25 Daily Habits for A Muslim Child

As Muslims, Islam is a way of life for us. Our lifestyle is the type that has its roots in the teachings of Islam, and therefore Muslim parents love for their children to grow up in an Islamic manner. How we eat, what we wear, places we visit, and how we interact with people all have Islamic guidelines.

When it comes to children, bringing them up with an Islamic lifestyle requires that we teach them the Islamic manners, etiquette and actions that will form the habits that they will grow up with, practice and come to love, in sha’a Allah.

In this blog post, I want to share 25 daily habits of a Muslim child with you. These are acts that you can teach and encourage a child to make daily until it becomes second nature to them, in sha’a Allah. Of course, not all these 25 will happen in a day (most will), but it gives you a list to work with when teaching your child.

Benefits of Building Daily Habits for a Muslim Child

 It is common to find people who argue that children should get to a certain age before they are introduced to many aspects of the deen, but this is a wrong approach in my opinion because the building blocks of worship and that of an Islamic lifestyle should be laid from the beginning so that the child grows up in a way of life that is wholly Islamic. When we build Islamic habits from a young age, we are doing a few things like:

• Instilling a consciousness of Allah (SWT) in the child
• Helping them naturally align with their sole purpose on earth, which is to worship Allah (SWT)
• Making Islam their moral compass and lifestyle
• Preparing the child for a lifetime of worship of Allah, in sha’a Allah
• Helping the child grow into their identity as a Muslim. This helps their confidence in an Islamophobic world

That said, here are 25 habits that children can learn to do daily to build an Islamic lifestyle, in sha’a Allah. You can click on the image after the list to save it. Please read until the end for tips on how to build and maintain these habits, in sha’a Allah.

Giving the salam to the person who woke them

Saying the dua of waking up

Washing the hands thrice after waking up

Performing ablution before sleeping at night

Offering the five daily salah

Reciting the morning and evening adkhaar

Reading a few lines of the Qur’an in the morning (or whenever suitable)

Reciting the adkhaar for entering and leaving the toilet

Reciting the dhikr of looking into the mirror

Reciting the dhikr of leaving the house

Reciting the dhikr of entering the house

Reciting ayat al Kursiy when entering the house

Saying ‘BismiLlah’ before eating

Saying ‘AlhamduliLlah’ after eating

Saying ‘AlhamduliLlah’ after sneezing

Greeting a person that sneezed with ‘YarhamukAllah’

Responding to greeting after sneezing with ‘YahdikumuLlah wa yusliu baalakum’

Saying the dhikr of Allah when angry or startled instead of using curse or swear words

Saying the dhikr of Allah when surprised or pleased (SubhanAllah, AlhamduliLlah, Allahu Akbar, etc.)

Putting on shoes with the right leg first and removing the left leg first

Eating with the right hand

Reciting Ayat al Kursiy after every salah

Reciting Ayat al Kursiy and the Muhawidatayn (Suratul Ikhlas, Falaq and Nas) before bed

Reciting the dhikr of sleeping

Reciting the dhikr of putting on clothes

This is by no means an exhaustive list. It is designed to give parents a starting point that is actionable and not overwhelming. You can take one point at a time and build a habit of it.

Note: Most, if not all the adkhaar and points on the list can be found in the book called “Hisnul Muslim or Fortress of the Muslim”. You can get a copy at any Islamic bookstore or probably on Amazon.

How to Start and Build Daily Habits for a Muslim Child

A question that typically comes up is when to start building these habits, and personally, I’d say that as soon as a child is born. This is because the foundation of teaching a child something doesn’t have to begin when the child can talk, walk, or attend kindergarten. A big part of the influence that parents have on their children comes from subtle, passive actions that are repeated in front of the child.

For example, it is not uncommon to hear that an infant responds to a song that its mother used to listen to or sing a lot while she was pregnant. This tells us that children pick up things right from a tender age, and we should seize the opportunity of this period of their lives to lay a foundation for the life that we hope for them.

To start and build these daily habits, here are a few pointers:

Model the Habit That You Want to Teach

One of the most effective ways to teach your child any behaviour is to model the habit. Modelling the habit means practising the habit yourself. So, when you teach a child to eat with their right hand, you should be modelling the behaviour by eating with your right hand.

The apple doesn’t fall too far from the tree until adulthood, so whatever your child sees you doing is what they will be inspired to do. You may have noticed this when a toddler pretends to pray salah, or puts a scarf over their head, for example. This also applies to negative behaviours, and therefore you may find a child exhibiting certain bad habits that their parent(s) have.

Modelling is also one of the first ways of teaching, and it is suitable for all human ages from newborn to old and grey-haired. The companions of the Prophet (SAW) were heavily influenced by the behaviours that he modelled around them, such that someone like Umar (RA) who had a different personality from the Prophet (SAW) would model his behaviour when he became the Amir-ul Mu’mineen.

I speak more on the topic of modelling in the Tarbiyyah at Home course. You can click here to sign up or click the image below.

Teach the Habit

While modelling is a passive way of teaching, there is also a need to literally teach some of the habits that you are trying to build in a child. Things like saying different adkhaar require you to teach these adkhaar to the child until they have memorised them.

A good tip when teaching, especially if it involves words or an act with multiple steps (like salah and the morning adkhaar), is to break the teaching down into bite-sized lessons. For example, when you teach an adkhaar that is more than a sentence long, you may want to break it into one sentence at a time, then join everything together when the child has memorised the last sentence.

An important part of trying to build a habit with a child is to explain the ‘why’ of the habit. Why do you want them to recite a dua when they wake up? Why does she have to eat with her right hand? Why does he need to say “Alhamdulillah” when he sneezes?

When parenting as Muslims, our actions and teachings should be backed up with the ‘whys’, not with an authoritarian “Because Mummy and Daddy said so” approach. Explaining to children helps them to understand the deen and understanding the reasoning behind an idea is important to accepting and believing in the idea. Of course, there are situations where we don’t have the answer to the ‘whys’ ourselves, especially in matters of the unseen. In such cases, we let the child understand that some knowledge is with Allah (SWT) alone.

Give Gentle Reminders

Children can often forget habits even when they have gotten used to them. A child who has been taught to say the dua of waking up may have days where they woke up and forgot to say it. This happens to adults too. So, to keep the habit going, endeavour to give frequent reminders to the child when they seem to have forgotten. For example, if you see the child putting their left leg first into trousers, you can prompt them to remember by saying something like “oh, I think you got the wrong leg going in first.”

Be Consistent

Like I said in this post, one of the things that kill our progress when we are teaching our children about Islam is a lack of consistency. If you teach an act but are not consistent in practising or reinforcing it, there is a high chance that the child will forget it or that the act will not be a natural part of them.

A good example is revising the memorised portions of the Qur’an. If a child (or even an adult) memorises a surah but does not revise, read, recite, or pray with that surah consistently, they will forget it. Many people have memorised the Qur’an when they were younger but forgot due to a lack of practice when they got busy with life. So, consistency is an important part of building daily habits for a Muslim child.

Reward the Effort

At a young age, children are inspired by rewards in different forms. This is a good tool to use when building daily habits for a Muslim child. The reward doesn’t have to be huge. It can be as simple as getting a high-five when they successfully memorised a dua or put on their clothes the right way. Remember that even adults are motivated by the rewards that Allah (SWT) has promised for acts of worship.

I pray that you find this list beneficial. Please feel free to share this post and leave a comment if you have any questions or if you spot any errors. BaarakAllahu feekum.