Revolusi Mental

I want to share an experiment that I did with my son in hope that it may benefits anyone who reads this. For almost a month now, I've been restricting him to play with his phone and video games. I realised that he has difficulty focusing and he has a rather short attention span. I also noticed he was kind of weak in numeracy and memorising. Few weeks ago, I scolded him off quite harshly because he can’t seem to understand some basic math concept like addition and substraction. As a punishment, I stopped him from all of these gadgets immediately and only allow him to use them one day per week, on either Saturday or Sunday.

I want him to do what some people called as the "dopamine fasting" - meaning we force quit all possible stimulant and anything that would give us an instant and superficial 'high' by the release of the 'feel-good hormones'. It also gives one a false sense of accomplishment as it tricks the brain that it has achieve something productive. Well, these are very addictive  and it is like a drug, and like any other drug, over the times, you will need a higher dose to get the same feelings due to your system will be less sensitive to it. So you will need to increase the dose or in this case one will have to spend more time playing with the gadgets and games just to have a fix.

This will lead to unhappiness, less appreciation, low morale and motivation to do anything else as it will not give the same sensation as what these gadgets can give. So, by quitting this altogether, the brain will be rewired to be more receptive of other things, and the boredom will make us more appreciative of the small, mundane and trivial things around. The theory also says that by doing so, it will increase motivation and the drive to achieve more realistic accomplishment and to work hard for an actual reward.

It has been 4 weeks now. My wife and I observed some changes happening to him. Some of the things we noticed:
·Sleep and wake up easy,

·No more dreading to the shower n no more wanting to burn down the school (hehe),

·More talkative, chatty, more inquisitive and attentive,

·Mastered maths + & - with the '1-up' and ‘borrow-1’ (naik satu & pinjam satu) which he had much difficulty before,

·Surah Al-Fatihah and Surah 3 Qul maybe around 75% mastery,

·Ayat kursi can be heard 'pacah2 bigi',

·Can spell jawi rather good after only few weeks of ugama school,

·He can do ablution on his own now,

·He knows the recitation of Solat fairly,

·He enjoys the company of the siblings, running, jumping around and more physically active,

·He laughs at my lame jokes,

·I think he doesn’t eat as much now, which is good as he has gained some weight.

I don’t know these things happened because of it or in spite of it. But definitely he is showing some positive changes. I will continue with the restriction and observe the progress. But of course, I will allow for cheat days and rewards him for doing something good, but there will be no more phones all day, all the time.

But that was not the best thing that happened. Few days ago, I was told that the grandparents tried giving him their phones as a test. My son told them: "father only allowed me phone and games on Saturday". The grandparent then said "well your father won’t know, he’s not around" in which he replied "but Allah is watching". Upon hearing that story, it warms and melts my heart, and honestly it got me a little teary. That is what being a true believer in Allah and having a faith or Iman is all about. What a faithful and obedient kid. Daddy don’t deserve you, my boy. May Allah grant you with the wisdom of Luqman the wise (al-hakim).

I pray that all my kids will be having absolute faith in Allah and to act right even when they are on their own. O Allah, I thank You for this wonderful blessing.