Abdur Rahman ibn Yusuf Mangera – Q&A Encouraging Children to Pray Salat

Bismillah al Rahman al Rahim, I have three children 11, nine and

six. And I have difficulties to ask them to do five times prayer,

especially Salat al Fajr.

Please give me your advice. It's very difficult to give very

specific advice because the dynamics of every home is very

different. Have

other parents praying regularly? Have they been praying regularly?

How have they managed to encourage or what kind of encouragement have

they provided to the children, I would probably just say,

generically speaking, it's about maybe sitting down and maybe

reading some Hadith on the formula of prayer on the virtues of

prayer. So for example, there's a famous book called virtues of the

prayer for dial a solid, it's part of the family law model. The whole

collection is some really beautiful, very intense, very

powerful narrations in there. So you just go through them with the

children to sit them down and say, Look, this is what the prophets

Allah said, This is what Allah says in the Quran, I realized that

that helps a lot, because I remember we had a student in, in

the, in the group that I was teaching and he, his, his father

was not very encouraging him of encouraging of him to miss school

for Juma prayer.

So I told him a few times, but he just couldn't have the willpower

to speak to his father and saying this is important, or whatever the

case is. So once we went through the narrations, both generations

that warned about what happens if you miss prayer, and also the

virtues of doing prayer, and mashallah he started. So it's

about positive encouragement. That's what I would suggest to

start with what helps a lot for example.

If my children have

computer time, two hours on the weekends, for every prayer they do

in the week, they get five extra minutes. If they get to do it in

the masjid, then they get 10 extra minutes. And believe me, they

running to do it. Because that computer time is very valuable. So

we found that to work and how long it's going to work for but it

definitely does work. So every time I'm going for prayer, he

wants to come with me for prayer.

When I'm praying at home, he wants to come and pray with me at home.

So there's there's these different things that you can use May Allah

subhanaw but make lots and lots of dua. The parents obviously have to

be praying for that to happen as well.