The responsibility of being the eldest at home

by Aasiyah

“Asalamoalikum Warahmatulahi wabarakatuh. I hope that you are well. Today I, have a bit of our personal life to share with you. My name is Aasiyah and I have a younger sister and 2 younger brothers. We live in Wiley Park in Sydney, the capital city of NSW. Today I am going to tell you a bit about the about the responsibilities being the oldest at home.

I’m 11 years old and I have a sister who is 10 years old and her name is Mariam. Then there is my brother who’s six and his name is Omar. Then is Mohammad, he is 1& half years old.

The challenges of being the oldest at home are always many. For e.g.; The other day my youngest brother tipped the indoor plant soil out. It all dropped next to the sofa and then I had to shovel all the soil and the plant back into the pot.

With that we also do Home – Schooling. When we are doing Homeschooling in the morning, Mohammad is normally climbing up the table and trying to get our pencils or our workbooks. If sometimes he is not in such a good mood, then he is whining. Anyways, we get our work done Al Hamdulilah. But sometimes he gets too annoying so my mum takes him to the room so he sleeps. We get our work done faster that way.

But my other brother as well does pretty silly things every now and then. He is sometimes day dreaming and once he accidently cut the fly screen!! Then the other time he was trying to climb up my dad’s office cabinet pretending he was spider man He does stuff which doesn’t look funny at that time, but later on it does sound funny.

And my sister, welllll, because she is only a year younger than me, so she doesn’t normally do silly things. But as they say, “Everyone has their moments”. I can’t possibly remember them now. Maybe some incidents might have happened when I was 6 or 7 but that’s 4/5 years ago. Anyways as I was saying, the main topic was about the responsibilities of being the oldest in the siblings.

So where were we… Ah yes I was talking about the time when we study. Mohammad is like, he likes attention. But again everyone does. So when we study, and my mum is explaining whatever subject we are doing, Mohammad feels that no one is paying any attention to what he is doing. So to create attention he starts crying real loudly or tries to find a way he can divert the attention. He snatches the pencil or book or the whiteboard marker. He does that so my mum looks at him.

Then there are the tasks of cleaning, cooking, washing dishes etc……. Sometimes we help with the cooking and washing but mainly we are cleaning up. Mariam and Omar are normally “Aw come on, why now?” Or “We’re playing snakes and ladders” Or “We’re inside looking after Mohammad”. They make up some excuses so they don’t have to clean up with me. Nowadays we’re giving the house a makeover and so we’re shifting sofas and carpets and things like that. So it’s craziness going on. We’re cleaning here and then running there and then Mohammad is crying, but Al Hamdulilah we have finished one part and in Shaa Allah we’ll do the rest as we’ll.

So our work is a bit behind as we clean up the whole house making it spick and span before Ramadan, so we can read more Quran and pray more. Al Hamdulilah.

So, after Mariam and Omar are making an excuse to stay inside, I normally end up cleaning up the living room by myself. Sometimes Mariam cleans too, but that’s sometimes. I normally finish up cleaning our room aswell. Mariam likes cleaning up our study room most. That’s what she gets appointed to do then.

That is my usual chores and sometimes 1 or 2 more come in or 1 or 2 chores reduce. It all really depends on whether or not Mariam does some of the responsibilities or not. But Ma Shaa AllahMohammad, loves to clean. Although he is only 1 and half years old he looks like he’s gonna help around the house when he gets a bit older like 5 or 6 In Shaa Allah.

Anyways last but not least the important things I do as the eldest, there is also the Taleem reading after Ishaa.

In it read the Ahadeeth both in Arabic and their English translations. Mom helps correct my Arabic mistakes. After that , we form a circle and recite the last 10 surahs of the Quran . My younger siblings look up to me when I do this and this makes me very pleased heheh.

I hope you have enjoyed reading just like I enjoyed writing!!

Until next time take care everyone and Ramadan Mubarak!!

Asalamoalikum warahmatulahi wabarakatuhu.