Enlivening the Quran at home

Daily Quran recitation with kids

There must be an effort to form a habit of reciting the Quran regularly until it becomes a routine that makes you feel like your day is incomplete without it. During pregnancies until now, almost every morning, my children have been listening to the voices of us as parents reciting the Quran after fajr(subuh) prayer, for a good 10-15 minutes. This has become our family morning routine, and we hope to continue this habit as long as Allah wills it to be, insya-Allah.

Embedding Islamic values in everyday routines

Values are embedded over time with consistency. This can be as simple as reciting bismillah every time before eating, before reading, before doing anything. There is a wonderful book for children about the importance of saying bismillah before doing everything from Homely Hammock, titled ‘Basma Bear Loves Bismillah’.

The love for the 5 daily prayers

Another important value that we need to inculcate in our children is the love for the five daily prayers. The culture of performing daily prayers must be established since our children are very young. When they are small, our children will always watch us as parents performing prayers daily while they play around us. This makes prayer times feel fun and special for them. We can purchase prayer mats or prayer gears for our children so that they can feel like they are part of the congregation (Jemaah). Hopefully these constant little efforts will make them love prayers as prayer times are deemed as fun and happy moments.

Asking Allah to take care of our worries for our children.

As parents, especially of small children, we may have our worries & fears about their future; whether we will be there with them and for them or not. Hence, it is important to place our utmost trust in Allah SWT and to pray to Him for guidance & care for our children in His best ways as we are told to leave our affairs to Him after we have done the best that we can.

“And I entrust my affair to Allāh. Indeed, Allāh is Seeing of [His] servants.” (Surah Ghafir, 40:44).

Allah is teaching us to be patient through our children

It is indeed a real and tough test at times, especially when we are handling their tantrums during moments of tiredness & stress. We must try our best not to lose our cool & not to leash out at them out of anger. We need to learn how to pause & breathe, and if there are others around, it is ok to ask for help to take over while we try to regain our composure & collect our thoughts. Our children learn to be patient and forgiving towards themselves and others through us and our reactions. If any small mistake is reciprocated with harsh words and acts, soon they will learn that that is the only way to go.

Praying to Allah so that our children become good Muslims

We can learn from Nabi Ibrahim ‘alaihissalam who prayed to Allah to make him & his progeny from those who submit to Allah.

“Our Lord and make us Muslims [in submission] to You and from our descendants a Muslim nation [in submission] to You. And show us our rites [of worship] and accept our repentance. Indeed, You are the Accepting of Repentance, the Merciful.” (Surah Al-Baqarah, 2:128)

At the end of the day, the modern Muslim family finds strength not in rigid conformity but in its ability to adapt and define its own success, in accordance with Islamic ethics and principles.