r/MuslimParenting

Any way you encourage your kids to stop scrolling on social media and read the quran?

Asalamwalaikum everyone. I apologize in advance for this very long post.

I recently found out that my next door neighbors daughter shoplifts.

We’re both muslim families. My family is of Indian descent and they’re Pakistani (dunno why I’m mentioning this) She’s very good friends with my daughter (she’s older than my daughter by 3 years both are elementary age (4 grade vs 1st grade)). They frequently play with each other and go to each others homes frequently. I don’t necessarily stop my daughter because all in all the neighbors girl is a good kid. Alhumdulillah Allah Humma Barik they are extremely rich while we alhumdulillah Allah humma Barik are very middle class. This girl has everything she could ever ask for an more. Her parents are good people very respectful and friendly and I couldn’t have asked for better neighbors it’s a blessing from Allah that we ended up with Muslim neighbors (they weren’t home for months when we bought the house and we didn’t know we had Muslim neighbors until much later)

Our girls are always bored and they only have each other to play with. My son is on the spectrum and my neighbor has an older son as well that is busy in his own things. So to appease the girls sometimes I’ll take them out for some fun. This is usually after Eids. Yesterday I took the girls to the mall because I didn’t have the chance to take them anywhere last Eid and I had promised from Ramadan that I’ll take them to the mall. They actually added a trip to Five Below as well and I said okay since it’s right next to the mall.

As my husbands very Indian he said let’s pay for the girls items since her parents always buy something or another for our child when she goes out with them. This girl had a lot of things but I said okay whatever let’s treat it like eidi. She said she had her own money but frankly she didn’t have enough money to cover what she was buying. Frankly it was a lot. My husband and I are slightly upset because we rarely spend money like this even on our own kids but he also is paranoid that it wouldn’t look good to take her with us and then make her pay for things.

After Five Below we head to the mall. These girls were in search for Needohs and saw some at a stall. That’s where my husband saw her take something and put it in her tote bag. I was skeptical when he told me because I thought why would she do that maybe he didn’t see properly. After the stall they begged to go to Miniso.

Anyways after we came back home told her I’ll put all her things inside a bigger shopper so it’s easier for her to take everything home. I also wanted to check if my husband was right or wrong.

This girl stole from the beginning multiple things from every store that we visited. One stores total was enough for the owners to call the police if she were to have gotten caught. I put the things away casually saying “beta when did you get this” trying to make a joke of it and she played it off saying “oh I bought it before I came to your house” then her and my daughter went to take all her things (it was a lot. There was even a mini fridge for skincare) to her house.

When my daughter came back I confronted her as calmly as I could and explained to her that stealing is haram and that she should stop her friend. My daughter even got gifted some of the stolen items and I told her that she has to return them the next day to her friend and tell her that we know what she did and that I won’t tell her mom because I don’t want her to get in trouble but this is an opportunity from Allah for her to rethink her choices make tauba and never do this again. My daughter was very remorseful about it all and alhumdulillah it was a blessing in disguise tbh because it helped me approach a topic with my daughter that I didn’t think I would ever need to.

Children make mistakes. I too once as a child stole something very stupid and small and alhumdulillah when my own mother found out she was very calm in her explaining why what I did was wrong. Alhumdulillah my neighbors are able to afford to send their daughter to Islamic school so it’s not like she doesn’t have the knowledge about right or wrong.

My husband is angry at me saying her mom will find out because kids blab and our daughter might blab infront of her and then she’ll feel embarrassed and insulted and I shouldn’t tell anyone anything and just keep my daughter from ever interacting with the neighbors kid ever again cold turkey.

I’m not directly confronting her I’m doing it through my daughter. But I can’t stop the girls from meeting we’re neighbors and it’ll be more suspicious and harming to the neighborly relationship if we do something like that especially so suddenly. My daughter is also afraid the girl wont be friends with her anymore after this but I explained to her the importance of having a good friend as a muslim so alhumdulillah it isnt such a sore topic anymore for her.

Should I do it directly or just let her know what’s up through my daughter or leave it like my husband says?