Salah with your child

Bismillah Arrahman Arrahim ,

Allhamdulillah

How a mother desires to pray salah with young children:

You tell your child that it’s salah time and they sit and wait for you. You perform wudhu with complete concentration, remembering how your sins are being washed and how you’re preparing yourself to stand in front of your Kind Rabb.

You then put on a nice jilbab and hijab, lay out a prayer mat, and get yourself ready for salah. The child sits next to you. You once heard that in order to have khushu, before starting the actual salah, it is good to try and get into the find frame of salah. Telling yourself what the actual action is about, preparing the mind and heart by choosing the ayahs you will recite, knowing that you are standing to converse with Allah. You think about all this and feel you’re ready to flood your salah with dua and obedience.

You perform your salah with some difficulty with khushu but are able to connect back every time your mind wanders off. Your ruku is good, it brings you back to remembering you’re in salah and you then go down to make sajdah with a heart that melts, knowing you’re the closest to your Creator the most now. Your heart makes dua whilst in sujood, feeling an absolute spiritual high, with gratitude pouring out of your soul.

You complete all rakahs of your salah, sit and do dhikr and then complete your Sunnah and even add a few nafl rakahs. Child happily joined the salah and didn’t move at all, and is now playing with a puzzle. You come away from salah feeling refreshed.

The reality of a mother’s salah with her young child:

You beg child 2 that you need to make wudhu, he throws a tantrum, so you take him with you. He is your interactive audience whilst you perform wudhu all along looking to check he hasn’t put his hand inside the toilet.

You wear your one piece salah dress, child 2 now realises its salah time, so he screams that he can’t get the musallah out of the ottoman. You help him, but he isn’t happy with your choice and wants a different prayer mat. You grudgingly let him choose.

He then joins you, only to finish his four rakahs in 2.7 seconds and wonders why you haven’t done the same. You tell him to follow you, he starts again, but this time he decides to perform a walking salah.

You hadn’t decided what surah you would recite, so your default surah al Feel is selected. When you go down to ruku, you realise child 2 has brought out a massive water gun, you try to regain khushu again, but he’s pointing it at you. You manage to get down to sajdah, you praise Allah and ask Him to keep the mini warrior attached to salah, because you can hear him raiding a kitchen cupboard whilst singing “alwan, alwan”.

You can’t remember if you’ve done 3 or 4 rakahs, you put hope in Allah’s Mercy, do a sahw sajdah and complete salah, to find child 2 has taken out a pan and is attempting to sit inside it. He looks at you and says “bi’la’la” - it means Bismillah. In your rush to finish salah, you realise your dua was rushed. His Bismillah reminds you that salah is also in the name of Allah, for Allah. And more than anyone else, Allah alone knows the mental and emotional strength that is required from you to perform your salah with a child He so Kindly blessed you with.

You wipe away the you feel for your poorly performed salah and find the Mercy of Allah envelope you. You realise that even in the midst of a crazy child, Allah has allowed you to remember that you’re in need. Always in need of the good He gives you, because remembering Him is peaceful times is beautiful but remembering Him in chaos is more valuable to your soul.