Parenting millennials by Mirza Yawar Baig

1. Parenting Millennials
Meet & Greet a Stranger

2. Who is your Role Model?
1. For how many of you is it a parent or teacher?
2. Ask your children who their role model is
3. Are your children inspired by you?
How do you know?

3. Ask yourself what counts more
1. What are your goals for your children?
1. What they studied, jobs, money?
2. What kind of people they are?
2. Are honesty, integrity, compassion, courage and
enterprise important for your children?
3. What is the evidence that you are doing anything to
inculcate these in your children?
What you can’t measure, doesn’t exist

4. Relatedness
1. The ability to continue to relate throughout a
relationship that changes over time
2. Generation Gap: when relatedness fails
3. What do you need to change in yourself to avoid
this gap and to bridge it?
Because you can only change yourself

5. What’s different today?
1. Self-focused and selfie focused, narcissistic
2. Short attention span = big knowledge gaps
3. Tech savvy gadget lovers
4. Nomadic, low loyalty, easily distracted
5. High need for approval & affiliation
6. Consumption, entitlement, dependent
Divorce & suicide rates are highest

6. OCD – Obsessive Comparison Disorder
1. Millennials are reporting the highest levels of clinical
anxiety, stress, and depression than any other
generation at the same age. (Psychology Today)
2. “The suicide rate among young adults has tripled since
the 1950s and suicide is currently the second most
common cause of death among college students.”
(Psychology Today)
http://allgroanup.com/twentysomething-life-2/5-shocking-statistics-about-the-challenges-facing-the-millennial-
generation-and-how-we-overcome/

7. What’s different today?
1. Entrepreneurial, risk takers – not loyal employees
2. Questioning, push-back, non-submissive – will walk
3. Challenging authority, non-accepting without reason
4. Social awareness & activism
5. Accepting diversity, low religious focus, non-marital
6. Own language, own culture, own groupism
High potential which needs to be channeled

8. Millennial’s world
1. Technology is supreme, so reading is CTS
2. AI makes all low tech jobs redundant
3. Always space for experts but only for experts
4. Earlier generation still calls the shots
5. Entrepreneurial wish must be converted to reality
6. Critical upskilling – leadership & teamworking skills
The world doesn’t owe me a living

10. Parental challenges
1. Knowing and understanding your children
2. Your experience is worthless unless…
3. Inspiring those from another ‘world’
4. Helping those who need help but don’t know it
5. Setting boundaries, making sense of culture
Recognize the challenge of inspiring strangers

11. New way of relating
1. Learn from them: they are your window to that world
2. Level with them, trust them, become friends, respect
them, treat them with dignity as young adults
3. Yet maintain boundary of parenthood because they
have many friends but only two parents
4. Walk your talk because they will face you with it
Be authentic, be real, love them and show it

12. Raising a Muslim millennial
1. Introduce Allah‫ﷻ‬ and Rasoolullah‫ﷺ‬ early
2. Home atmosphere is the template to compare
3. No gadgets until at least 15 years old
4. Reading, hand writing, art, craft, drama, adventure
5. Connect to the earth – garden, farm, forests, animals
6. Entrepreneurial development – learn by doing
Don’t pamper – because pampers hide only…

13. Millennial Asks – 1
1. Excellence: Does your presence in their lives
inspire them to be a better a Muslim, a better
Son/Daughter, a better Businessman?
2. Do your children see you pushing the boundaries
trying to be better at what you do or do they see
you only giving gyan?
Credit: Mohammed Azharuddin

14. Millennial Asks – 2
1. Knowledge (not to be confused with information): Are you
knowledgeable enough to be able give us confidence that you
understand our world?
2. Can you connect random bits information that we are
bombarded with and explain it to us in a language that we can
understand? If the answer is yes, how do you know?
3. When was the last time your teenager confided in you about
something that he/she experiences amongst his/her peers?
Credit: Mohammed Azharuddin

15. Millennial Asks – 3
1. Trust: Even if we confide in you, how do we
know that you wont use it against us?
2. How do you (parents) react when you get upset
with us? Do you push us into corner and make us
do whatever you want us to do by leveraging
our weaknesses/force/humiliation OR do you
take the high road and lead by example?
Credit: Mohammed Azharuddin

16. Give them memories & dua
1. Your life will be remembered, so decide how you want it
2. Tough love is good love – best word is ‘NO!’
3. Differentiate between bad action and bad person – be a
coach, not an examiner
4. Differentiate between mistake and crime – be a mentor,
not a policeman
5. Stand in the night and ask Allah‫ﷻ‬ for them
Teach them to take from the treasures of Allah‫ﷻ‬

17. Millennial Generation
Greatest blessing or curse?
1. That has been given in your hands
2. Treat it with respect, give it the time and attention it
needs and reap the results of what you sowed
3. Killers: throwing money, handing over to gadgets,
pampering, obsessive parenting, no boundaries
Enjoy the challenge – that’s your best option

18. Thoughtshare
www.yawarbaig.com
yawarbaig@gmail.com