Today, I’ve invited my good friend Saffia Umm Abdul-Hayy to run through 5 ways to help your children love Ramadan, by setting a good example.
Keep reading to refresh your outlook and make helping your children love Ramadan easier, cheaper and long-lasting…
As with most things in life, Ramadan is becoming very picture perfect.
The beautiful decorations, the seasonal tableware and the varied creative activities and resources fill up our social media feeds.
It is a special time and it is important you help your children love Ramadan, so they can feel its joy and importance.
However, the endless social media posts also have the potential to overwhelm and burden us by cluttering our minds. What is more important than the material and the aesthetics of Ramadan is the power of its purpose.
Let us set a good example this Ramadan and for every consequent Ramadan and help our children love Ramadan in its true essence.
If our children must remember anything from their Ramadan’s it is to reconnect with the Quran, reconnect with Allah and increase in goodness.
So whatever seasons they may live through in their lives, times of ease or times of struggle, they will always have the gifts of Ramadan in their hands and in their hearts.
Here are 5 ways to help your children love Ramadan, by setting a good example:
1. Attach to the Quran
Ramadan is about you and your relationship with your Quran. This is a very personal endeavor. If your intention is to make this month dedicated to the Quran, you can do that in whatever way suits you, the time you have and your family.
You can read, memorise, listen to recitation, read the translation, do some Quran journaling,/reflecting and study the tafseer. You can do as many or as few different Quran activities as you can. The key is to keep it easy and that way you can keep it consistent.
Your children will be watching you and absorbing this memory forever. Little ones will naturally want to join in, so sit them next to you with a mushaf of their own and invite/encourage older children to sit for Quran too.
2. Speak to Allah
Make a habit of increasing in dua during this month. WE are always in need of dua. As mothers, our duas are enormously powerful for our offspring. And as mothers, sometimes we forget ourselves. Make dua for yourself, your dunya and your aakhirah.
Make it a visible and consistent act. Something that not only is helping you but teaching your children how to speak with Allah.
Let the sight of you sitting with your hands raised and heart open become familiar and comfortable.
3. Increase in Adhkar
If there is one way to focus, find clarity and reflect then it is through our daily adhkar.
There are as many different recorded dua and adhkar from the sunnah as there are times in the day. Find the ones that will fit in the rhythm of your days and start introducing them. Each Ramadan introduce some more.
Simple yet so powerful in bringing peace and clarity in a sometimes crazy world.
4. Strive to be Better
Demonstrating to the children how you will be trying with things you normally struggle with is a beautiful example to set. That could mean using your phone less, staying calm and not losing your temper, taking your time with your salah or setting yourself any personal goal to work towards during the month. Children will be inspired to see Ramadan as a time to become better and make changes.
5. Charity
Explaining the levels of sadaqah and actively demonstrating how you are doing everyday tasks to please Allah is a beautiful lesson and reminder for us all.
Also, physically regularly donating this month, if you are able, however little you may give is a deed that is multiplied and highly encouraged. Making and decorating your own sadaqah jar is a classic and very practical activity.
Summary
So as we venture further into Ramadan, let us acknowledge the fact that it doesn’t really matter whose house is the best decorated, which books and resources we have managed to acquire and who has the greatest feast prepared for iftar. The real Ramadan inspirators are those that re-ignite the love of Allah, the love of Quran and the desire to rise up and become better year after year within themselves, that try their very best and in the process they ignite little hearts all around them to do the same.
Saffia is a home educating mother of 4 great kids, aged 10 – 16. She is a trained NLP Life Coach and has a wealth of experience teaching and raising children (especially strong-willed teens!)
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Thank you for this Mariya and Saffia. The mother’s dua part really struck a chord with me. Now more than ever, I worry for the future my children will grow up into and only in dua do I find consolation.
Jazakillah Khayr. xx
you’re so welcome Sara. Thank you for coming over and reading. I loved how you spoke about this over on your Instagram stories a couple of weeks back. Dua is the best foundation, but there is so much you can DO too Sara xx