Need advice reg. daughter and boyfriend

[BNDGR]

Asalam aliakum everyone,
I would like as much sincere advice as possible regarding my situation at home.
I am divorced and a revert, I have a 15 yr old daughter and my problem is that before converting I was lenient with kids with regards to discipline. My ex was hard so I became the soft one and when we seperated 4yrs ago I made the mistake of trying to be thier friend and parent. I thought wrong and now I am paying consequences for it.
I allowed my daughter to have a boyfriend before and when I started reading about Islam I realized my grave error in the way I was thinking. I was setting her up for her to fall into bad ways with boys and other things.
So now I have a completely different way of thinking and have done a 100% turn around in my life but how do I go about changing her way of thinking. She now hates me since I reverted saying I am so different and we don't even get along and she is going to move out as soon as possible and then what??
I have tried several approaches to this matter and so far I'm not getting anywhere with her, so any any any help or advice would be greatly appreciated...

[Hamayun]

Salam Alekum Sister,

I think its not possible to expect her to have a change of heart overnight. She is still young and in a very rebellious age. The more you try to hold her back the harder she will struggle.

Make dua for her and ask Allah to show her the right way. Sometimes people learn the hard way. Sometimes people grow out of it and realise their errors.

I have been there myself and looking back now I don't think I would have listened to anyone no matter how hard they tried or what they said.

But saying that Allah guides whom he wishes and Masha'Allah he has pointed me in the right direction. Inshallah he will guide your daughter too.

Even though I am a sinner and my Dua probably holds no value I will make dua for you Inshallah.

[AnonymousPoster]

Asalam aliakum everyone,
I would like as much sincere advice as possible regarding my situation at home.
I am divorced and a revert, I have a 15 yr old daughter and my problem is that before converting I was lenient with kids with regards to discipline. My ex was hard so I became the soft one and when we seperated 4yrs ago I made the mistake of trying to be thier friend and parent. I thought wrong and now I am paying consequences for it.
I allowed my daughter to have a boyfriend before and when I started reading about Islam I realized my grave error in the way I was thinking. I was setting her up for her to fall into bad ways with boys and other things.
So now I have a completely different way of thinking and have done a 100% turn around in my life but how do I go about changing her way of thinking. She now hates me since I reverted saying I am so different and we don't even get along and she is going to move out as soon as possible and then what??
I have tried several approaches to this matter and so far I'm not getting anywhere with her, so any any any help or advice would be greatly appreciated...

Haallo,

Hope ur ari, basically yeah, ano how kids can be like =P all you gotta do is stop using the terms 'DONT DO THIS AND DONT DO THAT' cause when yu tell teenagers not to do somethin theyl go ahead n do it more,

Talk to her,

Tell her pro's n cons,

maybe yu can cum up wiv a compromise,

Keep tha bond between yu n kiddah, it's cute! :-[

All the best, itl be hard, buh be patient, it may b a rough ride, :blind:

AsalamuALaykum Warahmatullah.

[جوري]

:sl:
looking back at my teenage years, it is a wonder at all my parents loved me? I was difficult and rebellious .. I come from a very strict very orthodox middle eastern family, but my parents never pushed me to do anything really, for I had my ways even when they tried all sorts of methods, I was a stoic.. I could sit in a vegetative state for weeks if they desired to withhold something as a form of punishment etc...
I have to tell you, it really has nothing to do with you becoming Muslim, or you defining the structures for her.. it is more where she is in life right now..

Teenagers think they are so complex, their feelings have never been experienced by man or beast, they live in a more mundane world than your simple one, they are far much more sophisticated and intense than your cave dwelling ways, they have the solution to any crisis.. any situation is naturally stripped of all its intricate and compounded ways because they lack experience so they have a telescopic vision of anything as is with your conversion for instance -- they travel in packs at the mall, you see them all looking exactly alike.. they are discovering themselves, their world, they have these raging hormones...

There is really no simple approach to this.. I think the more you hammer it in, the more acting out you'll get to see. And they will push you to see what more they can get away with...

I am not a psychiatrist and it wasn't that long ago that I'd left my teenage years as it is still vivid in my mind.. how much I hate myself just looking back..
but that is all bound to change.. it is simply part of growing up.. Yes you need to define for her the structures and boundaries of respect -- yes you should cultivate her talent with as many after school activities as possible.. idle hands are a tool of the devil and that is your secret weapon right there... but the more you tell her do this, do that, she won't, she simply won't, in fact it will probably bring opposite attitude.. as much as I hate this, I think some non-reinforcement is key here...

and Allah knows best

:w:

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[BNDGR]

JazakAllah Hamayun, your right about the trying to force her to change not working. And I have been there too having to learn my own lessons sometimes the very hard way.Thank You for the prayers.
InshAllah she will come around with time, as long as I keep being there for her and sharing with her what I'm learning too.
Anonymous, jazakAllah to you also I appreciate both of your advice.
I don't want to push her away I just want the best for her.
:)

[BNDGR]

jazakAllah Skye,
its true that they do have tunnel vision and they are the only ones who have ever gone thru such terrible LOL times. I am going to try the non reinforcement approach and just set up some boundaries and inshAllah things will get better.
I was expecting too much too soon, inshAllah she will grow and realize what right and wrong. I know Allah will guide her, I trust in him.

[Grace Seeker]

Life for teenagers is all about what they are experiencing at that moment. The truth is that if even if you had not reverted, at the age of 15 you would probably be in some sort of conflict. If not over the present issues, then over something else. I don't suppose that is going to make you feel any better, but it might remind you to quit beating yourself up over any mistakes you may or may not have made.

I'm not a revert, but my wife and I had rules for our kids, probably very similar to the ones you have, maybe even more strict (no dating till age 16; be home by 10 PM on school nights and midnight on weekends; no being alone in your room with people of the opposite gender; as long as you live under our roof you will go to church; homework and household chores before play, phoning, or chatting; being home on time means at the time, not 5 minutes or even 5 seconds after it, if you can't be on time learn to be early not late) and since they were raised knowing these rules from childhood there was no second chance just because being an adolescent causes one's brain to become rewired. But I do understand that your daughter wasn't raised this way, and now feels that somehow she has suddenly had her life changed by a decision that you made and she didn't. Well, as a friend of mine tells her grown kids: "Get over it, cream puff."

I don't mean to be snide with regard to your daughter, but either you are the parent in the situation or you aren't. That is your decision. If you're still desiring to be your child's friend that would be one thing, but if you goal is to raise your daughter by what you think is best for her, then you can't get all worked up because she isn't celebrating it with joy. That just isn't going to happen. So, decide which of those two roads is the one you want to travel, make that your choice, and then you need to learn to live with the consequences of that choice just like she does.

I'm not saying that you have to become a dictator, and certainly there should even be occassion when you can sit down with your daughter and discuss these things. But in the end you still have to decide who is going to set the standards in your house the adult or the teenager.

[Brother_Mujahid]

just out of curiousity, how would you 'punish' your kids if they broke any rules?

[Grace Seeker]

just out of curiousity, how would you 'punish' your kids if they broke any rules?

We used things from loss of minor privileges to total groundings depending on the seriousness of the issue.

I am going to try the non reinforcement approach and just set up some boundaries and inshAllah things will get better.
I was expecting too much too soon, inshAllah she will grow and realize what right and wrong. I know Allah will guide her, I trust in him.

I think this is very wise. We had our toughest time with our daughter between the ages of 13 & 15. (With our son between 14 & 16.)

What eventually worked with her is we had a trip she wanted to go to with our church youth group that was a whole year off in the distance. So we set up a procedure by which we evaluated her every day on her demeanor at home with us, and we gave her tokens (we used plastic poker chips for the tokens) to record that.

Each day she would get from 0 to 4 chips based on our subjective opinion of her behavior. She would start each day with 4, and as long as there were no problems she would get all 4 at the end of the day. Then at the time the deposits were due for the trip 6 months in the future we would convert each chip into case at $1.00 per chip and with it she could pay for her trip. To pay for it in full, she didn't have to be perfect, but she would have to be generally good. Averaging 3 our of 4 chips a day would be enough to pay for the trip completely. If she didn't have enough, we were not going to make up the difference. If she had more than she needed, she could keep it as spending money for the trip.

Well, the first couple of days, of course she was perfect. But then there was eventually a bad day when we only gave her 2 chips. The next day she was mad because we had only given her 2 chips the day before and she acted worse, so she got just 1. That made her even madder and the next day she got none. Well, she said we weren't being fair, and we told her that it didn't matter how we felt or how she felt, all that mattered was how she acted. She could be mad at us if she wanted, as long as she acted nice. So, the next day she did just that. And though we knew she was still made she didn't act that way and once again earned 4 chips. For the next few weeks she would average 2-3 chips. Not quite good enough to earn the trip, but already an improvement in how she had been before. And then every now and then she would have a really good day again and get all 4 chips. In time her behavior changed so completely it was a rare day that she didn't get all 4 chips. By the time we were 3 months in, her mother and I were ready to declare the experiment a success. Our daughter said it was a joke. That she didn't really change, and that is her story to this day 12 years later raising kids of her own.

We don't care. We got the daughter we wanted out of it. And I've noticed that she uses the same sort of behavior modification on her own kids. And when she does, I just smile and let her keep her belief that she just did what she wanted, not to make us happy.

[BNDGR]

just out of curiousity, how would you 'punish' your kids if they broke any rules?

Wa aliakum salam brother,
JazakAllah, Well since my divorce the kids have had alot of emotional issues due to that. No excuses but I have been the bad guy and when I am strict with them for instance she will miss curfew then I would put her on restriction for a week or take away her cell phone, at her age there isn't alot of things she is really attached to other than being with friends and talking on the phone.
Don't get me wrong these problems are not only coming about due to me reverting, it is just coming to a head and she just wants to move out rather than be part of our family.
And I guess she will have to learn from her mistakes, and choose her own path in life.
Grace Seeker,
Thank you for your advice too, I do understand that no matter what if I was a revert or not this was happening still due to her age and general teenage rebellion. The more you try to tell them what not to do the more they WILL try to do it.
What it comes down to is I love her very much and have seen her making some serious mistakes (drinking, boys and found drugs)that could cost her jail or even her life, so I have prayed and will continue to pray for Allah to intervene and show her the way, and I will put it in his hands.

[Na7lah]

Make dua for her sis thats the main thing

and try talking to her instead of ordering her, my sister is 15 now when she was younger she was my cute lil sis, now its like i don't even know her...even tho she's been homeschooled she's changed, i convinced myself that its a phase and that she'll come around, *seeing how i was at her age :-[ * but i don't stop making dua for her and talking with her not like i'm older than her but like i'm her close freind, and i'v seen some improvement walhamdulillah

keep at her don't give up :)

[glo]

Greetings, BNDGR

For me as a mother of a 14-year-old daughter this is a very interesting thread. And I empathize with you. :)

I agree with Grace Seeker with regards to setting parental limits and sticking to them, and striking a balance between being parent and friend.

But I am going to try and see things from your daughter's perspective for a moment.
You have converted to Islam, and as a result your goalposts have suddenly moved by a huge margin.
That must be really confusing for your daughter! One day she is allowed to have a boyfriend, then suddenly she isn't.
Your moral standards may have changed suddenly, but they haven't for your daughter.

I see here in LI how hard it is for young converts to Islam to reassess their relationships with boy/girlfriends, to come to the tough decision to end the relationship, and then to actually follow that decision through. And that's for people who have embraced the teachings and standards of Islam.
How much harder must it be for your daughter, who probably has very little to do with Islam at this point in time!

I advise you to be patient with her. Explain to her why you have changed your views, that you are concerned for her, and why.

Please don't lose your relationship with your daughter.

I wish you both well.

[BNDGR]

Greetings to you also Glo,
I appreciate your advice also.
All the points of views on the subject and advice have opened my eyes up to see things from her point also.
Yes the age is hard huh!!!! And I can't push my views on her (I will continue to share with her).
I love her very much and I have compromised and told her that I will allow him to visit with us at our home, and if we happen to go somewhere, then he would be allowed to come with us (totally supervised) of course.
I am praying five times a day and making dua's for her as well, and our relationship is little by little coming around.
Oh and of course she still has the limits and boundaries that I expect from her.
InshAllah we will make it thru all this and get back our relationship.
:statisfie
JazakAllah/Thank You everyone !!!

[islamirama]

In addition to what everyone has said, i think a good thing to do would be to have a conversation every night. You both pick one thing about each other and ask them to explain about that and make you understand. Whether she likes it or not, inshallah you tow will begin to better understand each other this way.