Raising children - that's it. That's the headline.

 Yeah so,

There was some conversation on twitter this past week on how to raise your kids - again. I didn't participate in that conversation on the TL mainly because I thought I would surprise y'all and actually write something on this useless blog of mine about it.

Not that anyone's asked my opinion about child raising, but

As you probably know I have various kids of different ages who helpfully provide me with a lot of my more hilarious  (and infuriating) twitter material. I'm not saying I've raised them particularly well, or that I'm in anyway an expert on anything relating children. However, I do have some experience on learning from my many mistakes, so here goes.

UmmTypo's advice on how not to raise kids

Firstly - there is no one perfect way to raise a kid. You will not be a perfect parent and you will not avoid making mistakes. If you are reading this going "but MY mummy and daddy were perfect!" you are probably in your early 20s. It's just one of those youth things. It'll pass. 

Maybe you are very well aware of the mistakes that your parents made - and you think that if you only avoid those, your kids will turn out great. The fact of the matter tends to be though that the more you try to, eg. avoid your parent's mistakes, the more likely you are to come up with a whole new range of interesting, exiting ways of screwing up your kids. I'm not talking about avoiding things like verbal or physical abuse - that should be a given. But we sometimes hyper focus on avoiding stuff and don't focus enough on what we are replacing it with. 

Example: your parents were very strict and used to yell at you about cleanliness and this caused you a lot of stress as a kid. Now you have a kid and decide you are not going to put them though that, and pick up after them yourself so as not to put pressure on them - your kid then grows up thinking it's ok not pick up stuff because mum will do it- this causes you a lot of stress but you don't know how to address the issue with your kid because you don't want to turn into your screaming mum etc. So yeah.

Secondly: One of the big traps parents fall into, is thinking that their parenting "style" has to be static - ie. that it somehow has to remain the same throughout your child's life. Many parents seem to decide that they are "this kind of a parent" and they stick to that - whether it works or not. They have decided in their minds that this OUGHT to work (because maybe it worked for their friends or parents or relatives etc) and can't fathom why their kid is not responding to their parenting. Parents start thinking there is something wrong with their child, that they are somehow naughty or bad.  

Example: you are a parent who commands authority. What you say, goes. That's fine when your kid is... well, under 10. But when they get older they will resent you dictating stuff to them and this will result in unnecessary conflict and again, you thinking your kid is naughty or bad. You need to include your older kids in conversations about rules and expectations and keep both of these realistic. It has to be a less "you" approach and a more "us" approach. 

Thirdly: your kid is an individual from birth-  even before that, as anyone who's been pregnant more than once can confirm. What works with one kid will probably not work with another. We need to be able to switch gears with our kids. One kid might be ok being told off quite sternly, then next will be emotionally very effected (and for God's sake do not even start telling me your kids "just need to be able to take it". Let your sensitive kids be sensitive.) 

Example: kid 1 drops a glass and spills the contents everywhere. They're like "ooooops haha sorry" and you're fuming and you're like "aaagh you always dropping stuff man whyyy I just cleaned" and the kid is like "yeah haha" and goes to pour himself another glass of juice. Kid 2, in a similar scenario will get panicked and worked up over making a mess- you blaming them over it will not help (it doesn't really help in any situation tbh, but the first kid - maybe a more confident kid- was like "yeah well sht happens" and went on with his life where as this kid now gets stuck on the situation emotionally - just... play along with me here). It will make the situation worse. You need to deal with a sensitive kid by making them feel safe first ("oh that's ok, it's just a little mess") and then letting them help with with solving the problem if they can ("come on, let's clean this up together"). 

Fourthly: what works in a specific cultural/ communal environment won't necessarily work in another. A lot of people who move from one cultural sphere to another expect to still raise their children as they would have in their previous place. You can bring over some elements. Others, you absolutely can't. 

I will let you draw your own cultural conclusions here as I don't want to pinpoint a specific one. This applies to everyone who lives out of their own community. This also really applies if you have - like I do - a family where the parents are from two very different cultural realms. Both have to be able to compromise. On top of that we are raising our kids in a third culture that is neither mine nor his - so all kinds of navigating is necessary.

Fifthly: Going back to the elasticity of parenthood, that all of these three previous points have been about, in their essence. We all want to raise our kids to be moral, upright individuals but we might have very different visions on how this is going to happen. Your vision might be: don't let them near a tv or internet. Don't put them in a public school. Don't even put them in an Islamic school if it isn't properly vetted. 

That's all fine and good. But what you can't do is generalise this stuff. Not everyone has the same  a) financial ability (and don't tell me "if you ain't middle class you should just not have kids" cos if that's your opinion, flush yourself down the loo for real) and b) mental energy as you. People might have many kids, or kids with many challenges - kids with special educational needs that the muslim school system can't respond to etc. 

I agree that it is not good to stick your kids in front of the TV or another screen as a form of baby sitting. But let's be honest to ourselves - a parent sometimes does need a break. This does not have to mean that your kid watches dodgy stuff on their own or that they watch stuff or play games hours on end? No.

But you are not a bad parent for turning on Paw Patrol and putting on a podcast on your own headphones to hear, you know, an adult talk for a change. 

You're not a bad parent for letting your kids play a game while you get the dinner ready because your kitchen is tiny and as cute as it would be let your kids participate, when you are actually around your own kids in a small space 24/7... Well. 

My kids have been to an islamic school, they've been homeschooled and they've been to state school. All of these have their good and bad points - maybe I'll write about those more another time. Not one system has guaranteed that my kids are pious and obedient and super religious - no, not even homeschool. 

Not allowing your kids online will not leave them deprived - but seeing internet as a big scary monster is also not healthy. No, especially smaller kids should not use devices unsupervised, I think we can all agree on this. But the internet can be an asset and a too. These things are tools and how we use them defines whether they are good or bad - internet does not have an automatic negative charge (because look at us, here we all are.) 

Sixthly: lately I've seen quite a few people promote this idea that "if you are not absolutely sure that you will be a wonderful, loving, self sacrificing parent, just don't have kids."... 

... 

...

Listen. 

I mean... 

It would be wonderful if we would know the outcome of things before they happen. But we don't. Very few people set out having children thinking "I'm not going to love my kid." But stuff happens. You might have a very traumatic pregnancy, you might have a very difficult situation in your life when your kid is born- inspite of your best efforts to have a better situation. You might get ill. You could get depression, or anxiety, or OCD. You can't predict how your body and mind will react to parenthood. 

Did I want my son? Yes, I absolutely did. 

Did that stop me from going though an awful post partum depression, fuelled even more by a failing marriage that at times made be the kind of a mum that I absolutely did not want to be? No. 

If you do have issues in bonding with your child - and very few people will bother telling you this - this is not something rare  nor is it something that determines your motherhood (or fatherhood). You can get help and you can redefine the relationship you have with your child, even when the child is older. Nothing is lost. There are instances, and charities and professionals and therapists who help with these issues. Seek them out in your area and find help.

Conclusion: 

The only advice I can really give to anyone reading this completely unnecessary rambling, is to have a relationship with their child. Be the person your kid can talk to. Talk to them about stuff at home. This does not mean preaching an educating necessarily - that's just a part of it, but rather make sure your child knows that your home and your family is the place they belong, the place they feel the most accepted and the most loved and the most appreciated for being themselves. Discuss stuff with them. Listen to them when they talk - even if what they talk about is seemingly nonsense - and be interested in them (not just on what they do but on them as people).  

Talk to them about learning to know themselves, their own strengths but also their own limitations. Teach them to recognise patterns in their behaviour. It's secondary what they'll do when they grow up - it's more important how they are.

At the end of the day your kids will go and do stuff you won't approve of.  They will do things to undermine your authority. Allah will test you through them in ways you did not even know was possible. No matter how well you do, you are the one whom they're going to talk to their shrink the most about. 

But that's ok. You can't raise a person who's whole but you can give them the tools to pick up their pieces. 

Conversion Chronicles

Assalamu aleikum and heyyyyy,  👋

Well,since someone actually did ask, here's - once and for all - THE conversion story.

Some of you may be aware of how I normally avoid this topic - simply because after telling the same story for 17 years, you get kinda tired. Also I, in general, oppose to people randomly asking converts about their stories as a form of inspiration porn (yes I used the p- word. I apologise, but that's how it feels like sometimes) - where you're almost required to entertain a group of inspiration-yearning born-Muslims with the story of your "beautiful journey". There is a lot of expectation regarding how it should go - the more tragedy and the more emotion, the better. The actual story doesn't really matter to most of the listeners - rather it serves as a means of boosting their own identity/ superiority of Islam as a religion. The convert is in the spotlight, but only as a disposable storyteller, who's identity, experience and persona is often of no interest, once her/his story is told (and she definitely is not to be taken seriously or listened to, when it comes to communal affairs/ masjid boards etc).

OK, rant over  - by the way, most converts probably really don't mind telling their story. I don't really mind either - it's just that it's more how you're seen/ are treated after you stop being inspirational/ need help/ go through a crisis in your faith, that matters.

I mean seriously, I promise the rant is actually done now.

So.

The story.

I converted to Islam less than a year after 9/11 (great timing, I know), when I was in the middle of my second year in high school (is that what that's called?), aged 16.
People seem to think that's very young - but to be fair most convert sisters I know have been between 15-19 year olds too at the time of their conversion. I think it's something to do with becoming more of an independent thinker - before that you kinda do what everyone else does and think that the world works in a certain way : that there's us and them, the good and the bad, the right and the wrong  - that the people in the past were more or less ignorant and humanity has, since, developed and somehow magically become more intelligent - which, of course, is absolutely not true. Humans are as dumb as they've ever been.
Funnily enough, I was a religious child, although my parents were not religious nor were members of any church. Religion was not in any way indoctrinated upon me- but I still believed in, and prayed to God. Of course at some point it became "lame" and so I stopped it, but no matter how hard I tried to be a "cool" atheist, I was never really as in to it as I pretended to be. I felt a need to connect to the Divine, but didn't really know how.

Christianity? 

At 15, I went to confirmation school like almost all other Finnish teenagers. This came towards the end of what I think of as my "searching period" - before that I had decided that I was Wiccan/ new age spiritualist/ definitely very, very liberal etc. Confirmation school is what Lutheran (christian) teenagers go to, to learn about their religion and to "confirm" their faith - after a week or two (most kids go to a camp that's really fun, apparently, and only lasts a week. I didn't because camping), they have an event at the church and a party (usually with lots of presents) and they're considered an official member of the church.
My parents are not christian, so I was never baptised as a baby - they baptised me a day before my confirmation so I was able to participate in it. I wanted to do it mainly because I wanted the party - and the presents that came with it. But despite my rather materialistic endeavours, I did sincerely try to give Christianity a chance. I tried to understand it and asked a lot of questions and probably drove the poor priest a bit insane. I had always been into reading the Bible and knew it quite well - but the creed just did not make sense to me. I could not, despite many explanations, understand the Trinity, amongst other things.

I was still trying to make sense of it all about 3-4 months later, when me and some friends started to frequent a cafe where a lot of Muslims (mainly men) hung out. We started hanging out there a lot because it was central, the staff was cool and you were allowed - back in those days still - to smoke indoors. I ended up working for one of the Muslim guys who owned a restaurant (obviously not very legally) and that was the first time I came into actual close contact with Muslims on daily basis. (Actually, not totally- as I had been a mentor to a little Muslim girl at primary, who was (and still is) absolutely awesome. She was my first Muslim friend (we reconnected later and yes, we're still friends) - but of course we had been kids back then so it was a bit different. )

People in Finland are, in general, quite well educated when it comes to world religions- at least knowing the basics of all of them - but do remember this was around 9/11, so there was a whole lot of propaganda around (luckily I was anti-establishment enough to buy none of it). Anyway, the mental image I had of Muslims was not that they were extreme, oppressive loonies - but that they were devout, and actually followed their religion. Working for a Muslim guy then, came as a bit of a shock: there was a lot of very obviously haram stuff going on (men cheating on their wives/ evading taxes, employing under aged chicks to moonlight, ahem. etc), but at the same time - these guys were very firmly Muslim and very proud of their Muslim identities - they often referred to their religion and the Prophet SAWS, and would be very particular about some things though being very lax about others. I found this interesting - but couldn't really respect these guys a whole lot, and eventually left the job for... Reasons.

Pre- google googlings 

Shortly after that, I met a guy, at the very same cafe- who was very different from the others. I wasn't really sure what it was that made him different - but later I realised that it was just that I had never met a really practising Muslim before. We'd start meeting up but he was always very adamant in that we could not be in a relationship because I was not a Muslim . This intrigued me as my experience of men (Muslims and others alike) was mainly that whatever ideals they held, they were very ready to throw in the bin for a girl - and yes, I realise I probably had not had the best experiences with men thus far.


(* Yes, I know, not all men) 

I realised that despite having looked into pretty much every religion during my "searching period", I had skipped Islam. Even though I was lucky enough not to be hindered by the common misconceptions of it, I had dismissed it as "too traditional". Almost as if the truth that was out there couldn't possibly be in something that was so well known. Islam, though it seemed very well organised, didn't seem to me awfully spiritual (yeah, I know how wrong I was). I had imagined the "truth" to be something that needed to be searched far and wide - there was a part of me saying "surely, it couldn't be this simple."

I started looking into it, a bit like I had looked into Christianity too - thinking, well, at least when I figure out this is ain't it, I will have made an informed choice. There was very little use of googling anything 17 years ago, there was like one Islamic forum back in those days that was in Finnish, but I never really got much out of that. I decided to go about it the old fashioned way, and tried to find some books on Islam. There were very few in my smallish local library - most of those very orientalist and mainly repeating the same couple of things I already knew. So, I decided to go and buy a Qur'an-  I went ahead and bought a Finnish translation. It was not a great translation, but by far also not the worst  one (as I came to know later). I read the whole translation quite quickly and there was something there. I wasn't really sure what it was. It seemed... Simple. The stories were the same as in the Bible - but seemed more genuine.  I felt drawn to the symbols of Islam - the hijab, the prayer etc - I worked on believing in God. And I prayed - for guidance. For, in the want of a better word a "sign."

There was no one, huge moment where I realised I wanted to be a Muslim. It was rather a gradual realisation, that that which I had always known to be the truth, was called Islam. I thought I had been looking for some major awakening, but what I actually had been looking for was a name for the truth I already knew.

Wow.

That sounded like a right cliche.

Home

I put on a hijab before I ever said shahada. Many Muslims, converts and born-Muslims alike, struggle with it - but to me, essentially it was a sign of being a part of something bigger than myself. The other reason was, of course, that I had no idea if there was .... a mosque or something I could go to. Somehow it did not occur to me at all, that there would have been Muslims who I could have contacted or asked questions to - it didn't even occur to me that there might have been other Finnish Muslims. So, you can imagine my surprise when one day (maybe my third or fourth time wearing a scarf) I was standing outside of a shop in our little town centre, waiting for my friend who had popped in for something, when a beautiful hijabi lady walked by, with her little boy. She noticed me - or rather my scarf, and like an exited whirlwind was all over me in a second, asking if I was a Muslim and telling me I must come to the mosque on Saturday and how they just had Eid and if she had known I was a Muslim I could have joined and ... I muttered some replies, almost in a daze - not really knowing what the protocol was. We chatted for a while, and I promised to go to the mosque, which - now that she had told me the name, I could look up - in a phone book. Yes, I really am THAT old.
On Friday I went to check where it was with a friend. I was so nervous I wouldn't find it: mosques in Finland don't look like mosques - so I felt more comfortable knowing where I was going to go.

The next day, I made my way to the mosque again. I was received in a small library room/ office adjacent to the musallah, where a group of women were sitting - reading together. I was SO incredibly nervous - but I have to say I have never, ever felt more welcome anywhere. I read the shahada that one of the sisters wrote on a blackboard for me - and no, I did not really know how to say any of the Arabic words. That was... Very hard. And very embarrassing. I didn't know how to pray, I knew pretty much nothing at all - but I prayed with them anyway.
I was blessed, very, very blessed, to come across such an awesome,  supportive group of Muslim women - this should not be taken for granted. Many converts don't feel an instant bond with their community, and sometimes feel left out. In our community though, there were a lot of other young girls (I was the youngest, but the others were just a year or two older)  all of them had said their shahada within a year - there were also some born Muslims- mainly Arabs and Somalis, as well as some converts who had been Muslim for longer - like the lady I had met before. The girls however... The girls. *Sighs in misty-eyed recollection*
They pretty much adopted me- they gave me my first hijabs, they gave me some booklets and instructions on how to pray (they were little drawings of stick men drawn on squared paper) - they took me in, and not at all in a patronising "let us teach you all about Islam" kinda way. I didn't feel like I had to pretend I was something that I wasn't, or a better Muslim than I was. Everything I am today, and I do tell this to them too, I owe to these girls. We are still in touch - most of us anyway- and though things have changed ( and we have changed), it's good to know that there are people out there that I can go to, and just be me. It also helps to have people at your back who will, no matter how much you learn or gain titles, always remember you as your 16 year old, dorky self and not take you seriously. 

Conclusion

So yeah, I guess that was my conversion story. Of course that's not where it ended. And the reality of it was much deeper and more complicated - and can't probably be put into words. This, however, is the version I have gotten used to telling to people over the past many years. Hope it had enough details for whoever asked me to write this story 😌.




Oh, what happened to the guy I met? I married him - then I divorced him - but that, kids, is a whole other (very long) story.

For any other topics, do send me a message here or DM me on twitter @UmmTypo

Salaaam and byeeeee

Heyyy a whole new blog no one asked for!

Hey kids, 👋

It's your favourite (?), friendly (?) Twitter aunty. 

I decided to make this blog because 

a) I was bored and 

b) someone did actually suggest it and 

c) I joined Twitter in the first place because I got too lazy to blog - however there is only so much you can say in 140 marks (thus the name of the blog) and thought that there are quite a few things that deserve more of an analysis - and my (extremely unsolicited) opinions in more detail. 

The comment section is open here and in my DMs on twitter (@UmmTypo), I promise I'll answer to almost any question or write on almost any topic anyone requests, so if you always wanted to ask a (polite) question about: 

- marriage 

- having kids (you know the small humans brought by storks) 

- being an expat 

- being a muslim convert 

- or anything else really - 

feel free to do so.