Correct the Behaviour, Don’t Define the Child

When I was 17, two friends and I came up with a business idea. Like most 17-year-olds with a business idea, we were convinced it was brilliant. There was only one problem: we needed around $15,000 worth of equipment to get started. Between the three of us, that meant finding $5,000 each.

I decided to ask my dad.

I remember preparing myself for that conversation. Five thousand dollars felt like an enormous amount of money to ask for at that age, and I had spent plenty of time thinking about how I would pitch the idea, how I would convince him that it could work, and what I would say when he inevitably started questioning me about it.

Eventually, I asked him – and he said yes. Straight away. I was almost disappointed that I didn’t get to use the pitch I had prepared.

So we bought the equipment and started our business. And, within a few months, we realised that our brilliant business idea wasn’t working the way we expected. We cut our losses short, and decided to close the business.

Alhamdulillah, we managed to sell the equipment and basically break even. I took the $5,000 back to my dad and finally asked him something that had puzzled me from the beginning.

“Why did you give me the money so easily?”

He told me that, to be honest, he had suspected from the beginning that the business probably wouldn’t work. But for $5,000, he thought the experience I would gain from trying to build something myself would probably be worth more than the money.

He was right.

Years later, I went on to start another business, and there were lessons I had learned from that little failed venture at 17 that I carried with me. Planning, dealing with other people, handling money, thinking through whether an idea was actually viable – and perhaps most importantly, experiencing failure without becoming afraid of trying something again.

Looking back, what strikes me most is that my dad could easily have prevented the whole thing. He was older and more experienced. He could see problems that I couldn’t. He could have sat me down, explained why the idea wouldn’t work, saved us several months of effort and saved himself the risk of losing $5,000.

And he would have been right. But I would have learned almost nothing.

There are times when the job of a parent or murabbi is to stop the children around them from making a mistake. But there are also times when the mistake itself is part of the tarbiyah. The difficult part is knowing the difference – and then knowing how to respond when they inevitably get things wrong.

Because once we give young people the space to carry genuine responsibility, as we discussed in the previous article, we also have to give them space to stumble. They will make bad decisions. They will act impulsively. They will disappoint us. Sometimes they’ll know better and do the wrong thing anyway.

The question is what we do next.

And when we look at the way the Messenger of Allah ﷺ corrected the people around him – particularly the young – we find something far more sophisticated than simply being “soft” or “strict”. Sometimes he smiled. Sometimes he joked. Sometimes he reasoned with them. Sometimes he quietly redirected them. And sometimes, when the mistake demanded it, he was remarkably stern.

But there was a methodology behind it. The goal was never simply to make someone feel bad about what they had done. The goal was to build the person they could still become.

Correct the Behaviour, Don’t Define the Child

One of the easiest mistakes to make when correcting children is to turn something they have done into a statement about who they are.

A child lies, so we call them a liar. They don’t put enough effort into school, so they’re lazy. They act selfishly, so they’re selfish. They struggle with maths, so they’re “just bad at maths”. They lose their temper a few times, and suddenly they have “always had anger issues”.

The problem is that children listen to the way we describe them, and eventually those descriptions can become part of the way they describe themselves.

Martin Seligman, an American psychologist, educator and author, discusses something similar in his book The Optimistic Child. He describes “permanence” and “pervasiveness” as two important dimensions in the way children interpret negative events. A temporary, specific explanation (“I didn’t prepare properly for this exam”) leaves room for change. A permanent, pervasive explanation (“I’m just stupid”) takes one failure and turns it into something much bigger.

Our language as parents can reinforce exactly the same thinking.

“You didn’t put much effort into cleaning your room” is very different from “You’re so lazy.” “What you said to your sister was cruel” is different from “You’re a horrible brother.” One identifies something that needs to change. The other risks becoming an identity.

We see remarkable precision in the language of the Prophet ﷺ when correcting people. When Abu Dharr رضي الله عنه insulted another man by disparaging his mother with a racist comment, the Prophet ﷺ did not minimise what he had done. He told him:

إِنَّكَ امْرُؤٌ فِيكَ جَاهِلِيَّةٌ
“You are a man in whom there is some Jahiliyyah.”
[Bukhari, 30]

The wording is striking. He did not reduce Abu Dharr to a “jahili” – a man of Jahiliyyah. Abu Dharr was a believer, a Companion and a man of enormous virtue – but there remained something within him from Jahiliyyah that needed to be removed.

We find something similar during the incident of the slander against Aishah رضي الله عنها. Before revelation came establishing her innocence, the Prophet ﷺ spoke to her about what he had heard. He told her that if she was innocent, Allah would establish her innocence, but:

وَإِنْ كُنْتِ أَلْمَمْتِ بِذَنْبٍ فَاسْتَغْفِرِي اللَّهَ وَتُوبِي إِلَيْهِ
“And if you have fallen into a sin, then seek Allah’s forgiveness and repent to Him.”
[Bukhari, 2661]

Even in an unimaginably serious situation, the language is about a sin someone may have fallen into, followed immediately by the possibility of tawbah. The mistake does not have to become the person.

This is not about playing with semantics. It is about leaving people somewhere to go after they have done something wrong. Good correction should make the child think, “I need to change what I did,” not, “This is just who I am.”

Look Behind the Behaviour

But correcting behaviour also requires us to understand why it happened.

One of the most remarkable examples is the young man who approached the Prophet ﷺ and made an outrageous request: “O Messenger of Allah, give me permission to commit zina.”

The Sahabah immediately began rebuking him. From their perspective, perhaps understandably, the problem was obvious: this young man had just asked the Messenger of Allah ﷺ for permission to commit one of the major sins.

But the Prophet ﷺ responded:
ادْنُهْ
“Come close.”

There is something beautiful in that response alone. Others wanted to push him away. The Prophet ﷺ brought him closer.

He then spoke to him about the desire he was struggling with. Would you accept zina for your mother? Your daughter? Your sister? Your paternal aunt? Your maternal aunt? Each time the young man answered no, the Prophet ﷺ reminded him that other people would not accept it for their loved ones either. He then placed his hand upon him and made du’a:

اللَّهُمَّ اغْفِرْ ذَنْبَهُ، وَطَهِّرْ قَلْبَهُ، وَحَصِّنْ فَرْجَهُ
“O Allah, forgive his sin, purify his heart and guard his chastity.”
[Musnad Ahmad, 22211]

The young man had said something deeply wrong, but the Prophet ﷺ saw beyond the words to a young person struggling with desire. So he didn’t simply tell him that zina was haram – obviously the young man already knew that. He helped him think differently about the desire itself.

We see something similar with al-Fadl bin Abbas رضي الله عنهما during Hajj. Al-Fadl was riding behind the Prophet ﷺ when a young woman came to ask him a question. Al-Fadl began looking at her, and she at him. The Prophet ﷺ noticed what was happening and simply reached over and turned al-Fadl’s face away.

He understood the situation for what it was: a young man, a young woman, attraction, and an opportunity for Shaytan. So he intervened. He didn’t need to humiliate al-Fadl or turn a moment of youthful attraction into an indictment of his character. He simply redirected him.

This is an important question to ask before reacting to our children: what is actually driving this behaviour? Ignorance needs teaching. Temptation needs support and boundaries. Immaturity needs development. Deliberate cruelty may need something firmer. The behaviour may look similar from the outside, but understanding its cause changes how we respond.

Not Every Mistake Needs a Lecture

Anas bin Malik رضي الله عنه gives us one of my favourite examples of this. The Prophet ﷺ once sent the young Anas on an errand. Anas left to complete it, but along the way he encountered some children playing – and, being a child himself, became distracted and joined them.

Eventually, the Prophet ﷺ came across him. Imagine sending your child to do something important, only to later discover them playing outside having completely forgotten about it. Many of us can probably predict the lecture that would follow.

Instead, Anas felt someone gently take him by the back of his neck. He turned around and found the Messenger of Allah ﷺ smiling.

يَا أُنَيْسُ أَذَهَبْتَ حَيْثُ أَمَرْتُكَ؟
“O Unays, did you go where I told you?”

Anas replied that he was going now. And that was it. Notice, also, that even while correcting Anas (RA), the Messenger ﷺ playfully calls him by his nickname, Unays!

Anas would later say that he served the Prophet ﷺ for ten years and could not remember him saying uff to him, or constantly demanding, “Why did you do this?” and “Why didn’t you do that?”

That doesn’t mean Anas was never corrected. This story itself is a correction. But there was no need to turn every childish mistake into a character-building lecture. The smile, the affectionate “Ya Unays”, and the simple reminder were enough.

Khawwat ibn Jubayr رضي الله عنه experienced something similar, although in a rather more embarrassing situation. While travelling with the Prophet ﷺ, Khawwat noticed a group of women and, wanting to impress them, went back to his tent, put on his finest clothes and sat down with them.

Then the Prophet ﷺ appeared. Caught red-handed and scrambling for an excuse, Khawwat claimed that his camel had run away and he was simply looking for a rope to restrain it.

The Prophet ﷺ knew exactly what was happening. Yet rather than publicly exposing him, he began playfully asking Khawwat whenever he encountered him: “O Abu Abdullah, what happened to your runaway camel?”

Eventually Khawwat could take the embarrassment no longer. He avoided the Prophet ﷺ for some time before finally admitting that there had never been a runaway camel. The Prophet ﷺ made du’a for him and never mentioned it again.

Sometimes people already know they’ve done something foolish. They don’t need us to destroy them over it. A smile, a question, a quiet word – or even a little well-placed humour – can sometimes achieve more than anger ever could.

Understand the Emotion, But Still Correct the Action

Understanding why someone behaved badly does not mean pretending that the behaviour was acceptable.

Aishah رضي الله عنها once became jealous when one of the other wives of the Prophet ﷺ sent him food while he was in Aishah’s home. In her jealousy, she struck the dish and broke it. The Prophet ﷺ responded calmly:

غَارَتْ أُمُّكُمْ
“Your mother became jealous.”

He understood exactly what had driven the behaviour. He didn’t turn the moment into a judgment on Aishah’s character. He didn’t humiliate her in front of everyone present. But neither did he simply laugh it off and move on. The broken dish had to be replaced.

That balance is important. Sometimes we become so focused on understanding our children’s emotions that we remove accountability altogether. He was tired. She was upset. He’s going through a difficult stage. She was jealous.

Those things may explain the behaviour. They don’t necessarily excuse it. We can acknowledge the emotion while still correcting the action. I understand why you’re angry. But you still cannot speak to your mother like that. Both statements can be true.

Sometimes Correction Needs to Be Firm

And this is why the Prophetic model cannot simply be reduced to “be gentle with children”. Sometimes the Prophet ﷺ was extremely firm.

Usamah ibn Zayd رضي الله عنه was deeply beloved to the Messenger ﷺ. Yet during a military expedition, Usamah pursued an enemy combatant who, when Usamah was about to kill him, declared the shahadah: “La ilaha illa Allah”. Usamah believed the man had only said it to save his life, and killed him anyway.

When the Prophet ﷺ heard what had happened, he was deeply disturbed.

أَقَتَلْتَهُ بَعْدَ مَا قَالَ لَا إِلَهَ إِلَّا اللَّهُ؟
“Did you kill him after he said, ‘La ilaha illa Allah’?”

Usamah tried to explain himself. The man had only said it because he feared the weapon. The Prophet ﷺ responded:

أَفَلَا شَقَقْتَ عَنْ قَلْبِهِ حَتَّى تَعْلَمَ أَقَالَهَا أَمْ لَا؟
“Did you split open his heart so that you could know whether he meant it or not?”

He kept repeating his rebuke until Usamah later said that he wished he had only embraced Islam that very day, so heavy was the guilt he felt.

Compare that with Anas forgetting his errand. One receives a smile and a gentle reminder. The other receives a rebuke that Usamah remembers for the rest of his life.

Why? Because the mistakes were not the same.

There is a tendency in parenting discussions to reduce everything to either “gentle parenting” or “strict parenting”, as though we simply need to choose which kind of parent we are. The Prophetic model is far more intelligent than that. The response is calibrated to the person, the intention, the circumstances and the seriousness of what has happened.

The goal is not maximum softness. Nor is it maximum punishment. The goal is tarbiyah.

What Are We Trying to Produce?

Ultimately, our children are going to make mistakes. If we follow the previous article, and genuinely give them responsibility, involve them in meaningful work and allow them to make decisions, then mistakes are inevitable.

Our job is not to produce children who are terrified of ever getting something wrong. It is to raise people who know how to respond when they do.

That means they need enough moral clarity to recognise wrongdoing, enough humility to accept correction, enough confidence not to be destroyed by it, and enough hope in Allah to repent, learn and keep moving.

Sometimes that will require a smile like the one Anas received. Sometimes it will require patient reasoning like the young man struggling with zina. Sometimes we simply need to turn their face away from something harmful, as the Prophet ﷺ did with al-Fadl. And occasionally, when something serious has happened, they may need to hear words as confronting as those Usamah heard.

But through all of it, we should remember what we are trying to build. The mistake in front of us is temporary. The person in front of us is a project that may still have decades to grow.

So correct the mistake. Teach the lesson. Hold them accountable when accountability is needed. But be careful about turning today’s failure into tomorrow’s identity – because the purpose of correction is not simply to make a child regret who they were yesterday. 

It is to help them become better tomorrow.