Command Your Children to Perform Salah: A Hadith on Parenting and Tarbiyah
Command Your Children to Perform Salah
‘Amr bin Shu’aib reported on his father’s authority that his grandfather (رضي الله عنه) said:
The Messenger of ALLĀH (ﷺ) said, “Command your children to perform Salat (prayer) when they are seven years old, and beat them for (not offering) it when they are ten, and do not let (boys and girls) sleep together”.
[Abu Dawūd].
Commentary:
This Hadith highlights the following points:
1. The importance of the prescribed five daily Salat (prayers).
2. When warranted by the situation, it is permissible to beat children for their proper upbringing and education. But this should not be in any case violent and aggressive. It should rather be done in a manner that the child does not suffer any physical injury and receives the right type of training. It is an absurd theory that children should be given a free hand, and leave alone corporal punishment, they should not even be rebuked for doing something wrong. Suitable punishment is essential for their proper training and education.
3. Muslim jurists have written that like Salat, other injunctions of Shari’ah should also be instilled in the minds of children, and if possible, they should also be given practical training for their performance. For instance, they should be made to observe Saum (fast) occasionally in accordance with their age and capacity during the month of Ramadan, so that the importance of the obligation of fasting is impressed on their minds at an early age. This exercise will prove very fruitful when they attain maturity. They will then be conscious that for a Muslim, fasting in the month of Ramadān is compulsory like the five daily Salat.
4. A child generally does not attain maturity at the age of ten years, but nevertheless he does acquire some sense. It is, therefore, necessary that rather than putting children in one bed they are provided separate beds once they reach the age of 10, especially children of the opposite sex.
[Hafiz Salahudeen Yusuf’s Commentary on Riyadh us-Saliheen: Book 1, Chapter 38, Hadith 301]