every lyric about tolerance and gender equality I had memorized as a girl growing up in California.

My Libyan-born husband, Ismail, sat with her for hours on our screened porch, swaying back and forth on a creaky metal rocker and singing old Arabic folk songs, and took her to a Muslim sheikh who chanted a prayer for long life into her tiny, velvety ear.

She had espresso eyes and lush black lashes like her father's, and her milky-brown skin darkened quickly in the summer sun. We named her Aliya, which means "exalted" in Arabic, and agreed we would raise her to choose what she identified with most from our dramatically different backgrounds.

I secretly felt smug about this agreement -- confident that she would favor my comfortable American lifestyle over his modest Muslim upbringing. Ismail's parents live in a squat stone house down a winding dirt alley outside Tripoli. Its walls are bare except for passages from the Quran engraved onto wood, its floors empty but for thin cushions that double as bedding at night.

My parents live in a sprawling home in Santa Fe with a three-car garage, hundreds of channels on the flat-screen TV, organic food in the refrigerator, and a closetful of toys for the grandchildren.

I imagined Aliya embracing shopping trips to Whole Foods and the stack of presents under the Christmas tree, while still fully appreciating the melodic sound of Arabic, the honey-soaked baklava Ismail makes from scratch, the intricate henna tattoos her aunt drew on her feet when we visited Libya. Not once did I imagine her falling for the head covering worn by Muslim girls as an expression of modesty.

Last summer we were celebrating the end of Ramadan with our Muslim community at a festival in the parking lot behind our local mosque. Children bounced in inflatable fun houses while their parents sat beneath a plastic tarp nearby, shooing flies from plates of curried chicken, golden rice, and baklava.

Aliya and I wandered past rows of vendors selling prayer mats, henna tattoos, and Muslim clothing. When we reached a table displaying head coverings, Aliya turned to me and pleaded, "Please, Mom -- can I have one?"

She riffled through neatly folded stacks of headscarves while the vendor, an African-American woman shrouded in black, beamed at her. I had recently seen Aliya cast admiring glances at Muslim girls her age.

I quietly pitied them, covered in floor-length skirts and long sleeves on even the hottest summer days, as my best childhood memories were of my skin laid bare to the sun: feeling the grass between my toes as I ran through the sprinkler on my front lawn; wading into an icy river in Idaho, my shorts hitched up my thighs, to catch my first rainbow trout; surfing a rolling emerald wave off the coast of Hawaii. But Aliya envied these girls and had asked me to buy her clothes like theirs. And now a headscarf.

In the past, my excuse was that they were hard to find at our local mall, but here she was, offering to spend ten dollars from her own allowance to buy the forest green rayon one she clutched in her hand. I started to shake my head emphatically "no," but caught myself, remembering my commitment to Ismail. So I gritted my teeth and bought it, assuming it would soon be forgotten.

That afternoon, as I was leaving for the grocery store, Aliya called out from her room that she wanted to come.

A moment later she appeared at the top of the stairs -- or more accurately, half of her did. From the waist down, she was my daughter: sneakers, bright socks, jeans a little threadbare at the knees. But from the waist up, this girl was a stranger. Her bright, round face was suspended in a tent of dark cloth like a moon in a starless sky.

"Are you going to wear that?" I asked.

"Yeah," she said slowly, in that tone she had recently begun to use with me when I state the obvious.

Oprah.com: Your kids are different...and it's okay

On the way to the store, I stole glances at her in my rearview mirror. She stared out the window in silence, appearing as aloof and unconcerned as a Muslim dignitary visiting our small Southern town -- I, merely her chauffeur.

I bit my lip. I wanted to ask her to remove her head covering before she got out of the car, but I couldn't think of a single logical reason why, except that the sight of it made my blood pressure rise. I'd always encouraged her to express her individuality and to resist peer pressure, but now I felt as self-conscious and claustrophobic as if I were wearing that headscarf myself.

In the Food Lion parking lot, the heavy summer air smothered my skin. I gathered the damp hair on my neck into a ponytail, but Aliya seemed unfazed by the heat. We must have looked like an odd pair: a tall blonde woman in a tank top and jeans cupping the hand of a four-foot-tall Muslim. I drew my daughter closer and the skin on my bare arms prickled -- as much from protective instinct as from the blast of refrigerated air that hit me as I entered the store.

As we maneuvered our cart down the aisles, shoppers glanced at us like we were a riddle they couldn't quite solve, quickly dropping their gaze when I caught their eye.

In the produce aisle, a woman reaching for an apple fixed me with an overly bright, solicitous smile that said "I embrace diversity and I am perfectly fine with your child." She looked so earnest, so painfully eager to put me at ease, that I suddenly understood how it must feel to have a child with an obvious disability, and all the curiosity or unwelcome sympathies from strangers it evokes.

At the checkout line, an elderly Southern woman clasped her bony hands together and bent slowly down toward Aliya. "My, my," she drawled, wobbling her head in disbelief. "Don't you look absolutely precious!" My daughter smiled politely, then turned to ask me for a pack of gum.

In the following days, Aliya wore her headscarf to the breakfast table over her pajamas, to a Muslim gathering where she was showered with compliments, and to the park, where the moms with whom I chatted on the bench studiously avoided mentioning it altogether.

Later that week, at our local pool, I watched a girl only a few years older than Aliya play Ping-Pong with a boy her age. She was caught in that awkward territory between childhood and adolescence -- narrow hips, skinny legs, the slightest swelling of new breasts -- and she wore a string bikini.

Her opponent wore an oversize T-shirt and baggy trunks that fell below his knees, and when he slammed the ball at her, she lunged for it while trying with one hand to keep the slippery strips of spandex in place. I wanted to offer her a towel to wrap around her hips, so she could lose herself in the contest and feel the exhilaration of making a perfect shot.

It was easy to see why she was getting demolished at this game: Her near-naked body was consuming her focus. And in her pained expression I recognized the familiar mix of shame and excitement I felt when I first wore a bikini.

At 14, I skittered down the halls of high school like a squirrel in traffic: hugging the walls, changing direction in midstream, darting for cover. Then I went to Los Angeles to visit my aunt Mary during winter break. Mary collected mermaids, kept a black-and-white photo of her long-haired Indian guru on her dresser, and shopped at a tiny health food store that smelled of patchouli and peanut butter. She took me to Venice Beach, where I bought a cheap bikini from a street vendor.

Dizzy with the promise of an impossibly bright afternoon, I thought I could be someone else -- glistening and proud like the greased-up bodybuilders on the lawn, relaxed and unself-conscious as the hippies who lounged on the pavement with lit incense tucked behind their ears. In a beachside bathroom with gritty cement floors, I changed into my new two-piece suit.

Goose bumps spread across my chubby white tummy and the downy white hairs on my thighs stood on end -- I felt as raw and exposed as a turtle stripped of its shell. And when I left the bathroom, the stares of men seemed to pin me in one spot even as I walked by.

In spite of a strange and mounting sense of shame, I was riveted by their smirking faces; in their suggestive expressions I thought I glimpsed some vital clue to the mystery of myself. What did these men see in me -- what was this strange power surging between us, this rapidly shifting current that one moment made me feel powerful and the next unspeakably vulnerable?

I imagined Aliya in a string bikini in a few years. Then I imagined her draped in Muslim attire. It was hard to say which image was more unsettling. I thought then of something a Sufi Muslim friend had told me: that Sufis believe our essence radiates beyond our physical bodies -- that we have a sort of energetic second skin, which is extremely sensitive and permeable to everyone we encounter. Muslim men and women wear modest clothing, she said, to protect this charged space between them and the world.

Growing up in the '70s in Southern California, I had learned that freedom for women meant, among other things, fewer clothes, and that women could be anything -- and still look good in a bikini. Exploring my physical freedom had been an important part of my process of self-discovery, but the exposure had come at a price.

Since that day in Venice Beach, I'd spent years learning to swim in the turbulent currents of attraction -- wanting to be desired, resisting others' unwelcome advances, plumbing the mysterious depths of my own longing.

I'd spent countless hours studying my reflection in the mirror -- admiring it, hating it, wondering what others thought of it -- and it sometimes seemed to me that if I had applied the same relentless scrutiny to another subject I could have become enlightened, written a novel, or at least figured out how to grow an organic vegetable garden.

On a recent Saturday morning, in the crowded dressing room of a large department store, I tried on designer jeans alongside college girls in stiletto heels, young mothers with babies fussing in their strollers, and middle-aged women with glossed lips pursed into frowns. One by one we filed into changing rooms, then lined up to take our turn on a brightly lit pedestal surrounded by mirrors, cocking our hips and sucking in our tummies and craning our necks to stare at our rear ends.

When it was my turn, my heart felt as tight in my chest as my legs did in the jeans. My face looked drawn under the fluorescent lights, and suddenly I was exhausted by all the years I'd spent doggedly chasing the carrot of self-improvement, while dragging behind me a heavy cart of self-criticism.

At this stage in her life, Aliya is captivated by the world around her -- not by what she sees in the mirror. Last summer she stood at the edge of the Blue Ridge Parkway, stared at the blue-black outline of the mountains in the distance, their tips swaddled by cottony clouds, and gasped. "This is the most beautiful thing I ever saw," she whispered. Her wide-open eyes were a mirror of all that beauty, and she stood so still that she blended into the lush landscape, until finally we broke her reverie by tugging at her arm and pulling her back to the car.

At school it's different. In her fourth-grade class, girls already draw a connection between clothing and popularity. A few weeks ago, her voice rose in anger as she told me about a classmate who had ranked all the girls in class according to how stylish they were.

I understood then that while physical exposure had liberated me in some ways, Aliya could discover an entirely different type of freedom by choosing to cover herself.

I have no idea how long Aliya's interest in Muslim clothing will last. If she chooses to embrace Islam, I trust the faith will bring her tolerance, humility, and a sense of justice -- the way it has done for her father. And because I have a strong desire to protect her, I will also worry that her choice could make life in her own country difficult. She has recently memorized the fatiha, the opening verse of the Quran, and she is pressing her father to teach her Arabic. She's also becoming an agile mountain biker who rides with me on wooded trails, mud spraying her calves as she navigates the swollen creek.

The other day, when I dropped her off at school, instead of driving away from the curb in a rush as I usually do, I watched her walk into a crowd of kids, bent forward under the weight of her backpack as if she were bracing against a storm. She moved purposefully, in such a solitary way -- so different from the way I was at her age, and I realized once again how mysterious she is to me.

It's not just her head covering that makes her so: It's her lack of concern for what others think about her. It's finding her stash of Halloween candy untouched in her drawer, while I was a child obsessed with sweets. It's the fact that she would rather dive into a book than into the ocean -- that she gets so consumed with her reading that she can't hear me calling her from the next room.

I watched her kneel at the entryway to her school and pull a neatly folded cloth from the front of her pack, where other kids stash bubble gum or lip gloss. Then she slipped it over her head, and her shoulders disappeared beneath it like the cape her younger brother wears when he pretends to be a superhero.

As I pulled away from the curb, I imagined that headscarf having magical powers to protect her boundless imagination, her keen perception, and her unself-conscious goodness. I imagined it shielding her as she journeys through that house of mirrors where so many young women get trapped in adolescence, buffering her from the dissatisfaction that clings in spite of the growing number of choices at our fingertips, providing safe cover as she takes flight into a future I can only imagine.

Let's Embrace Healthy Lifestyle

This is the extended version of my speech for Sri Ayesha Sports Day 2012 this weekend.  Let's support our children and be there for them.  Thank you for all hard works by teachers and parents to see through this event.

Update:

As I briefly said in my speech during the actual event - "I originally wanted to pump-up and motivate the children for that special day...but reality sunk in and I was the one who really pumped up and inspired by the determinations and teamwork shown by the children".  Serious motivational acts took place among them and I was so proud.  They did their best not necessarily because they seriously thought they could win, but they were doing all the stuffs because they understand the meaning of teamwork and cooperation.  It's not about winning, but it's all about trying.

A little note to parents: I know some of you were a bit concern about the heat that day; but everything turned out to be just fine.  We had a dehydration problem with couple of the children but that's it (they're back normal).  I run around and made a quick checking and 'survey' to see if the heat really pushed them back... and the answers I heard really made me proud..."We're find Mr. Fauzi, we need to finish this for our team!" Many of them shouted the same reason to stay on the field regardless of the heat when I asked, "...do you guys want to move to rather shading place inside?"  

We parents just a bunch of concerned adults ;-)  In the environment Sri Ayesha has designed, I believe they can thrive.  As I tweet in one of my tweets..."Some parents could do more for their children by not doing so much for them.."  I don't blame parents because I do have same concern with my kids too but I believe in the shaping process to simply give in to some weird weather to shake the whole things up.


So back to the speech...

Sports Day is finally here!  Alhamdulillah, today is a celebration of life.  The life we choose as a Muslim – the life that will lead us to the right path.  In the course of living as a Muslim, we’re strengthening our purpose in life by being the khalifah of Allah swt.  The khalifah within, once externalized, will fulfill our pledge to Allah SWT – that is to supervise the well-being of this ‘world’ in our journey back home...to jannah.

Living in this temporary world is not something we want to take for granted.  Our world is our responsibility.  Internalizing such an understanding will require us to look closer to our body & soul.  Our soul needs a good home – our body.  Taking care of our body will make our spritual living in harmony to all Allah’s creation.  The reason we take care our physical world is because we want to take care of our spiritual.  The two goes hand-in-hand.

Now that we understand the relationship, we seek to understand how the prophet (saw) has taught us in normalizing the lifestyle.  He taught us to have a healthy lifestyle.  If it follows sunnah, it should be healthy. ArRasul (saw) taught us to take good diets (halalan thaiba), to exercise (swimming, horse riding etc), to perform solat and fasting... in order to prepare us, the khalifah of Allah, for a healthy lifestyle.  Who can deny it!  Islam is a healthy lifestyle.

Sri Ayesha has taken serious efforts to prepare students with a healthy lifestyle from day one.  Today’s Sports Day event is part and partial of the holistic approach into preparing the child to become the khalifah of Allah SWT.  We want to prepare the child for life.

I would like to encourage parents to scale up their level of cautiousness in preparing their child’s daily routine at home.  The saying “you’re what you eat” is very much a reality nowadays.  Watch how and what they eat.  The reason some foods is called junk-food is because they’re – unfortunately  - junk!  That saying is also true for “you’re what you read”, or “you’re what you see/watch” and so on.

Good and positive routine is so crucial in creating a healthy lifestyle.  We’re so fortunate that the prophet has taught us all positive routines through his beautiful sunnah (way of life).  Try our best to establish his sunnah at home and at school.  At the same time, we need to work hard to reduce and eliminate negative routines and influence in our family because it will lead to a destructive lifestyle.

To model upon the sunnah of our beloved prophet is the way forward for a healthy lifestyle.  The prophet (saw) reminded us (parents) to teach our child to love him.  The reason being is simple.  You follow the people you love.   

Story time... it goes like this:

A mother who understand the meaning of the above hadis started to teach her daughter few simple hadis and the meaning.  One of the hadis shared by the mother to her daughter (narrated by ibn masud)...the prophet advised me (in a long hadis)...IhfazilLah, Yahfadzh-ka... “ Jagalah Allah, nescaya Allah akan menjagamu”.   

Time passed by the mother daughter and they live a normal life...mother was sending daughter to school and picking her up on daily basis.  They talked and laughed.  Sometime they eat roti canai together.  School is quite a long distance drive from home so it was a tiring routine.  Mother did the routine without complaining and she felt so happy that she’s there in the course of her daughter growing up. 

 

One day, they got a little late and mother was a bit hesitance to continue the journey due to bad traffic.  They haven’t perform asar prayer.  Mother checked on the daughter and noticed how tired the daughter was... deeply slept with a tilted neck.  It was a signed of exhausted.  Must be very tired, thought the mother.  She looked back to the traffic, and the view was not helping!  She cruised slowly into left lane and took the next exit – Petronas Gas Station.  The weather was not being too mercy either...it’s starting to rain.

“Syaa... wake up dear, time to solat”, mother was whispering a little loud.

“Let’s solat when we get back...I’m too tired, we got sports day marching today Ummi”, showing her resistant and displeasure with mother’s decision to stop. 

“I’m afraid we won’t reach home on time for asr... sorry Sya, we need to solat”, mother sounded a little heavy to show who’s in-charged.  She made a quick calculation earlier.  Traffic jam will delay them 1 hour, and with rains...thing can get even worst!  Daughter’s displeasure versus Allah’s forgiveness.  It’s a no brainer.

“Let’s do this... we make it fast and we head home straight.  If we reach before maghrib, I’ll cook you your favorite dish for dinner.  Plus you get to buy your favorite drink – Iced Tea – after solat”, the mother became a bit creative in reasoning with the starting-to-show-rebellious-attitude daughter.

The little smile from daughter lighten up the situation.  She’s convinced.  They walked out towards the Surau Muslimah and performed the obligation.  Mother was so happy and grateful.  She knew this and she always right about this all the time.  Every time her intention was clear to get Allah’s pleasure, Allah will make thing easy for her.  Allah is kind!

After solat, mother get back to car running due to the rain and quickly settled down on driver sit, waiting for daughter to come out.  Engine on to get the AC and wiper blade up and running.  She was looking back using rear view mirror directly towards the Petronas store.  She noticed the daughter just step out from front door with plastic bag at hand  – iced tea – and looking straight to the mother pick-truck.

In a matter of second, the mother heard a loud engine noise roaming out from one of those modified-muffler car.  One of those want-to-be-like-Schumacher driver, driving Proton Satria.  The sound was too loud speeding up from far side of the parking corner and rushed straight across the front door of Petronas.  Exactly where the daughter was making her move.  Hey..What a big rush??

“Allah...Allah...Ya Allah...” mother was uttering those beautiful words while she could feel the speeding rush of her adrenaline... almost the same speed of the real Schumacher drive during F1.  It was raining hard.  The sounds of the rain was too loud, making the sound of the modified-muffler-Satria reduced to 60% of its original grumbling.

Mother froze!  Time is a miracle of Allah SWT's creation. At time, it moves speedy-fast but at that particular moment, time was like... halted.  Mother could do nothing except waiting.  The back windshield screen was zero-visibility.  Mother wanted to step out right away but stopped by the sound of passenger's door clicking opened.  “Ya Allah...” simple utterence by mother.

Daughter rushed in and quickly close the door shut!  She was a bit pale, heavy breathing and looking straight ahead.  Mother was looking deep but not a word.  Breathing heavily in and out... she stepped on the gas paddle and moved her slightly-less-than-a-ton 4x4 pick-up truck away.  Towards the main road.  The traffic was getting worst.

No one utter a single word, just heavy breathing shared by both.

“Ummi... something happened.”

Mother kept on driving.  Slowly.

“The moment I was about to cross the road, a car rushed so fast.  I couldn’t hear anything.  It was loud. I run and I have never felt running so fast before... But the car didn’t stop and I can’t stop myself...”

Mother gave a semi-concerned look. Kept driving, even slower.  She wanted to hear daughter's story.

“I only remember Allah... and I felt a big push from behind”, continued the daughter. “Split second, the car passed me and already behind me, I remember... IhfazilLah, Yahfadzh-ka... I believe Allah protected me when we decided to stop for asar prayer...”, her voice a bit choking -- getting slower with the last word she uttered.

Mother just can’t say anything, but she could feel a bit of a goose-bump... like something cold just deep-freeze her spirit from inside.  Allahu Akbar! Subhanallah...MasyaAllah. Then she nodded her head a little to affirm what the daughter was saying.  She wanted the feeling to last.  She knew daughter was also having the same feeling.  The feeling of Allah in you, watching and protecting your life...  

This is our life, we choose our own lifestyle.  We choose to be healthy... spiritually and physically!  If it's following the sunnah, it's a healthy lifestyles.

Sri Ayesha... Happy Sports Day 2012!

Tweets for a 'change'

I'm happy to get involve positively in @SriAyeshaSchool twitter forum for the past one month. I know that I'm still an amateur at tweetingy and stuffs... way behind majority of you guys 'fellow' twitters - the grand masters with K's tweets and K's followers ;-), congratulation though. Anyway, I'm planing to do "Syarah Tweets 100".  I plan to do posting on my first 100 tweets and the story behind it.  How's that for a change? Neat.  And later on, I will pick the best tweet I've been receiving and do "syarah" (so to speak) on that beautiful 140 characters tweets of yours... (Alhamdulillah, I didn't follow too many tweets though - otherwise, I may need an assistant to help read them all).  --- That's the plan.  Until then, keep the "intention" right so that tweeting can become credible source of good 'energy'.



I'm supposed to attend the Sports Day event this weekend and if possible, I will post my Sports day speech here and that would significantly reduce my officiating speech to, perhaps 140 characters ;-)  Many has reminded me to shorten it because of the heat.  I got it ;-) Start early so we could all go back early.  Ta-baarakaLlah!

A Little Quality Time

"Watch your thoughts, they become words. Watch your words, they become your actions. Watch your actions, they become habits. Watch your habits, they become character. Watch your character, it becomes your destiny."

The other day I was watching a cartoon show with my little Aziem and one thing I noticed was that kids never get board too easily with these cartoon shows.  Surprisingly, they ‘learn’ alot from it too.  Many parents happy that kids can understand English and may conclude, it’s good for their kids...  Zooming in closer (after time and time again), I also noticed the consistent theme of these cartoon shows i.e. children were taught to “be the adult” – in thinking, reasoning, talking – just be free and take chance in life. It’s good and bad at the same time. I've always pro liberty and freedom in learning (after a serious shaping process has taken place, that is). Nevertheless, that doesn't mean a child is free to decide based on what he or she 'thinks' is right, right? Wrong!

Exactly what i mean... How can we trust him/her making important decision in life when it comes to matter like - soul mate, or best friend, boyfriend girlfriend stuffs. (My dear teen-children at SA, no offense. I trust lot of your judgment but we need to talk more on this issue in my future posting, deal?).

Let me be more specific. Have you ever watched Disney movies --yep the G grade movie -- meant for general viewing suitable for both kids and adults. It's fun and entertaining movies to watch as far as the superb graphics is concerned.  Most of the time it makes a good laugh with the young one, right? That's a happy family you thought. Little that we notice the theme and 'hidden' message in almost all the so-called G's grade movies. The child will 'smartly' be influenced and empowered into making decision that totally against the wish of the parents. Ironically, they portrayed the parents as the 'un cleaver' bunch of adults, most of the time. If you're the adults in the movie, chances are you don't know much about solving the world problem – that job has been assigned to the young hero out heroin. The message is simple and straight forward for the child - it's ok to disobey your parents (especially when they're id#*ts and dumb). It’ totally OK and fun and adventures! Says who? Well, how about Aladdin? Or Simba? Or Mulan? It's a cross-boundary message -- cultures and religions. All included! From the desert heat of Africa to the green rain-forest of Asia. Religious kids to the kids living in jungle...atheist! Wow, that sounds alarming don't you think so? I think so. I'm not into any 'conspiracy theory' analysis here, but reality checked.  We don’t expect the script writers, directors and artist designers preaching Islamic dakwah in the movie right?  They’re for fun and more fund (money).

Where does all this put us, parents?  Some parents have no say in what their child can or can't watch. They're so permissive...No ground rules. Never thought one. Some just say no to TV's. Well good luck with that because the last time I checked, the kids without in-house TV's exposure starts acting weird when they're away in some hostel (secretly sneaking into neighbor's house to watch 'Miami vice', and the neighbor don't mind that).  Some of them even 'graduated' with a degree in watching TV's. Go figure.

Some parents are worried about violence and sex and lump all violence as anything involving killings and bombing.  That's why some parent took exception when teachers showed a short video presentation on the calamities and the reality faced by the poor children in Palestine. Parents thought that under the premise of peace & loving, let the child watch Disney only movies. And 5 years later they start to complaint, "why is it my daughter talks back and becoming more rebellious, she wasn't like that..." And what’s worst, our kids quietly making plan/s with someone he or she never met ever - yes, the online friend; hooked up by someone's friend who knew a friend's friend in the Facebook. Go figure one more time.

The issue is not "to watch or not to watch". Obviously it's inevitable. We're living in totally different 'jungle'. Ironically, It's just until recently that we got our act together and start to get to know the jungle we (the adult) used to live in and all of sudden, the new jungle creeps up (in out child's world). It's jungle out there, and that can't be more true nowadays. Digital jungle. Some make it sounded even more interesting like generation X, Y, Z (?), borderless, information super highway and many more 'terms' to come; trust me.

So next time you allow your child to comfortably smugly sitting in that pluffy sofa watching those cartoons -- to avoid from violence and negative adults influence from the CSI rerun, or because to quite them up -- you should be ready to re-program your child's mindset. Reset! Back to factory default, fitrah.

Well for a start, sit and watch along and become the 'in-house film censorship board'. Send your in-house message of the right and wrong -- at the right time, the right way... Reset their inner speech.  This is important! The Disney started its influence on our child at the very early age, why can't we fight back?  Yes, parents do strike back. Like any good advice taken from the Mythbuster guys, "kids, don't watch this without an adult supervision". Well, it's true. Entertaining and beneficial yes but never neglect out role. Now, that's a real quality time!