Ibu menempelkan tangan di kening adik saya untuk memeriksa suhu.

Ibu can mean:

• mother / mom
• Mrs.
• a polite form of address for an adult woman

In this sentence, it most naturally means mother/mom because the sentence also mentions adik saya (my younger sibling), so the family context is clear.

The root is tempel, which has the idea of sticking or being in contact.

• menempel = to stick, cling, or be attached
• menempelkan = to stick/place something onto something else

So Ibu menempelkan tangan... means that Mother places her hand against the forehead. The -kan form makes it more clearly transitive: she is doing something with an object, tangan.

No. Here di is a preposition meaning in / on / at, and it is written separately:

• di kening = on the forehead

The passive prefix di- is attached directly to a verb:

• ditempelkan = was placed/stuck onto

So spacing is important in Indonesian.

Both can make sense, but the nuance is slightly different:

• di kening focuses on the location where the hand is placed: on the forehead
• ke kening focuses more on the direction/target: onto the forehead

In this sentence, di kening sounds natural because it emphasizes where the hand ends up.

Indonesian often leaves possession unstated when it is obvious from context, especially with body parts.

So:

• Ibu menempelkan tangan... naturally implies Mother placed her hand...

You could also say:

• Ibu menempelkan tangannya...

That is more explicit, but the original sentence is perfectly normal.

Adik saya means my younger sibling.

It does not tell you whether the sibling is male or female. If you want to specify, you can say:

• adik laki-laki saya = my younger brother
• adik perempuan saya = my younger sister

So adik is about relative age, not gender.

Yes, both kening and dahi refer to the forehead.

In many everyday contexts, they are interchangeable. Kening is very natural here. A learner will often see both words, so it is good to recognize them as near-equivalents.

Untuk often introduces purpose, like to or in order to in English.

So:

• untuk memeriksa suhu = to check the temperature

This is a very common pattern in Indonesian:

• Saya datang untuk belajar. = I came to study.
• Dia membuka pintu untuk melihat keluar. = He/She opened the door to look outside.

Because the context makes it clear that this means body temperature.

When someone touches a person’s forehead, suhu is naturally understood as temperature in the health sense. If you want to be more explicit, you can say:

• suhu tubuh = body temperature

So both are possible, but suhu alone is enough here.

Indonesian does not use articles the way English does. There is no direct equivalent of a/an/the that must appear before nouns in normal sentences.

So Indonesian simply says:

• di kening = on the forehead
• memeriksa suhu = check the temperature

English needs articles there, but Indonesian usually does not.

You usually know from context, because Indonesian verbs do not change form for tense the way English verbs do.

So this sentence by itself could describe:

• something happening now
• something that happened before
• something that usually happens

If you want to make the time clearer, you add time words, for example:

• Tadi ibu menempelkan tangan di kening adik saya... = Earlier, Mother placed her hand on my younger sibling’s forehead...
• Ibu sedang menempelkan tangan... = Mother is placing her hand...
• Ibu akan menempelkan tangan... = Mother will place her hand...