Courses › What to do instead of shouting
Your marriage
What to do instead of shouting
Why shouting works tonight and stops working by next year, what the religion actually asks of a parent, and the one swap with evidence behind it.
Six short lessons for a parent who shouts more than they want to. It separates what you meant from what landed, explains why the fast route works in the moment and costs across years, and handles the religious material honestly rather than selectively. One change is taught, and it is the one the research on parenting programmes actually supports, which is not the one most parents expect. The last two lessons cover what feeds the shouting and what to do when it has become something else.
Who this is for
Any parent who has ended a day feeling worse than their child did. It assumes no clinical background and no training in the sacred sciences, and it assumes you already know you shout, because you do.
What this is not
This is not a behaviour programme, and it is not written for a child with a disability, autism, ADHD or a disrupted early attachment, where generic behavioural advice is often actively wrong. It gives no advice on a child's psychiatric symptoms, no infant sleep protocol and no feeding protocol. It does not work through your own childhood with you, and it does not ask you to write to or confront your own parents. It gives no fatwa and settles no disputed ruling on discipline.
The lessons
6- What shouting is actually doingWhat you meant, what landed, and why those two are almost never the same.
- Why it works tonight and fails by next yearThe mechanism, the escalator, and the finding that lets you stop blaming only yourself.
- What Islam actually asks of a parentOne contested report, and a great deal of material about mercy that is not contested at all.
- Catching it before the shoutThe one swap the evidence supports, which is not the one most parents expect.
- What feeds the shoutingSleep, load, the other adult, the audience, and the house you grew up in.
- When it has gone past shoutingWritten for somebody exhausted rather than somebody cruel, and it routes rather than lectures.
It is written and sourced and it has not yet been read by a scholar and a clinician. Read it as a draft, and if something in it is wrong please write to admin@inshirah.org so it can be corrected.
What this course is built on
- Qur'an 2:233, 3:159, 6:151, 17:31, 20:44, 31:13 to 31:19, 66:6. Translation throughout: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004. 66:6 is used only to correct its use as a licence for severity. The argument from 20:44, that gentleness commanded towards a tyrant implies at least as much towards a child, is presented as a reading and is flagged for the scholar reviewer.
- Sahih al-Bukhari 5971, 5997, 6038, 6114, 6116; Sahih Muslim 543, 2594; Jami' at-Tirmidhi 1924. Only reports graded sound or good are used, and each carries its grading and grader on its own entry. Sunan Abi Dawud 495, the report about children and prayer, is not quoted or cited anywhere in this course and lesson 3 is not built on it, pending a written scholarly treatment. The course states that the report is not weak and that how it is read is contested, and adjudicates nothing. Sunan Abi Dawud 4784, on performing wudu when angry, is the most circulated text on anger in Muslim material and is graded weak, so it is not used. The various discipline and adab narrations were not verified and are not used.
- Ibn Khaldun, al-Muqaddimah, on the instruction of children and on severity to students. Al-Ghazali, Ihya Ulum al-Din, the section on the training of children within Kitab Riyadat al-Nafs. Named by work and chapter only, and nothing is quoted. Volume, chapter number and page for the Muqaddimah passage still need pinning down by a reviewer.