whose heart we have made heedless of our remembrance and who follows his desire and whose affair is in ever a neglect make sure again that we choose the right company and the right people who become our who influence us right in our behavior if they're um heedless if they're in rafla why are we following them the prophet was reportedly asked which of our companions are best and he replied one whose appearance reminds you of god and whose speech increases you acknowledge and whose actions remind you of the hereafter again this is the yardstick that we should measure the company that we keep and also ourselves are we this are we these people are we people who remind other people of god are we people whose speech increases other people in knowledge do we have you know good actions that remind people of the hereafter if we don't the believer is supposed to be a mirror for the believer why are we seeking out you know excellent company but they're not also putting some investment in ourselves so we have to start in ourselves but we should also seek out excellent company and the prophet said a person is on the religion of his companions therefore let every one of you carefully consider the company that you keep and then Ali Adil Lan reminds us mix with the noble people you become one of them and keep away from evil people to protect yourself from their evils again this is so essential because if we want our children to have excellent character to preserve their iman it starts with us and the people that we expose them to and the company that we keep and we have to give primacy more than ever before I would say honestly to making sure our children have good sohbah young make sure they have really good friends at a young age that have good adab that their parents have good character because those parents may end up being your mentor that your children's mentors and I'll tell you I live this reality I know this reality either will come a time when your teenagers and you may have you know maybe butting heads over something but Wallahi it will be the greatest gift from you when you can say I have so-and-so my dear friend who has a bond with my child and I can call that person and say hey having a rough time with so-and-so you know my child my teen boy girl can you please make some time to talk to them it is a gift from Allah to have people in your life that you think that you can turn to but if you don't have anybody in your life that you can turn to for that role of mentorship when it's time please seek those people out now do it it's we don't believe in this you know fatalism or defeated attitude no inshallah put your trust in Allah and ask Allah to give you your children good so-and-so literally make dobb added to one of your Ramadan dobb y'all bring the best company for my children I need them to have really good friends give us good friends good me and my husband or me and my wife give us good friends so that when our children are with their children I don't worry of what's going on in closed doors right because I know their children are good children I know their parents are good I know they have the same philosophy about what to what they teach their children what they give their children but have this intention with the people that you mix with so that inshallah Allah brings you the best of company for yourself and for your children and just some further reminders do not speak much without mentioning Allah the Prophet ﷺ reminds us here for too much speech without mentioning Allah hardens the heart and the hard-hearted are the farthest of all people from Allah it's um it's something that we should be very intentional about and I really want to make this point we when we get invited to social gatherings family friends you know we can't always dictate how that's going to unfold sometimes you want to just go to preserve the bond right I want to I want to call because that sunnah you get invited to somewhere you go you you respond so your intention is I don't want to hurt their heart I don't want to offend them they invited me they thought of me it's beautiful but make part of your niyah with Allah that especially if you have like a religious family secular family family that's not interested in religion at all make your niyah to Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala and be intentional about it ya Allah make me a means by attending this gathering of opening their hearts you know give me the words prepare in advance what are topics that you can talk about that are not overly religious but maybe there's a beautiful moral lesson value something that you give them that it's like the perfume you know maker right that you've you've sprayed them with the perfume of the beauty of our Dean so that even though they may not have bought the bottle right from you um that that smell resonates with them and they love it and then after you've left they may recall that smell and then maybe because you've left such a good impression on them with your beautiful akhlaq and your intentionality to be in those gatherings for the sake of Allah that maybe you will be the means where they find Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala because it was your beautiful akhlaq every time you entered their space but have the intention that that's why you're going not just because i want to be nice you know what i mean like raise the bar because sometimes we respond to invites like with with with friends and family but we don't take our intention to this level like elevate the intention which is make me a means of guidance for this person i love them they're my family they're my friends they're not religious but i love them but maybe i can be the means you know and do it do that with that intention and then here's the hadith the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam says a good friend and a bad friend are like the perfume seller and a blacksmith right the perfume seller might give you some perfume as a gift or you might buy some from him or at least you smell the fragrance as for the blacksmith he might sing your clothes at the very least you will breathe in the fumes we don't ever want to be all the below like the the last the ladder we want to be the former and we also want to surround ourselves with people who are not like the ladder either and then the parable of the believers and their affection mercy and compassion for each other is that of a body when any limb aches the whole body reacts and with sleeplessness and fever and then the rights that we have for each other that we have five rights over another to return the greeting of peace we have to be better at the salam assalamu alaykum get what? wa alaykum assalam wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuh always elevate it right you can give the same or but it's better to give a greater greeting and if someone obviously says assalamu alaykum wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuh you don't say wa alaykum salam you match their their salam but be in the practice of that and whether it's verbally or even on text and wa alayhi i mentioned this in a previous talk this week and just yesterday i was sending a text and my son was next to me and he saw me right because it reflects him w s wassalam and i i said this reminder that we have to even expand our our greetings and mommy i said i love you because he reminded me we forget we get into habits i said thank you and i went back and i changed it so little children can be your teachers but we should give the greeting in the best way possible visit when someone is sick follow the funeral procession so even if you don't know that the person who's deceased it doesn't matter if you know there's a funeral and you have time go go to the funeral go to the janaza follow it because when you go Allah may send a lot of unknown people and maybe among them are sprinkled with saints you know maybe there'll be a bunch of saints that come for your time to pray over you so be intentional and then answer the invitation as we mentioned and respond to the sneeze right so someone sneezes and teach your children young alhamdulillah what do we say what do we say learn the learn the dua and teach them to your children and another narration of the procession when he seeks your advice you counsel him right so be also the type that is picks up the phone when people reach out to you for help don't just turn them away because you're too busy with your own problems you're on time that apathy and lack of concern for others will also come back to haunt you at some point when you need help and nobody wants to pick up your phone call everything there's a sunnah of Allah the law of reciprocity how you are with others Allah will show in your own life so if you want to be that person is i don't have time i'm too busy then don't be surprised when nobody comes to your aid Allah will show you these things right do not hate each other do not envy each other do not turn away from each other but rather be servants of Allah's brothers and sisters it is not lawful for a Muslim to boycott his brother for more than three days that's it three days work it out you have an ego problem after three days you really do your ego is in charge but if you got three days to deal with your issues whatever the resentment is whatever the you know hurt is the pain is but after three days for the sake of Allah you have to be willing to have that spine pick up the phone or go to the open the bedroom door if it's between spouses sometimes this happens you know you get upset with each other and then it's a cold war not for three days unfortunately for weeks sometimes for months it's terrible and shaytan is just loving it but you have to challenge yourself to say i have to get over my my ego so i need to go into into that their space and go hey we should talk and just because you do that you initiate conversation doesn't mean you're saying i was you're you know i'm i'm completely in the wrong and you're in the right what you're saying is i'm a grown up right i'm a grown up and i i hold myself accountable to Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala and our prophecy said we have to work things out after three days so here i am let's work it out that's what a grown up does with a proper understanding who has command of their ego right and then the final thing because i know this is gone on forgive me one more thing never ever forget so all of these advices and all of these reminders of course the the culmination of that should lead us to constant reliance and turning to Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala we have got to call on Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala with what as the prophecy says with certainty that he will answer you know that Allah will not answer the supplication of a heart that is negligent and distracted so if we are not really all convinced of Allah's khudrat of his power and we are weak in our yakeen right the prophecy said i fear but my for my umma the weakness of certainty that we don't have certainty in Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala he feared that for us and we are in this age where we we make half hearted doze if you can i would but if you can to Allah could he could do anything you say it with ya Allah you can do all things please yallah make this easy for me yallah please fulfill this need fulfill this need whatever it is but you do it with that certainty that Allah can do anything and you want to be worthy of that so you say make me worthy right forgive me whatever you need to say call him by all of his beautiful names but do it with certainty inshallah right and and be patient because Allah will answer our doze either in this world he may delay it in the next world he may replace it with something better but to think for a moment that your doze will not be answered is is tantamah to kufr because what are you that that's you're you're you're you're not realizing or you're you're limiting Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala and who are we to ever limit Allah we can never do that right so don't let your mind go there and if you go there that's a wasp usa from shaytan al-dhubadam of shaytan is you i don't ever presume to know what Allah will do i just put my need out there and the rest i submit and i surrender right so alhamdulillah that is the next week inshallah we will do balanced parenting and there's another one as well i forgot the title of that but you can see it in the in a flyer and we will close next week inshallah but i'm happy to stay on for any um questions for a few more minutes i know we went over any questions or comments yeah i know it's an excellent excellent question jazaki lachaden so um the sister asked about a situation where you know some of us want to come and you know to the to the sacred spaces to to do our own worship and we may even bring our children just to be participating in these beautiful events and nights of especially of this month but we may find that other families because they also have the same intention though they they're here they may not be managing their children with correctly and in that they give their children devices where it's unsupervised and maybe exposing not only themselves but also other neighboring children to content or just in general to the device um you know without permission or without the uh you know the the desire of the parents who are praying so that's absolutely happened it it happens all the time and i'm sure we're all witness to that so i do think this goes back to personal responsibility and all the things we talked about as parents we have to raise the bar and really be mindful of um of our spaces you know how you conduct your business at home is between you and Allah but your behavior that impacts other people is is more you you're held more accountable right so if you're going to do something and it harms or potentially exposes other people to harm that's going to be greater um against you it's going to be greater than whatever you're doing that it's just between you and you know i mean it's just you're only uh harming yourself so we have to really take that to heart and that's part of you know becoming more emotionally intelligent when i talked about those social skills and empathy and all those things if you're not thinking of other people in general because you're so self-centered then that doesn't occur to you that wait a second my giving over my childhood device because i can benefit from their distraction may in fact distract other people right then that's not the right right you know um protocol what what what else can i do so this is where i think i mean a couple of things obviously uh we want our children to come to the massage we want our children to be here but this is where the parents have to coordinate you know there might be a time where and i saw this actually happening here even uh just earlier but there might be a time where you have to hand off so if you're wanting to do some extra prayers you know and your husband is free or your wife is free they have to maintain the children while you're doing your prayers and you're responsible you have a guardian basically taking care of that responsibility that could be one thing to bring them but the parents are handing off and tag-teaming and taking that responsibility and allowing for each other to benefit from their worship and the space right another thing is that you can find a if you if you really if it's difficult for you then find someone to watch the children sometimes people have um you know other friends or family in the you know in the message too that they may ask can you please watch them while i do some extra but i can't or whatever it is but look for helpers because there are sometimes people who have no problem they would love to sit and play with the children and this is also a good way to encourage community and so if your children are comfortable with that person ask them could you watch them for just a few minutes but to just immediately default to the device i think is really the issue here right because this becomes a nuisance in even the rest of the congregants not wanting to hear the sound of you know uh shark whatever that song is um baby shark shark now i don't want to hear a baby shark when i'm doing you know uh my my external effort right or reading Quran but if you for you that works at home then you have to have a plan b for the for public spaces plan b is more considerate of other people right and so think uh not so much about your own needs but also how you can have a system that's mutually beneficial for everybody also for the child because it goes back to make sure the child is safe feels good is happy in the care of whoever you leave them and not just you're not just neglecting them of course that would be terrible um so those are all some suggestions the other thing is as a collective as a community we can certainly um organize with the um must-get and ask if there is a way to hire or to you know bring in some services during prayer time so that we have actually qualified well-trained supervisors with children who know how to engage children who can maybe manage uh you know the child programming part so that parents can come out here and enjoy all of the other talks and benefits of the of the you know message without the fear of oh no it's my kid being exposed to something or learning something that's not beneficial so there are a lot of things we can do in the space outside of that obviously the answer would be to leave them with other caretakers that you trust and then allow for the congregants to come together in peace but i i'm personally i would love to see more children we just have to do better about managing them so it's an excellent question she's like welcome thanks any other questions i want to come thank you for coming yes right sure sorry uh we're just gonna wait for the microphone to turn on and then do you have any advice for parents um for small but impactful habits that they could pick up to help them you know get closer to Allah swt and the Quran and to prophesy salam when they are managing smaller children who require perhaps a little bit more time a little bit less sleep things like that so just small but impactful things that are easy to be consistent with sure mashallah just like a look at it for the question so i can only speak from what has worked for me and what i've seen other teachers or other people that i i i believe have also found you know things that work for them and i think you know as as we know we're all creatures of habit and children are certainly creatures of habit so at a young age i think if we really increase um their connection with the book of Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala their connection with nasheed with vikr right so that when they're very young they understand that there's a routine to your day right we have the five daily prayers that are kind of interspersed throughout the day and sometimes we do it at one time another time we may do it another time right it's not as routine based right but there are certain routines that can be fixed every day at a certain time so one of the things i speak about often which our teachers really encourage us to do is as a family to have that have a practice of a litany right a word and so in the morning for example in my household alhamdulillah and this has been for decade maybe over a decade now we've done this and it works is we have a bluetooth speaker so it reaches the house everybody can hear it and the boys know i have two sons that in the morning when they wake up they go and they play the word which is you know on a youtube link and it reaches the whole house and then you know so that's the morning routine we start the day off and the remembrance of Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala after that we also listen to there's different asheeds you can listen to the al-khairat the the burda you know whatever you're comfortable with there there are many other du'as that you can listen to as well but we do usually the al-khairat and then we also listen to Quran and that's kind of our just day like in terms of what's going on everybody could because i homeschool so my kids are doing their homeschooling work or i'm cooking but there's always something playing that is connecting them to the book of Allah and alhamdulillah as someone who used to teach children Quran um you know previously i know from working with children that they love to play even if they're playing with Legos or their blocks or drawing or coloring or painting and also be listening to something right because they have that natural affinity to rhythm and rhyme and music musical most children love dance and song and play so when you find them reciders that they really like and i would create playlists for them there are now much shall i mentioned this last week but there's a an app called kharia q a r i a h that's an all female they're all they're all female reciders so if you have young girls i would definitely encourage them to find maybe some connection there i mean certainly any of the great reciders but just give them a curated list that's special to them and that it's their playlist right so that they can go and listen to certain surahs or nasheeds even because if those are even more musical right and that becomes a routine for them and something that they always know is is there and for you it actually helps because um you know you'll see your children kind of almost in like a trance like state when they're doing their games because children love they're in the imaginary play right so part of the the challenge for a lot of parents is they want our attention a lot right so it's like you're trying to cook and they're like mommy mommy mommy come play but come do this with me and then we're divided and torn but i think if there are times pockets of time where you can keep them engaged in their activity but also feel almost as if there is a presence with them right through the nasheeds or through the angelic you know realm because there's angels of course that come then i think you'll find those are good breaks for you like oh they're they're enjoying their little nasheed song and dance while coloring or doing whatever and you can then take care of other things for you as a practice the word is certainly important but also finding the kid that you can do throughout the day even while you're doing daily tasks right so for some people salawat is something they love to do their people of i know people who do thousand or more salawat the day that's just their practice which is the greatest of the car or la ilaha la la whatever thicket that you feel is speaking to you maybe calling on allah's specific names you know that speak to what you're going through but finding those ways to channel your your mind back to him right is really helpful but having a habit of that right and inshallah you know those are the things that come to mind now that i think if you start with inshallah you'll feel that baraka you know in the household and i would also say as a you know aside to that is limiting the the the amount of you know entertainment that they're watching i know it's very normal for because you know but i really think stipulating some some clear limitations about like television especially is really important they're too drawn to that it's very what i said about the imaginary world you're you're teleporting them into someone else's imaginary world when they have all the imagination in their mind and if you do that too much then then what they do is they don't want to come back into their world now they all only want that world and so i feel like although it's a crutch for some of us if we create a dependency on that for our kids and we're stifling their own imagination and creativity and that's that's really sad if you think about right so imposing restrictions i would say i mean my my kids knew 30 minutes to an hour a day in most days it never really happened but that was always the limit of cartoons and devices games like we have ipads they are only allowed on friday because our teachers taught us like yomal jomal is a day of eid and celebration so you should always have exciting things to do for your kids right so if you're going to teach them anything from the seerah or quran have their favorite treats with them if they like cookies cupcake ice cream just make it it's okay one day of the week to break some of these dietary restrictions for fun so that your children have this positive association with Allah and with deen right the jomal is a very special day is really important and so in addition to doing that i also added games i said you can have your games but as they grew older because now i have preteen and teen they have to do chores on friday so friday is their day of chores and then rewards so this is now the next level of parenting you know where you you want to teach them inshallah to work and strive and and really um you know have have a have some responsibility inshallah so yeah inshallah that'll help but yeah i think that's a lot of thinking and i know we're a way over so i think inshallah we will end here uh jazakum lakhid and thank you everyone um if there are any other questions we can wait till next week but i'll go ahead and end in dua Bismillah ar-Rahman ar-Rahim thank you so much everyone for being here inshallah we will see you next week for the final week inshallah of this course the third and final installment of quranic parenting alhamdulillah thank you for all of those who've been tuning in the videos are available on the mcc website if you wanted to go back and watch the first two sessions but this will be the final session so i'm going to now zip through some slides because i need to get to section three today um and last week i did a summary but it took a little bit of time so i'm just going to ask all of you to go back and watch those to to get uh session two but session three is on balanced parenting so with that said let's go ahead and begin um here's a beautiful quote from imam al-qazali to get what you love you must first be patient with what you hate so there are a lot of things that we we need these reminders as we um continue to parent or if we embark on the journey of parenting that it is a constant balancing act between a lot of emotions um and and it's if you have this perspective then inshallah you will manage you'll manage it won't be easy but you'll manage so balanced parenting is really again knowing how to navigate the demands of the dunya which we are all sometimes drowning in um with the goals and objectives of the ahra for yourself as well as your children uh because although we live here this is not where we reside or wish to reside right we're here temporarily so just like when you vacation you go and you rent a space it's only temporary right your final or actual home is somewhere else so that's how the believer looks at dunya that this is just we're passing through but we still have to live so therefore you have to be able to meet those demands as well as keeping your eye on the final destination which is the life after this world and that is for you as well as your children so always keeping both of these in balance right what do i need to do to survive in this world but what do i need to do to have salvation in the next world right survive and salvation so you want to think of those two um and so i i mentioned this last time i like acronyms because they work they're easy to remember i make them up there it's nothing special but here's an acronym that i hope is helpful for you uh balanced parenting is parenting with p m c i know it's not as catchy but um let's work with this so the first one is prioritizing right this is knowing your responsibilities first and then the rights sometimes we enter either the domain of marriage or parenting always with all of our rights in check like we know what we're gonna get what we expect what to do to us but then when you follow up with do you know what is expected of you we don't really always know those things right so you have to know the rights uh the responsibilities of the uh you know the role that you're going to take on first and then after you've really you know make sure you have that down then you move on to your rights right so you should know what are the rights of children over the parent not the opposite right what what is the child's right over me what will i be called uh into account for what is Allah expecting of me because as we mentioned parenting is an amen it's a trust from Allah so right there the the role or the responsibility is on us to fulfill the rights of children right but if we don't even know those clearly that's a problem so we have to know what the rights of children are over us next or then we we can learn what are the rights of the parent over the child right now that i know my responsibility as a parent what am i owed as a parent and what should i be guiding my children too so that i am raising responsible children who understand that life is always about this balance right of roles responsibilities rights and so that they understand also what's expected of them and over time as they grow that they really again have a clear understanding and then the next thing is really important because this is probably in my estimation one of the biggest contributing factors to why households are falling apart is because we have not yet defined are we going to model our marriages and families according to our cultures or islam because if it's your culture you're going to likely have a lot of problems especially when you look at blended families and you have a husband and a wife who come from two different cultures now who gets to call the shots right because if my culture if i think my culture is the best and my husband thinks his culture is the best then what we're going to be squabbling over every little thing you know my this is you know the custom in my family yours isn't as good and it's just this constant competition that's really terrible to start off of a marriage like that let alone a family but so many people do that and even within the same cultures you'll have this so it's not even a you know mixed family you'll have well my you know tribe of this culture does it this way or my family did it this it's all ignorance and it's why we have so many problems so we have to go back to making that definitive decision which is our family is going to be run according to islam the model that's set before us by the prophet sallallahu alayhi wasallam and what he taught us and all of the teachings of our faith that have come after that is what we are going to run our family according to not culture because culture changes it you know it's it's fluid islam is fixed and it's perfect then you want to go into the next part here which is modeling again if you want a balanced household you have to understand the children learn especially when they're younger they learn mostly from modeling they're watching you they're learning and they're imitating and if you are not going to put forth virtuous acts and be a good person and all of that meaning then to expect that your child has the best adab and manners and is just a model child is is is quite frankly insane because where would they learn that if you're not doing that yourself so you have to be working on your own self and really correcting your own character so that your children can learn from you but if you're oblivious to yourself and you're just you know dictating to your children thinking that they're gonna learn under your command it doesn't work that way so they need proper guidance they need to you know make sure that again that you you have that understanding that they learn from by imitating listening and observing so model good behavior excellent behavior and then the last part of this is customizing right so this idea of a one size fits all model of parenting is also uh it doesn't work there are there are philosophies of parenting but each of us have to really think about what works for our family and so if you have multiple children in your in your family you have to take the time as a parent to know them to know their temperament their personalities what's different about one in one house you will find multiple different personality types you'll find the aggressive kind of intense personality type you know strong willed you'll have the more sensitive you'll have the extroverted that is very social and you know out and about it makes friends easily and then you'll have others that are more introverted if you don't realize this about your children and you kind of just give all your kids the same rules and and and expect them all to fall in line like little you know soldiers in an army it just doesn't work that way you have to be paying attention to the nuances in your children's personalities and realize that even in the same household even in the same womb right twins triplets quadruplets all of them their womb mates right as they call them you will find children who share the same womb completely different temperaments that's a law that's just a proof of a law right there they have the same DNA but completely different personalities and temperaments so you have to take the time to know them and also you have to know about what each child what the dangers are for each child like if you have a child that's easily influenced it's they're they're very you know people pleasing you have to know that they are going to have a very different set of dangers than the one that is super strong willed and you know has a very like kind of take charge attitude they have a different set of circumstances they're working with right are they going to have you know each of them will have challenges because of those you know what they're presenting so the dangers as when they're young look like that but as they grow older right think of a highly influential child that enters adolescence what happens to that child when when you know uh they make a friend with someone in school that's telling them hey let's go do this and let's go do that if you're not aware of your child's temperament to give them the the strength to be able to resist giving in to people pleasing and just kind of going along with the the crowd then they will fall and that's what's happening everywhere you're finding a just a crisis with our youth because all of these children who have not been fortified with what they need specifically are being then set out into you know amongst the wolves and we expect them to be fine it doesn't work that way we we are our responsibilities to protect them part of protection isn't just keeping them safe from you know a shelter and and and all of that it's also seeing the the present dangers and giving them the tools necessary this is what tarbiyah is the tools necessary for them to navigate the world but it requires present parenting it requires that you're paying attention and you actually care to know the differences in your child's personality and that's where temperament theory is very useful i think i may have mentioned it before but temperaments we have in our faith this is called mezaj it is to study the the different temperament so i mentioned extroverted introverted you also will understand the difference between a reactive child and a non-reactive so for example if you have a child that gets very easily agitated and blows up emotionally they just they can't contain their emotions i mean that's typical of young children but even if you have adolescents or young teenagers who are very instantly you know just it's like a switch comes on that child needs to learn how to regulate that emotion right because they can harm them and they can harm other people that's why you see a lot of harm happening in the world because of people who've never learned to regulate that emotional response to whatever the circumstance is right but then you have the opposite of a child who is non-reactive and so there there are a lot of you know kids for example who get bullied easily it's not that they are weak we make that mistake and assume that some children have a slower emotional process to heightened situations so when a classmate comes and grabs their you know thing you know whether it's a young child or or with an older kid if something happens to them that kind of comes left field they're not prepared for it they have that freeze you know that they kind of freeze in the moment now if you don't teach your child that that's natural right then what happens is someone else tells them how to label themselves or think of themselves you're weak so then they carry that label forever that oh i'm this weak person because i can't respond or react in the moment that is horrible to do that to a young child whereas if you teach them before which is what we're supposed to do that listen Allah made all of us very different some people are reactive some people are not and the beautiful examples that we can draw from which is where present parenting is is really shown is look at the khulefa ar-rashidun they are each of them they represent one of the four temperaments and they were all very powerful leaders but they were not the same you have abu bakr who was very quiet subdued but incredibly strong he was the right hand of the prophesy i said i'm always there by his side dutiful stable but he was not a person of many words right and then you have al-maq radil al-han he was intimidating people were terrified of him right and that's why when he embraced Islam he brought so much strength to the umma because he was just this mountain of a man and he maintained that throughout his life and then you have uh othman who was gentle so gentle that the angels were shy of him he was he was known to have incredible modesty even the angels were shy of othman radil al-han and then you have said na'ali who is cheerful and so warm and welcoming all of them again according to our scholars representing one of the four temperaments you have in uh i said abu bakr you have the melancholic which is again not very verbose not very talkative but stoic strong non-reactive stable force choleric is the next temperament that's in al-maq forceful very outspoken right formidable then you have othman radil al-han said othman who is the phlegmatic temperament gentle very um loving modest kind of just calming presence excuse me and then you have said na'ali who was the sanguine cheerful sociable always you know just warm and welcoming these are beautiful models that we can teach our children so that they see that all of their temperaments are beautiful and not one is not better than the other so i remember once i did a talk many years ago uh at an event and this mother came to me afterwards i was talking about temperaments and she came to me afterwards she was crying she was crying because she said i wish i knew this when my children were younger she said as you're explaining this i realized that i punished my quiet son always his whole life because i compared him to his older brother who was the more outgoing athletic super talkative social one she said i didn't realize i just thought he was deficient right because that's what the society tells you they that we we create these you know black and white archetypes where it's like if you're not this way there's something wrong with you and our children are susceptible to those messages because in their world what what children are exposed to by celebrities and by all the other stuff that's in on the online world is saying the same thing that if you're famous you're cool right you're relevant if you have a lot of followers or in school if you are what popular right if you're popular that means you have a lot of friends which means you're super funny you're outgoing you're charming right and so a child is told to look at themselves constantly in contrast to that and if they don't fit that they feel that they are what i'm a loser this is the self talk of our children our youth are literally bombarded with this message in their inner voice i have no friends i'm a loser i'm quiet i don't speak up in class i'm a loser i'm this i don't i don't you know sign up for this sport or do this i'm a loser this is the negative self talk because nobody is telling them that no you're not a loser you're actually one of the beautiful temperaments that Allah gave us and this is actually you know and then you can go on and expand and say that the prophesies had all four of these temperaments in perfect balance and so you're representing one of his temperaments right and this is how we empower our children to not fall into the narratives that they're being taught in the in this general society a parent who's not aware of these things will not know to do that they won't even talk to their children and sometimes we are the ones actually who are giving them those messages right what's wrong with you when i was young i never did that what's wrong with you what's wrong with you what's wrong with you if that's what your children are hearing why would you expect them to have any sense of confidence in themselves because you're making a comparison to either yourself or other children your cousins how many kids and i hear from youth by the way so i'm not speaking in just general terms i'm telling you of some of the pain that youth have come to me with about what their parents tell them you know they're comparing them to cousins or other friends always and making them feel that they're deficient and it's because we have failed to recognize that our children are all beautiful every single child is beautiful they are light they are in fitra they are sinless right and that's why we love to see children you know uh shahamsa mentioned this recently but he said you know when you look at the face of children right it just it lights you up you don't feel that with adults you know we don't get like oh what you know i mean some adults mashallah when there are when there are people of god but generally speaking because he was saying we've amassed so much sin right that is reflecting in our face whereas children are pure and sinless they even smell pure you know he was saying this too like an adult you don't bathe for a few days it's not it's not a pleasant sight or smell but children you don't really see anything right subhanAllah because they're sinless so they are light and if you don't appreciate that about them and you just kind of you know their nuisances shooing them away or you know we just we need to bring back restore that that sense of respect towards children inshallah but this is balanced parenting so that prioritization modeling and customizing and it's also now a reminder about that we've mentioned this but another reminder parenting is a trust from god right allah spada actually tells us now specifically fear Allah and treat your children small or grown fairly with equal justice we all need this reminder because we're very um we call all young children and we're tenting we're tending to them we we rush to them as soon as they have something going on because we're so afraid they're fragile to us right but as our kids get a little older we start to you know wane in that in that attentiveness towards them and we almost kind of just figure it out right do it on your own i mean that's not to say there's you know anything wrong with trying to create that sense of independence and autonomy in children but it's more about the heart and if you are no longer you know treating your grown-up children with that same sense of fairness and and mercy and compassion and justice that you were when they were younger this is the message that you need to be reminded of because their age doesn't matter you cannot be harsher just because your child is now bigger and and seems like they're an adult which yes when when they're technically speaking when they've reached puberty they are considered adults in islam but that doesn't mean that you begin to speak to them in a in a way that you've diminished that that sense of justice and fairness right because you see sometimes parents losing a lot more patience with older children than they ever would with younger children and it's because you know you should know better that's the attitude and a lot of it does come back to that comparison i could never speak to my parents this way i would never leave my bedroom this way i would never do this and the harshness comes through but your treatment of the child should still be fair and just be on the side of truth don't let your ego always run the show basically whether they're young or small and then we mentioned that children's rights are mandated by god so we have to know what they are and there are hadiths that that describe in essence what the rights of children are but among them are that they have a beautiful name that you name your children with beautiful names and not names that are you know in any way disparaging sometimes for you know people people will come up and i'm sure you've seen it now there's a lot of attention seeking behavior even through children right so it's like i want a weird name that has some abstract meaning i've seen people like even symbols and letters and like there's no real meaning to that name but it's it makes the parent feel good you know like i got a i got a cool eclectic strange name i'm the mother or father of so-and-so but if that name has no meaning or it has a bad meaning this would be you know wrong on the parent because the child should be you know deserving of something of honor right so name your children with excellent names another right is that we educate them and give them sound education now the word education is complicated because immediately we think of schooling right but we're not talking about schooling here necessarily we're talking about tarbiyah that your children need to know Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala they need to know the prophecy i said them they need to know the book of Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala they need to know their akhida they need to have a grounding in the deen and that takes precedence over all the other stuff that we're worried about and i know because i was there too with my young children the first thing you think about is oh my god can they read i need to get them to read so we are all thinking of abc's in the womb the first book is like okay abc's like that infant is like just born yesterday we don't need to read to that child yet but there is this fear right that we're not gonna we're gonna mentally you know handicap them if we don't do these things early but then the spiritual handicap nobody thinks about what about their spiritual well-being what if they don't know anything or they don't have the right understanding and then you put them into environments where they're going to get the wrong understanding how are they going to navigate that so if you're going to not give your children that foundational knowledge but then put them in an environment where they are taught by other people who literally do not believe in god and who may in fact you know in one way or another get that message across to your children then how can they protect the how can they be protected so it's our task to lay the very very strong foundation and when it comes to the the six articles of faith for example you know we know right god his messengers his books his prophets the angels the day of judgment heaven and hell qadr right these are the six articles i would caution with young children introducing the heavy topics we don't need to talk about fire and burnstone and hellfire we don't need to talk about shaytan with young children they don't need to know that iblis exists don't scare them and frighten them like oh it's dark at night you know don't do this or you know people sometimes it's very cultural to do that but it's it's traumatizing to young children when you introduce those ideas because they're in the world of imagination and play in their fitrah and inshallah they're with allah always in this this beautiful state and then you bring them out of that as we say the garden of eden and you cast them into hell with these images terrifying images no don't do it if you need to control your parents your children threatening them with that kind of message is not the way to go you have to do better and the better thing to do is to actually teach them about allah and love of allah and jannah and angels of light and the stories the incredible stories from the seer of the provisionalism which we should know because one of the things that i find devastating in the modern world is that our children would rather sit in front of a screen which is just you know puts them in a complete spell and and you know extended exposure as we know absolutely affects their brain but they would rather do that because they've entered this fantastic world of lights and images all based on farce it's all lies right it's all imagined it's just it's fantasy it's not real but then we haven't done our job to convey to them the truth of a story like the revelation right like it's not one mirage when when the provisionalism was first you know seeing angel jibreel if we don't have the words because we haven't learned those stories well enough to convey these powerful real truthful stories to our children but then we're quick to turn on disney plus and and and netflix and let them enter that world of where shaytan i mean literally there if you haven't done the research look go and look at the many people who've shown the hidden symbolism in a lot of the messages in disney films there are subliminal messages this is not you know conspiracy theory it's real they do not really care they like to you know put put certain things out there because that's the way they normalize things right so anyway that's a different conversation but think about this as a parent that you need to know these stories well so that they can come to a masjid inshallah or come you know to a space where they will feel so invigorated by hearing a story about you know when angel jibreel came to to ghar hira and he saw the process and he said squeeze like all of that imagery that you're bringing because you've done the work to say i'm gonna show you what a real incredible story looks like you know if you're and and not keep turning you away to video games and films i'm gonna bring that to you that all of Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala i'm gonna show you that and i'm gonna sustain that with continued exposure to the seerah and the Qur'an because there are miracles upon miracles upon miracles that Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala has left for us that are treasure it's a treasure trove of stories but we don't know it so then we don't know how to convey it and we cannot expect the masjid or a teacher to always do it it's on us as parents to learn if you can read you have to know how to do these things so an education is really that it's that knowledge of God that's the ultimate and the highest form of knowledge so this is just a reminder for all of us you know to lead we mentioned about modeling before but we have to lead by example and we have to know the difference between commanding the respect and demanding when we begin to raise our voice to our children which we all are guilty of at times and sometimes it's because they're far that's not what i'm talking about because if you're just trying to reach them that's fine but if it's they're right in front of you and you're angry because maybe you want something done or something happened that shouldn't have happened a perfect example you know your child goes to to to get some milk and then the entire jug collapses on the floor right you have to if that's ever happened to you before or a glass breaks or something just you know disturbs you because it was it was a unexpected event pay attention to your reaction in that moment right some parents i've seen it actually it's quite tragic and very upsetting to see a young child be reprimanded harshly because their small hands can't hold like sorry let me all love forgive us because we we let the world overwhelm us then we don't realize these precious hearts don't deserve a scolding because their hands couldn't hold something properly so we have to move away from this idea that that if i raise my voice i get what i want that is a failure of parenting you don't need to raise your voice you just need to speak with a respect and you can be firm you can say please don't do that but to yell to threaten or to scold harshly and humiliate a child just because they were children is a failure on us and may Allah forgive us for breaking pure hearts of children may Allah never let us do that to children so this point about you know tailoring our parenting is really important as i mentioned but here we have some sage advice from said Ali radi allah and he reminds us beautifully that we have to do better in terms of tailoring our parenting because first of all do not raise your children the way your parents raised you because they were born of a different time so whatever you experienced as a child of your parents is not enough as you know to replicate you can borrow from certain things that worked for you or that were pleasant good memories good rules that your parents showed and it worked for you and your sibling sure but if that's all that's informing your parenting and you're not reading books you're not learning about children's temperaments developmental stages you know that that in the next uh i mean look at the insight look at the insight that they gave us 1400 plus years ago about the developmental stages of children that they're only now learning about right if you can if you know eric erickson psychosocial development you know of eight stages it's all it's subhanallah reflecting the exact you know information that we had centuries ago play with your children till the age of seven why because this is look at them they're so sweet this is the age of play they're learning this world is new they've been thrust into the universe and everything is sensory so they're just learning they need to touch they need to put things in their mouth and sometimes we don't want them to but that's how they know things right so let them play but you know what play with them enter their world you see some fathers who come home from work they don't want to play with their children i'm tired and they'll go straight to their video games computers start working more even though you just came from work let's just work they don't want to get on the ground and sit and let's wrestle let's play you want to play legos you want to play play dough mom maybe if you're stay at home you have to do you have no choice you will go crazy right if you do not do that sometimes you're doing two things at the same time you're cooking you're flipping you know but i doesn't then also playing with the child or cooking rice and you're just doing all the stuff but you have no choice because children demand our attention so it goes to both but the point is is we have to play with our children enter their world go into their playrooms and i'm telling you probably some of the sweetest parenting moments i've ever had in my life was when i did that when i took a pause for my adult mind and brain and said you know what i just want to be a kid today let me go into my kids room and literally and well sometimes i would get emotional because the the shock of my kids seeing me enter without invitation they didn't invite me they didn't say mommy come play with us i would open the door and i'd just go sit on the floor and they were like frozen looking at me like what are you doing here because i was in a time i wasn't as often as i would have liked it to be but they were very pleasantly surprised when i said just here to play with you can i play with you you you want to play with us of course and then of course mommy so here's this guy i have two boys so it's lego land basically in my house still is but the joy that would overcome them at seeing me wanting to enter their world we have to do that as parents right so play with your children be silly be goofy if you come ask my kids they'll tell you a whole other side of hosai that you guys wouldn't even know or think it exists but yes i am very goofy i'm very i do voices i will get into character i do it all there's nothing really because i want them to have fun and we can we can do that masha'Allah my my sister-in-law is here so i'll just mention this about her she's masha'Allah wonderful with children may Allah bless her but in addition to her her husband i always say who's my brother-in-law i say he's like a walking amusement park for kids because masha'Allah his ability to connect with children especially i've seen him mostly with boys but he is just so fun am i kids to this day even though i have a 13 year old who's almost you know six feet they still get excited when humza kakas coming because they know it's going to be a lot of fun you know and he's like that with his own children so of course he's going to be like that with children in general um and so har masha'Allah amazing ability to connect tell stories read do the same voices play you know this is the kind of parenting philosophies that really work with young children so do that more and get over your um your cultural you know added sometimes it's just culture that tells us oh that's kind of silly or but no just if the prophesies said him could do it who are we he played with children he let them crawl on his back he would race he would do things so who are we what we're too cool we're too adult we're too mature it's all ego be like him and you'll succeed discipline and teach them from the age of seven to 14 this is the next level so when they reach that age of seven you're going to see an awakening that happens because they are starting to think about themselves in the world around them and they do you do start to see a little bit more maturity so this is where giving them more tasks giving them responsibilities teaching them about their farah it right like what the will do and then prayer starting that process and over time solidifying that identity that i'm a muslim too that i pray just like mama and baba that i make will do that i read quran all of that comes in that age of seven to 14 right and then befriend them at the age of 14 plus so now as we're you know we're teaching in the middle and guiding and then the befriending comes when they really need it you know our teens are going through a lot they have a lot of social and pressures that that overwhelm them and they need to know that their parents are a refuge right so if we are meeting them constantly with a litany of tasks that they have to do and responsibilities and we don't really make time to connect and just say hey how are you how's it going talk to me and just you know hold them you know sometimes you'd be surprised and i really want to say this for parents of boys because i have boys but one of the destructive things about modern society is that it has created you know this uh i mean it's just something that happened with boys around this age of adolescents where emotionally they start to really shut down and they don't talk about what they're feeling because they are told or conditioned that in society they're conditioned by society to think that emotions are for girls right so boys just have to act tough and and bury all of it bury their insecurities bury their fears bury their anxieties because if you talk about it you're not you're not strong you're weak right you're like a girl that's really the the insult that that boys receive to be anything like a girls and insult all of that it's horrible but um again when you look at the Prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam and the way that he nurtured this emotionality and even the youth you know there's that famous story of um Umair who lost his bird and the Prophet sallallahu alaihi sallam you know he was holding his bird and the Prophet sallallahu alaihi sallam went to him and he basically helped him reconcile and grieve over the loss of his pet like you have permission to be sorry you know you have i mean feel sorrow and sadness he didn't tell him toughen up what's wrong with you it's just a bird go bury it you know like some of our cultures do around these things it's like because you're a boy you can't cry a girl sure oh poor girl it's horrible to do that let our boys be human beings they're not robots so allowing them to be expressive towards you and inviting that is so essential as a parent inviting them to talk to you so with my boys we you know i do and i have to do it again because i kind of had a hiatus but i would do these what we called mommy and son like dates where we would go separately so i would not take the family i wouldn't take them as a unit i would take them each separately and give them a total separate fun experience all for themselves so that they get undivided mommy or baba attention and my husband did the same it was both of us having to do it with each kid and they loved it because it was like i feel special i feel seen and you you'll love it too because you realize like i'm always speaking to more than one of you you know and it's nice to just see one of you and not worry about what the other one's doing right now so to separate the kids is is good good to do but that is essential at the age of the later teen years so now i kind of just go into similar i mean it's similar discussion is what i just said but we kind of want to know what young children need most they need love safety and guidance all of our kids these are their primary needs right now when they're young right and the tools that we can do to inculcate the love of the promise life sentiment in our children is storytelling with animation so we have to be more animated in our storytelling we have to know those stories song in rhymes you know i am this is a shameless plug but why not i wrote a book called clear the path um a rhyme book for unmanners for little muslims and the reason i wrote that book is because i worked with young children i realized like wow i could teach them all day about a law and the prophet and just lecture them but it's not going to stick but if i sing to them anything they'll remember so i said okay we all want our children to have good manners why not give them a book on manners that rhymes and it works because they just wanted to sing the lyrics all day but what were they singing about being a good muslim so you know rhymes work and you can um make up your own songs you don't have to cut and paste everything from a professional just make silly songs up they don't care they're the most receptive amazing audience you can have as a young child you can be tone deaf have no rhyme skills whatsoever have no musicality but your young kids will go yay because they just like to see you as not you know this adult and you're being willing to be silly so do that stuff and then model you know that's what they need modeling and then the second group or second developmental stages at eight to 11 what do they need love of course respect and reassurance this world becomes very scary at this age because they're coming out of as we say like the Garden of Eden and they're now because in Jannah everything is great it's rosy it's amazing right but when you start to see and hear about things like young you know middle schoolers this is where they hear stories from their parents their friends about kidnapping and murders and you know like really dark themes and so poor kids start to suddenly you know they get scared of the world so they need a lot of reassurance and a lot of love and hugs and it's okay so get them in the habit of calling on Allah if you're scared if you're upset about something just call on Allah Allah's with you always he'll always be there for you he'll rescue you and I can't tell you how many times I have that like my son will come out of nowhere and he'll go mommy mommy you know he said I had a headache and I was feeling so bad and I made dua and I asked Allah please get rid of my headache and it's gone now I'm like of course because your thoughts must the job but they know to do that because we taught them you you're in pain make dua we'll take it away so we have to teach that at this age so that they get in those good habits right and so what tools can we teach them with storytelling of course always works with kids at all ages but now we want to move into those metaphors and analogies too that's another really good tool to use because there are you know a lot of stories in the Quran are metaphorical right and lessons in the Quran and so you know that's that's the those are the types of stories that work and also because they're in that age of seeing the the you know the the sort of dystopian nature of the world the good versus evil right that's kind of what they begin to understand the world as it's really good to expose them to like stories where of nobility of valor of like overcoming odds so the battle stories of the sida for example right like but but there's an amazing story to tell children at this age because the numbers are so like incredible at how they beat right the the murshid-e-keen despite their low numbers but because they had you know the the the Prophet's wisdom obviously but Allah swt sent helpers to them all of that imagery needs to come through so showing stories of overcoming hardships really speaks to this age because they're going through a lot of that internally and then of course modeling the excellent behavior that we want with them and the final stage you know what do they need the most love respected empathy we need to empathize with our teens because they are going through a lot that we don't understand and instead of judging them and expecting always the best gold standard of behavior at all times always we have to also figure out what's wrong why aren't they for example sluggish to come to prayer right because a lot of i get these questions all the time my teen doesn't want to pray anymore they don't want to come to the masjid i'm frustrated what do i do with them yes i can understand to be frustrated by that because you want the best for your children so you feel like they're standing in the way of that but i would say find out why what's going on maybe there's something that's happening maybe there's a classmate of theirs from school you never know muslims go to the school together that they don't like to come see at the masjid because they have a history that you don't know about you got to fish for what the core issue is do the investigation ask the right questions get to the core is there something you know a very good example like my my teen's son when he was maybe 11 or 12 he just flat out said mommy sometimes in prayer i get distracted like i can't really focus you know and instead of responding with that with like shame like well that's not good and just start judging that you want to give them you know like what's going on like what are you thinking about what are the things that come come up for you and you know sure enough it's going to be the game that they have the next day or they're seeing their friends you know all the stuff that we adults also experience we're always planning future events during our prayer i would not be able to forgive us so we just have to humanize them and say okay so let's come up with some tools of how you can be more focused and so i told my son for example i says what i want you to do i mean just if you feel feel free to use this but i said i want you to for every prayer before you get in the prayer think of a couple of things one one thing that you're grateful for just one thing one thing and one thing only do that to think about the suras you want to recite before you get in the prayer don't make those on you know as you're doing it because sometimes we just get in prayer immediately and then we're thinking of these things but i said if you're more intentional before the prayer you'll find yourself more focused right and it worked for him right and so it's just these are little tools that we can teach them but that's empathizing like i get it your your child your brain is distracted easily so let me help you rein that mind in by giving you tools instead of shaming because i want you to be perfect and you're not and now i'm at it you they're just what parents do so how can we inculcate love of god and his messenger friendship and mentorship it's really important that we extend also for other adults in their lives that can play that role of a mentor because there are there are adults believe it or not it happens it's it's happened to me before and i've been on the other side of it where the parent and their friend or this mentor will verbatim say the exact same thing to the child but they take it more from the mentor than they do for the parent and for the parent it's hard it's hard on our hearts to see like well really i've given you my whole life and you're going to take this person's word i said the same thing to you last week and you didn't even believe me right but it's just the way it goes and this is part of their actual natural you know development because in this age they are wired to start to separate from us and it makes perfect sense they eventually have to be like the bird that leaves the nest and fly on their own so if there's always this tether to mom and dad they will not learn to fly so there is this kind of detachment that slowly begins in adolescence and we have to be okay with that where that's why enlisting the help of trusted mentors is not seen as you know something that we should be territorial about no you're bringing them in to be helpers along the way for you and your family so look for those helpers by the way when they're young because trust me time moves very quickly and all of a sudden you're like oh my god i need some really good adults that i can trust my kids to so forge those relationships when


Boom What's up money gigs mr. V here welcome to another video guys so into this video I want to give you guys some update as far as the content that you're gonna be seeing here on the channel Again when I started doing the $250 a day video here on the channel I didn't know that a lot of people were interested in this so Ever since I started that movement. We've had a lot of people join And continue to want to improve that skills So when I started again, I was a student like and of you guys today And so and I said learning and I've actually learned a ton and I've made some changes with the strategy And I've learned some new tools that had made me a better trader So I want to share some of the content is becoming your way in the next few weeks or month Before we get started guys if you're new to the channel We took about how to earn money how to save money how to invest and build wealth So there's something that interests you go ahead and hit that subscribe button and the notification bell So you don't miss out on new content So again, I talked about making $250 a day trading on Weibo and that video was quite a success a lot of people No fun interest in that and started asking a lot of questions and looking to get into the space Because I think it was kind of like a myth out there that you needed thousands of dollars or you need a lot of money and so much Experience to be able to do it which I think you need a little bit of experience But you can actually start especially if you're starting small to do it So again, I started as a student shared my experience with you guys What I was doing and now I've actually learned a lot more things a lot more tools In my tool set that I can I want to share with you guys and I'm gonna be doing that in Videos I'm gonna be putting out here subsequently. So we're talking again topics like You know when to trade how to place trade when to take profit What percentage of profit she you take also where to find the stocks that you trade using stop losses using trailing stops So all those nuances that you guys have questions about I'm gonna be talking about those and I'm gonna give you guys a complete blueprint So I'm talking about new indicators that I've started using Improve my strategy added another strategy trading options to so again I'm not just like one one mindset here I'm actually diversifying in opening up my ability to make my profit So but at the same time minimizing my losses. So that's the goal here So I want to share that with you guys and I would again like I said, I've been doing it in subsequent videos So I'm gonna be putting out these videos and again in combination with the other content I normally put are you know doing some stock analysis and stuff like that talking about portfolio and then we'll go back and revisit One topic you have actually neglected it here on the channel a little bit Dividend portfolio because some of you guys can have questions of that. So we're gonna go back again take a look at that Again, what I want us to do is again start looking at even some long-term plays that we can cover So again, this video was specifically again Just to give you guys an idea of what to expect as far as making 250 dollars a day strategy update New tools new indicators Again, some changes on we will platform that would help you be a better trader and all that good stuff So that's what I want to cover here And so you're gonna see that in the coming video But before I start putting out those videos if you do have any questions as far as Day trading on the we will platform do not hesitate put those in the comment section I want to specifically go through those read through them and see which ones Really weren't a video and I'll create a video specifically for that topics Do not hesitate to put stuff in the comment section if you have any questions again as far as you know Trading on we both a trading on we both or any of the topics that you think that weren't a Respond and I would respond in the video form if that works better If you just stop that I can just respond by typing our respond to the comment But if I see something that interesting that More people can benefit from trust me I would put that on my list and I'll create a video for that So again, let me know the comment section what you guys are thinking what kind of content you want me to start with And what are your challenges when it comes to investing and it comes to trading on the we will platform again Drop those in the comment section if you're new to the channel We're talking about how to earn money how to save money how to invest and build wealth So that's something I interest you go ahead and hit that subscribe button any notification But so you don't miss out on your content again guys that little bell icon is very important because if you don't hit that Sometimes YouTube doesn't send out those notifications and if you're looking to get started with investing We both has your promotion where if you sign up and deposit five dollars You get two free stocks links in the description below and as always guys do your due diligence Don't be a greedy savage.


Okay, so our next talk starts, and since it's two minutes late, the talk after Brunt will also start, two minutes late. Okay, let's start. Okay, thanks, Rachel. Hi, I'm Brent Waters. I'm going to be talking about a punctured programming approach to adaptively secure functional encryption. So let me just start by talking very briefly about functional encryption. This is a way of thinking of encryption that moves beyond the all or nothing decryption semantics of traditional public key encryption. In this system, what we want to do is endow this user Alice with a secret key which doesn't let her necessarily see the whole message, but lets her learn a particular function of the message. So we'll have an authority which generates a master's secret key, public parameter pair, keeping the master's secret key to herself. She'll generate then a secret key F for Alice. And Bob, if he encrypts a message M, and eventually this ciphertext gets to Alice, she can learn the function F of M on the message. So this might be something like she learns if an encrypted email was spam or not, but doesn't learn anything more than that, for example. Okay, and then, you know, the progression of works that led to this and around 2008 we first started using the term functional encryption, sort of changed it over from predicate encryption. Okay, so to explain the state of the art in functional encryption, I think it helps to kind of look sort of pre-offication, this whole obfuscation explosion and post. So pre-offication, there were sort of two different flavors. One was this attribute-based encryption, where there'd be this payload we wanted to hide, and we have this metadata which we sort of evaluate the function over, but this metadata itself is tied to the ciphertext but not hidden. So at first we could do things like boolean formulas on it, and then eventually we're able to, especially this neat GVW work, we're able to move to circuits, which was pretty neat. Okay, but that only hides this payload. Then for kind of true functional encryption, we were limited to things like doing a dot product with a ciphertext and both the key were these vectors. We could do a dot product test if it's zero or not, which can build so many things off of that, but it's still a far cry from, let's say, polynomial-sized circuits. Then when obfuscation came along in this GGHRSW paper, what we are also able to show there is that if you combine indistinguishability obfuscation with a special type of simulation, sound nizics, you could get functional encryption, or at least what we call selectively secure functional encryption. This is where an attacker that says, okay, you cannot distinguish, or a attacker says I can distinguish between these two messages. He's forced to declare these two messages before even seeing the public parameters. So it's kind of a useful model for, I mean it's a challenge to get to this point, but ideally we want it to be adaptive. Okay, so for this talk I try to answer these two questions in some sense, can we build a better functional encryption system, one that is a simpler, and hopefully without this extra nizic type primitive around, and the second one is can we make it adaptively secure, that is, can we get a polynomial time reduction from our system to the underlying, with polynomial loss to the underlying indistinguishability obfuscation. Okay, so to present this talk, I have this really two results here. The first one is going to be a simple, collectively secure functional encryption system that comes from IO, indistinguishable obfuscation plus one-way functions. Actually it's a little more secure than that. We actually can do it for this semi-adaptive thing where all private key queries come after the challenge side for text, a little bit better than the selective, but I'll just call it selective. Second, we're going to present the first, actually that came in the literature, adaptively secure FV scheme that comes from indistinguishability obfuscation plus injective one-way functions. And to present this talk what I want to do is first go into the selective construction proof so you can get some idea of these kind of punctured programming machinations used to get around in all this stuff. Second, for the adaptive one, just due to, in some sense, how complex it is and time constraints, I'm more going to give an overview of the main ideas, which I would say the central idea there was we can take a one-bounded scheme that is adaptively secure and kind of connect this with a selectivist techniques to get full adaptive security end-to-end, and this is actually, and then finally, I'll kind of actually just make a couple of remarks we'll share here a good talk from Pranjan on how this bootstrapping technique can be simplified and kind of made better and stuff like that. Okay, so for selectively secure functional encryption, let me first go over the basic definitions and tools we're going to use. Functional encryption scheme again has four algorithms set up in crypt, keygen and decrypt that have roughly the semantics I talked about earlier. Informally correctness says that if we have a ciphertext that encrypts a message M and if I have a secret key for F and I execute decrypt, I will learn F of M, okay?  Here what we basically have is that the challenger will give the public parameters to the attacker. A attacker can query for secret keys from many different functions, and it submits two, and gets these secret keys, and it submits two messages M0 and M1 with the constraint that for each function, F of M0 must equal F of M1. Otherwise the system could be trivially distinguishable just using the natural power you get from the secret keys. Okay, then the challenger does the usual thing. It flips a random coin B, encrypts the message M sub B. We can ask for more private key queries with the same constraints, and the attacker's job is to guess B prime, and his advantage is that probably he does this over one half. Okay, so in some sense the usual definition. Selective security is where we sort of remove this selection thing up to step zero ahead of seeing the public parameters. So in some sense the security game here, the adaptive one seems like the right one, and we like to be able to get to there, and of course without using sub-exmanential hardness assumptions in this kind of usual trick. Okay, so the first tool, if you guys haven't, I guess we even have the song about it now, is indistinguishability obfuscation. And so the idea is that we can take some original program, run it through some obfuscator compiler and get out a functionally equivalent program, but one that should hide it in a certain way. And the definition for indistinguishability obfuscation, which I guess is the most believable one in a sense, is that if I have two circuits C0 and C1 that are functionally equivalent, they give me the same output on every single input, then you cannot tell whether I gave you an obfuscation as C0 or I gave you an obfuscation as C1. Okay, now to build upon this, we're going to use this punctured programming ish technique introduced by Mitzvah and myself in 2014, where we want to like sort of the methodology, you remove a key element of a program that doesn't change the functionality, but it makes an attacker hard to win with it. The mechanism for this will be, the main tool will be this punctured pseudo-random function, which is really like a pseudo-random function, but I can give you a punctured version of it, I can give you a punctured version at x star, and that basically says that you can evaluate the function everywhere except for x star, and moreover, at the point of x star, you cannot tell the difference between the functions output at x star and just the truly random value. Okay, that's the idea of a punctured pseudo-random function, and this can be built from one-way functions, GGM tree, that type of deal. The second thing I'm going to have is a slightly higher level abstraction, which I can build from puncturable PRFs, I'll call it PDE, and this is a deterministic encryption system, this is going to be a tool I'm using to build other stuff, and it has the usual encryption, decryption semantics, but I can also give you a punctured version of this, and here I puncture on two messages, and what this means, essentially the puncture key means, if I puncture on M0 and M1, that means you can decrypt ciphertext for any other message other than M0 and M1, remember there's only one ciphertext per message because it's deterministic, and moreover, if I show you ciphertext for M0 and M1 for M1, but I don't tell you which is which, I don't tell. Okay, so I puncture this, an encryption from M0 is ambiguous relative to an encryption for M1. Okay, so that's going to be our other tool, which we're going to be using to make this, and we can derive it fairly simply from previous work I'll mention. Okay, so let's actually see the selectively secures system, I'll give it a little bit of detail, as I said. So first of all, the public parameters are going to be this program obfuscated, so they're going to include a puncture period K, and pretty much what this program will do is just take an input R and do it, let's say, length-doubling pseudo-random generator T, and evaluate the pseudo-random function on T to get a small K will actually be a PDE, a puncturable deterministic key K. Actually, let's skip the secret key for a second and go to encryption. So to encrypt the message, I'm just going to choose a random value R and run it into my program, which will give me an output some tag value T and a corresponding K. Okay, so that's how I'm going to encrypt, is just feed it into this program. Now, the secret key for function F, what it will do is if you give it a tag T, it will actually compute that PDE secret key K, like as F of capital K comma T, and then it will decrypt the C that you give it, so this is a PDE ciphertext C, so it sort of decrypted under the system and then evaluate the function on it, and give you that output. Okay, so we have the public parameters, which are just, encryption is pretty much just feeding in a random value into the public parameters. Oh, and then, so I want you to do that. You should use that to encrypt the message M under the PDE system, sorry about that. And the secret key is something that decrypts this PDE, kind of figures out from the tag what this PDE secret key is and applies the function on that. Okay, so not too complicated as far as things, as far as things go. And now I'd like to just kind of give you an overview of like kind of how this security proves in these punctured programming sort of look. So here's the first security, this is sort of the security game instantiated with our concrete scheme. So here we have the public parameters from our scheme, the secret key from our scheme, and there's going to be some challenge ciphertext, which will be generated by choosing R star randomly and saying T star is equal to PRG of R star, this is all done honestly, and then we're going to get this K star, which is this PDE key, and encrypt the message AMSA be under it, okay? And what I want to do is I want to create a sequence of games where I say the attacker cannot tell the difference between these games, but I'm slowly going to make it hard to actually win in this game, okay? So the first step I'm going to do is a simple PRG step, where instead of choosing R star randomly and driving T suit a randomly, I'm just going to choose T star, which let's say be two M bits, I'm going to just choose it randomly. And by PRG security, the attacker's advantage shouldn't be any better in this game than the previous one. The important point, though, is that now T star is, with high probability, T star is outside of the range of the PRG, okay? Whoops. Okay, so step two, what I'm going to do is I'm going to take away the ability to evaluate the PRF on T star from this public parameter program, and this can be done from indistinguishability obfuscation. The main point is that since T star is outside of the range of the PRG, this program will never need to actually use this. So it's okay to cut it out. This is almost like extra fat. And this is like a common technique in puncture programming. Since T star is likely, very likely not in the range of the PRG, taking away this capability doesn't hurt the, doesn't change the public parameters program, but it takes away this kind of knowledge in a sense. Then the second thing, it's a little more complicated step. On this tag T star, which is for the encryption tag, I'm going to sort of hardwire in how you're supposed to decrypt these messages C0 and C1. So here for C0 and C1 correspond to encryptions of either M0 and M1, but no matter what one you see, you don't actually kind of do what you normally do. You just hardwire in the output. And you're able to do this because by the rules of the game, F of M0 is equal to F of M1. Okay, so if T is equal to T star, then you just kind of hardwire the output. Otherwise you can, you know, otherwise if T is equal to T star, not those, you do the decryption of the PDE. And otherwise you just drive some other key. Okay? Okay, and then the step stuff to that, since we kind of punctured all these things out, we're able to derive this K star here, not from the punctual puref. We're able to do it randomly. And then once we have that, we can finally apply the security of the PDE scheme and I can change M sub B to always be an M sub 0 and kind of lose all information about the bit B. Okay? So I know I went through fairly fast, but I hope this at least kind of gives a, you know, some sense of relatively simple hybrid. You know, five steps, that's kind of the whole proof. So it's a fairly simple, selectively secure scheme. We kind of take these capabilities to evaluate outside. We cut it out of the public parameters. We hardwire the key. And once we kind of hardwire in what you're supposed to be doing, we can kind of flip the message. Okay? Okay, so that is the selectively secure scheme, in a sense, in a nutshell. And now we get to the, okay, the main, in some sense, the main result is how do we do it from adaptively secure. And so the good news is I won't try to torch you with another 15 steps of puncture puref hybrids for this one, but instead of what I want to do is kind of give you the high level idea of how we do things. Okay, so at the highest level, what we're going to do is we're going to combine selective-ish for some definition as selective-ish indistinguishably obfuscation techniques, which we saw some of in the previous slides. Along with, it was open whether we could do adaptively secure functional encryption, but if we do this one bounded case, this case where you only give away, let's say there's only one ciphertext and only one private key, this was actually known from previous work, like the GVW scheme. Okay, so we actually have this, but for the case we're not usually aiming for is this one bounded, we want unbounded occlusions, but we can actually make use of this as a tool, and we can kind of bootstrap or combine these to get an adaptively secure functional encryption scheme. And so the way it kind of looks, let me give you kind of one snapshot of how things are going on. So a ciphertext for message M would be a pair of a tag T, and along with an obfuscation, the ciphertext will embed somehow the tag T and the message M, and the secret key for function F will be associated with a different tag Y and will somehow embed the function F, I guess along with Y2 I should say. Okay, and the idea of that is that these are kind of our ciphertext, and what they're going to do, instead of kind of decrypting or evaluating the function directly, they're going to generate one bounded ciphertext. So we're going to take these obfuscated programs instead of doing the job directly, they're going to kind of generate a fresh, in a sense, fresh relative to these tags, and then have the one bounded schemes actually do the work of decryption. So the first step what we'll have here is this key obfuscated program will take in the ciphertext tag T, and what it will do is it will produce a one-time functional encryption key itself relative to a key that's kind of generated from the pair Y, comma, T. So it's sort of pseudo-randomly generates a one-time system key relative to the pair of tags, like Y and T for the function F, and also develops what I'll call a signal, alpha sub Y, T, here. Now for the second step, we're going to feed the tag of the secret key along with the signal that was generated. The signal source says it's okay to go ahead to this obfuscated ciphertext, and this will generate a one-time functional encryption ciphertext for the message M. And importantly, this kind of subscript Y, T means for the same one-time key, like the one-time key is kind of pseudo-randomly generated from this P pair Y, comma, T. Okay, well, now that I have these two things, I have a one-time functional encryption key, a one-time functional encryption ciphertext. I can just run the decryption algorithms of these one-time existing schemes themselves, and I can do this one-time decryption algorithm and get F of M, okay? So this is this kind of bootstrap and going on instead of dealing with it directly, we generate these one-time schemes. Okay, now, you know, I won't have time for the actual proof, but I have a couple of highlights from it. First of all, there's many hybrids actually between each one I'll show you here, but we sort of embed and challenge the message M sub B. And then what we do is, in the ciphertext, in addition to embedding M sub B in there, the challenge message, we also embed always M sub zero, no matter what the bet is, kind of in this unused space at first, kind of doing nothing. And then what we do is we change the signal that I showed from the previous slide in each key. And the signal before said, hey, use your normal message, and now the signal kind of says, no, use this alternative previously unused message to decrypt. So I keep on changing the keys to say to use the different message in the system, and at the end, after I change all these keys, it's actually this first part that's unused, and then we can kind of excise it out so that no information about the bit B is left. Okay? Now, of course, this is very high level and there's many, you know, to actually execute this, it was kind of a bit of a pain.  Okay. So, for the final part of the talk, I just want to conclude by saying, you know, I think, you know, it's one thing, one good thing is, you know, just to get out this adaptively secure and in some sense, the idea that I think will last, you know, of course, everything gets improved upon, you know, over time, is this idea of taking a one-bounded scheme and bootstrapping from it, you know, kind of taking a complicated mechanism and in some sense, yeah, not doing the decryption directly. And something we'll hear obviously more detail in a little bit is this ABSV paper, which we'll hear about next, kind of had a neat different way of looking at it, which the way I kind of saw it, and I'm sure Pribanjan will give you much better insights and all that stuff, is that the first thing they do, they kind of flip the way we do bootstrapping. And this flipping made it a lot simpler, which, you know, kind of kicked myself for a little bit later on. But, you know, in the way I did bootstrapping, there were kind of two heavy primitives, obfuscation on the key side and obfuscation on the ciphertext side. And you can kind of, if you look at it in a different way, you can get only heavy stuff like the ciphertext side program on only on the key side and just a one-time thing on the ciphertext. And then, you know, once you kind of make that flip, then, you know, instead of obfuscation being the heavy thing, you could have, like, they'll show you how to do a selectively secure thing. Now, again, just like the previous steps here, actually, you know, much easier said than done. So we'll get to see a lot of the kind of neat mechanisms and stuff to do it. Again, I'm sure Prabanja and Ziko over there will be able to give you better insights from what I remember. Okay. Thank you very much.


Theikis asks, when Bitcoin is under attack, some people just say, don't worry, Bitcoin is unstoppable. I see their point, but could this inaction be dangerous in the end? Yes, I would agree. But I think the answer, don't worry, Bitcoin is unstoppable. Doesn't mean do nothing. What it means is, from a technical perspective, and given a social response, Bitcoin is very difficult to damage through all the attacks that we're seeing right now. Right now, the vast majority of the attacks against Bitcoin are social attacks. There are attacks in the media, there are attacks with propaganda, there are attacks with tax legislation and accounting legislation and regulations in the banking system. They're not attacks against the actual protocol or the miners or anything like that. And from that perspective, in those types of attacks we're seeing right now, they're not really effective in the long run, because every time Bitcoin survives one of these attacks, it feeds the narrative of unstoppable ability, which makes it more appealing to people. So the point is that, saying, don't worry, Bitcoin is unstoppable also serves a purpose. The narrative of unstoppable ability becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy when the attacks are ineffective. Now, if we saw directed attacks against mining or against the network protocol or attempts to ban it, then we would need to make technical changes. We would need to either make them if we're developers or adopt them if we're node operators in order to thwart these attacks. And there are plenty of technical changes that are possible to make Bitcoin more stealthy, to make the operation of nodes more stealthy, to protect Bitcoin against attacks, to further anonymize it, to increase its privacy, et cetera, et cetera. Part of the reason there's no desire to implement those things today is because the attacks aren't really having the intended effect. And when attacks are not having the intended effect, that means there's no reason to build a defense. That doesn't mean there are no defenses or that people are simply going to sit back complacently and not do anything. What can I say, Thika, against this other than, as my answer, don't worry, Bitcoin is unstoppable. But that doesn't mean don't do anything if people try to stop it. I hope you enjoyed that video. If you'd like to support me in my mission of educating people about Bitcoin and open blockchains all around the world and publishing free content under Creative Commons licenses, please consider sharing this video as well as supporting me on Patreon.com slash A-A-N-T-O-N-O-P. Thank you.