I've started to take my daughter with me more frequently when I shop and I'm starting to see what she's looking at when we go to the mall or the supermarket. Now, I let her pick DVD's for her and her brother to watch- always either Diego, Dora, the Backyardigans or Elmo and she has a few Barbie movies... and I notice her looking at all the "big girls" when we go out and even at the age of 4, she has begun to take notice of what they're wearing. One day, when we were walking she said, "Mommy, look at her hair!" as the girl hair was very long like hers, MashaAllah and "I like her pants..." which the girl had on a pair of decorated jeans. So it made me realize truly how early we need to start to "instruct" our girls with the proper way of covering herself. Now, we started to put 
hijab on her just a little before she turned 2, not full time but to get her used to the idea of wearing it. Now that she's 4, she knows what it's all about... there are some days when she'll say to me, "Mommy, I don't wanna wear it today!"- these are the days when we paid a visit to the Dominican salon for her monthly deep condition and "blow out"- if any of you know about it or ever had one, you definitely know there's nothing else out there like it! But for the most part she doesn't protest about putting it on and on some days when the house is crazy and I'm trying to get everybody out to get some place on time, she'll even remind ME by yelling, "Mommy, you forgot my hijab!!!"... MashaAllah.It made me start to think about all the images they see on a daily basis and how even when we think they're not listening, their little ears hear ALL things.... on more than one occasion while driving, if I had an episode of "road rage" and called someone an "ignorant donkey", she would say to me "Mommy, why did you say that? That's not nice...."- and she's right. That's when I catch myself and tell her Mommy was wrong and that wasn't a nice thing to say and that I'm sorry. She would say to me in return, "Mommy, okay, NOW you're being a good girl... excellent, Mommy!"- the phrase I always tell her when she corrects her behavior, subhanallah.
So I never bought her any dolls until recently as my 
husband IS NOT an advocate of them but as a Mom, I knew I grew up with too many to count so I wanted to her to have a few so she would be able to "play house" the same way I did coming up... so I bought her three Pottery Barn Kids dolls as she fell in love with these particular ones when she saw their latest catalog in the house. While the dolls are fully dressed and look "normal" meaning not like those hoochie Bratz dolls, I said to myself I should find her something that would be more suitable for her as a little Muslimah- which started my quest for the beautiful Fulla doll. Now, I became familiar with the doll when it first came out but since she just came along and now she's starting to took at dolls, I thought I'd better be proactive and give her something to identify with in a positive way. When she visits her cousin's house in Long Island, she has more dolls than any one shelf in Toy'R'Us and they play with them for hours... including those provocative Bratz girlz... and I see she likes them as I sit there and watch her by the way she stares at them- NOT the image we want etched in that mind of hers!
!!
husband IS NOT an advocate of them but as a Mom, I knew I grew up with too many to count so I wanted to her to have a few so she would be able to "play house" the same way I did coming up... so I bought her three Pottery Barn Kids dolls as she fell in love with these particular ones when she saw their latest catalog in the house. While the dolls are fully dressed and look "normal" meaning not like those hoochie Bratz dolls, I said to myself I should find her something that would be more suitable for her as a little Muslimah- which started my quest for the beautiful Fulla doll. Now, I became familiar with the doll when it first came out but since she just came along and now she's starting to took at dolls, I thought I'd better be proactive and give her something to identify with in a positive way. When she visits her cousin's house in Long Island, she has more dolls than any one shelf in Toy'R'Us and they play with them for hours... including those provocative Bratz girlz... and I see she likes them as I sit there and watch her by the way she stares at them- NOT the image we want etched in that mind of hers!
!! We've also made it a practice of having her wear her abaya when she goes out to masjid so she can get used to that idea as well- and when I recently started researching where here in the US I could purchase the Fulla doll, I saw that you can get her in her abaya, in her prayer outfit, as a dentist, as a teacher and totally dressed up in a gown... just the thing I was looking for! They are quite costly but to me it's worth it- if I can buy her a non-Muslim PBK doll then I can pay a few more dollars to buy her something that she can identify her Mom, my friends and her little friend's Mommies with... properly covered and wearing a hijab! Even when I showed my 2 year old, Big Papi, the Fulla doll, he exclaimed, "That's Mommy!"...
MashaAllah, she LOVES wearing niqab when we visit one of my girlfriend's house or when my best friend is around, she'll take the niqab and put it on herself! At home since I don't wear one, she improvises by taking my inside scarf and tying it around her face... InshaAllah, I hope in the future she elects to wear one... she would look sooooo beautiful (MashaAllah). They need to make a Fulla doll complete with niqab!!!
Just jotting this down to remind myself and any of you sisters out there with daughters that they are sooooo much more aware than we realize and we need to be more diligent with showing our daughters to guard their beauty by covering properly- early intervention saves a WHOLE lot of headache later...
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