Every adult, sane Muslim must offer salah five times every single day. As we all know it helps keep one away from wrongdoing and immorality, it is also an act of submission and worship that helps a Muslim achieve the ultimate purpose of life: to worship Allah alone. As a parent, we recognize the increased responsibility to teach a child to pray Salah as soon as they turn seven. Those are the days when we get stressed out thinking about how we will teach our children salah in a way that they will understand well and adapt quickly.
The Salah must be taught to a child at the age of seven and must be regularly performed by age of ten. The evidence of this lies in the following hadith:
Sabrah bin Ma’bad al-Juhni narrated that:
Allah’s Messenger (SAWS) said: “Teach the boy Salat when he is seven years old, and beat him (if he does not pray) when he is ten.” – [Jami` at-Tirmidhi 407]
As a parent, we want our children to get habituated to offering salah, and to be able to perform this obligatory act as perfectly as possible, we need to work on our children right from start.
6 Ways to Teach Your Child to Pray Salah
1. Develop a Love For Prayer
It’s very essential to inculcate the love of salah in young children even before we teach them proper rules of prayer. We must educate our children that salah gets us close to Allah. It’s a means of communication, it brings inner peace, it helps us fight evil, and it’s a door to Allah’s blessings.
Most of all, it’s a gift of Allah to Prophet Mohammad (PBUH). Such little yet powerful reminders will not only make them understand the importance of salah but also help them fall in love with it.
2. Make Spiritually and Physically Able
It’s important for us to understand that focus and concentration are essential while we are in salah. But these two qualities can be difficult for children to achieve. To help with this we can play little meditation(zikr) games. For example, make your child sit at one place and ask them to do a small zikr for a min or two.
The rule of the game would be he/she must not look away from a certain point, neither get distracted nor talk to anyone. Slowly increase the time and length of azkar(adhkar) they read. This will help your child attain control over body movements and distractions. Another game could be the silence game where you set a timer and ask the child to sit or stand silently until the buzzer goes off.
3. Give Visual Exposure
Let your children see you and others pray. That said, basically, your children are always interested in following what elders do. They also keep absorbing things from the environment. If you want your child to pray regularly with utmost concentration then allow your child to see this done by you and your partner daily. Also taking kids to the mosque is great where can see others pray.
4. Prepare the Environment
To encourage your kids, you can either fix a salah space at home or just buy kids salah mats for each one of them. You can also buy salah caps or scarfs for boys and girls respectively to make them feel salah is special and personal.
5. Keep it Interesting
To develop interest, you can do the following:
- small coloring project on wudu and salah
- prepare a salah calendar
- and little acknowledgment cards to let them know that u are aware of their efforts.
- rhymes and stories about salah
- arranging kids congregation salah at get-togethers and parties. Kids love to repeat activities done in peer groups.
- a colorful project on the story of Meraj.
6. Memorize Salah Essentials
To make the whole process smooth, begin early and start making your children memorize salah essentials. You can start with a little dua of rukuh and sajdah and then continue from thereon.
Things to Keep in Mind
Go slow: Learning to offer salah with utmost concentration and regularity requires time and positive effort. As parents, we need to support them during this learning time and give them time till they develop the habit of salah. Remember each child works at his or her own pace so pushing or comparing won’t work.
Be gentle: Often as parents, we get anxious and worried and would want our kids not to miss a single salah or at least get responsible about it. In this anxiety, we many a time take steps that are rather harmful. Taking harsh steps or yelling at kids will only make them negative about salah. We must rather be patient, supportive, and gentle in our approach.
Acknowledge efforts: Make sure that you acknowledge efforts so that it acts lie motivation and appreciation for the child.
Make Dua: Lastly, make a lot of dua for your children to be able to pray in the best possible manner. I would end with a quranic dua that every parent must daily make:
O my Lord! make me one who establishes regular Prayer, and also (raise such) among my offspring O our Lord! and accept Thou my Prayer.[14:40]
Also read: Dua for a righteous child
