Tarbiyah: Conditioning our Habit Triggers

 

As Muawiyah and I were playing by the beach, a sound of a motorbike could be heard coming from a distance, and then the ringing of a bell 🏍️🔔

For us Malaysians, this only meant one thing: ICE CREAM! 🍦😋

Immediately, the sound of that bell triggered fond memories of my childhood, eating ice cream in a hot dog bun. 🌭

In that moment, I immediately looked at Muawiyah to observe his reaction: in my head, already planning in advance a respectful negotiation script to convince him that I don’t want to buy ice cream for him.

Hearing the sounds of the bell, Muawiyah looked towards the motorbike, took a good glance of the uncle with the bike.

Then, it happened:

He looked away, completely uninterested. And resumed playing by the beach.

Anticlimax?

🤣

From that split second, I learnt: Muawiyah’s mind was not conditioned to know that this bell indicates “ice-cream.” 

For many of us Malaysian kids, this trigger-reward was seared into our emotions and subconscious: While enjoying ourselves with the family by the beach, at the soothing background sound of rolling waves, and that bell on a motorcycle meant one thing: an uncle who would sell satisfying sweet ice cream, under burning hot sun at a price so cheap that our parents and uncles wouldn't refuse!

That bell was a significant trigger: it would signal that, “you’re having fun now, but BOY, things are going to get even more awesome!”

In the book “Power of Habit”, psychologists have discovered that when our minds are conditioned to certain cues, knowing they are associated with rewards (i.e. bell >> ice cream). And sometimes, our minds are so well-conditioned to it, that our brain releases pleasure chemicals even at the mere cue / trigger itself, because it EXPECTS to be rewarded (even if we don’t actually receive the reward!)

But what if we never trained ourselves to associate that cue with a reward? 

The cue becomes just another sound in the background.

Because we never indulged in ice-cream-uncle-by-the-beach in the presence of Muawiyah, he didn’t learn to associate the bell with ice cream (even though he loves ice cream!) To him, it was a bell on just another motorbike with a container, no different than a Grab or Foodpanda motorbike.

What I learnt from this about parenting: How are we conditioning our children to respond to – or ignore –  ‘triggers’ and cues in things occuring in everyday life? 

As Muslims, how are we training them to perform acts and dzikr from the Sunnah in every day activities and events? When they eat, when they sleep, wake up, when they enter/leave the house, and so on?