_Imām Ibn Qudāmah Al-Maqdisi -rahimahullāh-_
Said:
*TRAINING A CHILD FROM HIS EARLY STAGE.*
Know verily – may the mercy of Allāh be upon you – that, a child is an amanah to his parent, and his heart is pure and clean at this stage and it is ready to grasp anything given to it because of its early stage.
Hence, if is trained on good acts, it nurtured on it, and the parent partakes in the reward, and if it is trained on bad characters, the sins is on the neck of his waliyy. Thus, it is beloved and recommended that a child should be well trained, refined, safeguarded from evils and bad companies and he should be thought good characters, and he should not be used to enjoyment, relaxation, and luxuries, for he may tend to spend all his life seeking for it in the future.
Rather, he should be censured from his early stage and the child should not be breastfed and brought up except by a pious woman whose means of sustenance is Halal, for a milk gotten from Haram has no blessing in it.
And if it appears in him some symptoms of reasoning and grasping, which the first of it is shyness, and it is an excellent sign which should be utilized in training him. And shyness in a child shows that the child will have a standard faculty of reasoning in his later age.
And know that, the first vice that normally appears in a child is the excessive love of food, thus, he should be thought the adāb of eating, rebuked on too much of eating and he should be thought that too much eating is an attribute of the animals.
At times, he should be trained on taking single food like bread so that he won’t be used to taking bread with tea thereby seeing that as a combination that’s compulsory.
In addition, he should be safeguarded from mingling with children that are used to luxuries and he should be occupied with studying Qur’an, Hadith and the history of pious predecessors so that their love will be well established in his heart, and he should not be made to memorize poetries that involves passion and the likes.
*1st Jumādā Al-ūlā, 1438H.*
Allāhu A’alam! Bārakallāhu fīkum!
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