Ramadan with my 2 year old

How do you teach a two year old about Ramadan? How do I make her understand it’s merit and how important it is in our lives?!

I’ve been asking myself these questions for the last couple of months. My husband and I have been having lots of Ramadan related conversations and we both want to make Ramadan fruitful for ourselves but also introduce it to our 2 year old daughter.

Any article/post I’ve seen in relation to children and Ramadan I’ve been reading like an obsessive stalker. Alhamdhulillah all the creative sisters out there make me feel motivated to think outside the box and do something with my daughter too.

So I finally came to the conclusion that instead of trying to teach the significance of a special month to such a young mind (a mind which is currently occupied with skipping instead of walking), I will try to build a tiny bit of awareness about how our home will change in this month.

Children, even the very young ones notice change. They pick it up and usually don’t like it. Well my daughter usually doesn’t (takes after me on that one). I thought about introducing her to positive and more specifically fun, enjoyable little changes.

She might be too young to understand the concept of fasting, or extra rewards or even know we have been blessed with a special month, but if I can expose her to it in a child friendly way then inshaAllah it will engage some awareness and help us build some more beautiful memories.

The atmosphere in all Muslim households changes in Ramadan with new routines and a love for extra Ibadah and I have decided I want Yusra to experience that atmosphere.

After thinking about all the different things I could do with her in this special month, I’ve come up with the following:

Ramadan Stamp Calendar

We finished making the calendar today. It’s not a piece of art and didn’t take much hard work either, but the 30 minutes we spent on cutting and gluing the numbers on were according to Yusra “good” as she kept saying “mummy, I like glue”.

InshaAllah I plan to get Yusra to stamp on the calendar at some point in the evening in Ramadan and in return she will get a date (because she loves them) to eat. We hope to remind her each day when she does this, that’s it’s a Ramadan calendar and it’s special. At Iftar time Yusra will be fast asleep, so I want her to do this when her baba gets back from work. The stamps are just something that came in a toy we bought for her a while back.

Extra Deed Jars

I’ve seen many parents to deed jars for their children and I absolutely love the idea. I think its brilliant for the older kids. I obviously can’t get Yusra to do many deeds now let alone get her to do extra sunnah inspired deeds. After much thought, I thought I’ll make them for myself and Abu Yusra. We sat down one night and made individual lists of 30 extra actions, which we would like to do in Ramadan. We then put them in the jar. I plan for Yusra to take one out from each jar first thing in the mornings in Ramadan and inshaAllah we have a whole day to do our extra deed at some point. The deed jars are for our daughter and us – we want her to have something to do (an action to remember) and this also encourages us to do something extra.

Ramadan Colouring Pages

This idea, I got from a sister yesterday. It’s very simple yet I think it is very interesting. Yusra loves her crayons, they go everywhere with her, so inshaAllah getting her to colour Ramadan related pictures would be fun and a lovely way to talk about masjids, people praying, the moon etc. There are lots of free online resources for this, here’s one I’ve found for now.

InshaAllah at the weekend we will make a Ramadan banner to put up in our living room to welcome the special guest. We will make some paper lanterns to put up in the last 10 days of the month too inshaAllah.

All this may seem irrelevant or not very effective but Allah is The Most Merciful and He rewards us for good intentions too. I make dua that He accepts my sincere intention and plea to implement all parts of Islam into my daughter’s life and helps me in this, which is yet another part of parenting. Islam places great emphasis on how we nurture our children, and we must help them walk the path of siratul mustaqeem. These small acts, in my head are all little pieces that will add up to shape a growing Muslimah’s life inshaAllah.

 The Prophet (saw) said:

“The best gift to children from parents is their correct training”

(Tirmidhi)