Islam -direct-marketing

S has been posing some interesting questions as well as doing some ’direct-dawah’ recently. The other week he was wondering why it is that so many children in his school use bad language. I sort of waffled on about the fact most come from a poorer background, their parents don’t tell them etc I was trying to puzzle it out myself as well, is it lack of education, class. I am still amazed that no foul words have accidentally popped out of his mouth, they still use the nursery type toilet talk if they want to be rude to their siblings and that’s as far as it goes. The children at school (and in the area as well as I have heard children round our way) use swear words without a real knowledge of what they really mean (often they are mispronounced English), they just know they offend. Anyhow, the flip side to the rubbish he is having to hear at school seems to be his growing Muslim identity and confidence. This combined with childhood honesty led him into his direct-dawah experience the other day with a sister’s MIL who does not practice. He was in a confident mood after having a good report in his parent-teacher meeting, and decide to let this lady know about islam and its requirements (in very fast Swedish I might add)! I think most of what he was saying was inspired by his islamologi lessons as I don’t remember explaining everything he came out with, and when I do it’s in a less direct way. Then last night as he was in a half-sleep as I came to put some clothes away in his room he asked me why a certain ‘muslim’ teacher in his school does not cover, he is very good at picking out inconsistencies mashAllah. Usually it is directed at the treatment he gets compared to his brothers.
So he did well in his development meeting, only needing to be brought on time in the morning (not unexpected!) and to practice reading more so he can be more fluent in this. I don’t think I mentioned he can now swim 200m and I got the letter today that he can go in the ‘crawl’ group for swimming next term, so I think we can say he can swim now! I just haven’t been to see him as it would be difficult with Hafsah. In his English reading he’s doing quite well and actually woke me from a nap to say he’d read a page of Charlie and the Chocolate factory himself. I was about to get angry at him for waking me up, but managed not to show it too much as he was obviously proud of himself. We had played hangman the other week with S and M and was quite a good way to encourage spelling, although M has to be content with spelling 3 letter words which I have to try not to guess!
Oh and another Swedish cultural observation, which I had heard of a while back which is letting kids have sweets on Saturdays. Well I was shocked to receive a leaflet from the dentists actually promoting this. I suppose it is instead of everyday, letting the teeth be continually exposed. Anyway I hope they would recommend a good brushing after the sugar session. H has another dentist appointment today as he has a small cavity, which S probably rightly pointed out, is because he bails (cries) so much when he doesn’t get what he wants. (‘bails’ a new piece of our family’s vocab derived from wails and bawl I think) I give in and give him m&m’s or whatever he craves, so again hands up ‘bad mum’ call the NSPCC. It’s probably also due to his milk and juice addiction. I try to make the juice very watered down, so sometimes it’s thrown by the wayside.
Managed to get kids passport birth certificate off in the post, so inshAllah will be able to get away from this place at some point soon. I’m thinking of booking something in the Gulf States over Xmas hols, but anticipating costs will prevent..
Hafsah still night-waking, yawn in both senses of the word, by the 4th night of just giving her water up till 230 am I gave up, as my body just said ‘NO; JUST BREASTFEED HER AND SLEEP)’ (instead of DH saying that, who was away).
Just done a ‘good mum’ task of whizzing up loads of different vegetable purees and freezing them. In fact the vegetarian selection of ready-made stuff is so limited here that I have to do it myself. I think she’ll be expecting porridge all the time otherwise.
Hs teacher seemed very shocked to hear him speaking English sentences (to me) the other day when picked him up. He’s still not speaking anything at nursery, Swedish nor English, just sign language.