Raising Children the Prophetic Way

🌴 Tahnik — a taste of date

Tahnik is softening a date (chewing it, or mashing it) and gently rubbing a little on the roof of the newborn's mouth. The Prophet ﷺ did this for newborns brought to him — including Abdullah, the son of Abu Talha and Umm Sulaym, and for Abdullah ibn az-Zubayr. It is a good practice to seek out, ideally done by a person of piety.

Refs: Sahih al-Bukhari 5469; Sahih Muslim 2144

📛 A good name

Choose a good name for the child — this can be done at birth or around the seventh day. The Prophet ﷺ said the names dearest to Allah are Abdullah and Abdur-Rahman. Names of servitude to Allah (Abd- followed by one of His names) and the names of the prophets are excellent choices.

Avoid names that claim servitude to anything other than Allah (e.g. "servant of" a saint or an idol), names with boastful or false meanings, and names that carry a bad or mocking sense.

Refs: Sahih Muslim 2132

🐑 Aqiqah on the seventh day

The aqiqah is a sacrifice offered in thanks for the newborn, on the seventh day: two sheep for a boy and one for a girl (reported in the Sunan collections, and graded authentic). It is a distinct act of worship with its own etiquette.

We have a full page on this — see the aqiqah guide for who does it, timing, and how the meat is distributed.

Refs: reported by Abu Dawud, al-Tirmidhi and an-Nasa'i (graded sahih)

✂️ Shaving the head and charity

On the seventh day the newborn's head is shaved, and the weight of the hair is given in silver as charity to the poor. This is reported of Fatimah, who weighed the hair of Hasan and Husayn and gave its weight in silver in charity. For a girl the same encouragement to give charity applies; the shaving itself is specifically mentioned for the newborn's hair, done gently and completely (not the disliked partial shaving).

Refs: reported by Malik in al-Muwatta' and by al-Tirmidhi

🔪 Circumcision (khitan)

Circumcision is part of the fitrah — the natural, God-given disposition. The Prophet ﷺ listed it among the acts of fitrah: "Five things are from the fitrah: circumcision, shaving the pubic hair, plucking the armpit hair, trimming the moustache, and clipping the nails." For boys it is done in the early years; there is scholarly latitude on the exact timing.

Refs: Sahih al-Bukhari 5889

❤️ Mercy and open affection

The Prophet ﷺ kissed his grandson al-Hasan. A man beside him said he had ten children and had never kissed any of them. The Prophet ﷺ looked at him and said, "He who does not show mercy will not be shown mercy." Warmth, kissing, playing with children, and gentleness are prophetic — not weakness.

Refs: Sahih al-Bukhari 5997

⚖️ Justice between children

An-Nu'man ibn Bashir's father gave him a gift and wanted the Prophet ﷺ to witness it. The Prophet ﷺ asked whether he had given the same to all his children. When the father said no, the Prophet ﷺ declined to witness it and said, "Fear Allah and be just between your children." Do not favour one child over another in gifts and attention — inequality breeds resentment and severs ties.

Refs: Sahih al-Bukhari 2587

☝️ Teaching tawhid early

The Prophet ﷺ took the young Abdullah ibn Abbas behind him on a mount and taught him: "O boy, I will teach you some words: be mindful of Allah and He will protect you; be mindful of Allah and you will find Him before you. When you ask, ask Allah; when you seek help, seek it from Allah…" Plant the roots first — that Allah alone is worthy of worship, that He sees and hears, that we ask Him directly.

Refs: reported by al-Tirmidhi (graded sahih)

🕌 Teaching salah

Children are trained into prayer gradually. The Prophet ﷺ said to command children to pray at the age of seven, and to be firmer about it at ten, and to separate their sleeping places at that age. The point is patient habit-forming through the earlier years, not punishment.

See also our page on the adhan and the call to prayer and on Islamic manners to teach alongside salah.

Refs: reported by Abu Dawud (graded hasan)

🏠 Sponsorship, not name-changing

A fostered child keeps his own father's name and his own lineage. Everything else — the home, the upbringing, the affection, the daily fatherhood and motherhood — is given in full. What is not given is the legal fiction that he was born to the fosterer. Preserving his true lineage is described in the verse as "more just in the sight of Allah": it protects his identity, his kinship rights, and clarity in marriage and inheritance. It is precision, not a colder welcome.

Refs: Quran 33:5; Sahih al-Bukhari 6005

📜 Inheritance: no fixed share — but the wasiyyah

Because the fostered child is not a blood relative of the fosterer, he does not take a fixed share under the faraidh — the Quranic shares belong to the heirs Allah named. But the door is not closed: the fosterer may provide for him deliberately through the wasiyyah (bequest), up to one third of the estate, since a wasiyyah is precisely for those who are not fixed-share heirs — and may of course give him gifts freely during life.

See our full guides: the wasiyyah — the Islamic will and faraidh — inheritance shares.

Refs: see /wasiyyah/ and /faraidh/ for the evidences in detail

🍼 Mahramiyyah through breastfeeding (rida'ah)

A fostered child is not automatically a mahram to the household, which raises practical questions of hijab and seclusion once he or she matures. For a child taken in as an infant, the shariah provides a route: if the fostering mother breastfeeds the baby within the nursing period, rida'ah establishes mahramiyyah — the child becomes her child through suckling, a mahram to her and to the relatives that suckling connects.

Where the child arrives past infancy this route is not available; the family still earns the full reward of kafalah and simply observes the ordinary limits between non-mahrams as the child grows. The detailed conditions of rida'ah are a matter of fiqh — ask a person of knowledge about your specific situation.

Refs: on the sponsor's reward, Sahih al-Bukhari 6005

🕌 Seven to ten: teaching the prayer

Notice what the hadith actually orders at seven: command — not punish. Between seven and ten lie three full years set aside for teaching: how to make wudu, the words and movements of salah, praying beside a parent, being woken gently for Fajr, being praised for what they get right. Firmness is not even mentioned until ten — and only after those years of patient training.

The three-year gap is itself the lesson: habits are built by repetition and warmth long before any firmness is justified. A child who reaches ten having prayed a thousand times next to a parent rarely needs the second half of the hadith at all.

Refs: Sunan Abi Dawud 495 (hasan)

✋ The limits of discipline — never harshness, never humiliation

The wording at ten permits a measured firmness — and the scholars who explain this hadith hem it in tightly, from the sharia's general rules on discipline: light and non-injurious, never the face, never leaving a mark, never in a flash of anger, and never humiliating the child. Discipline in the Sunnah is a tool of training, not an outlet for a parent's temper; the moment it becomes venting or degradation it has left what the text permits.

Weigh it against the rest of this page: the same Prophet ﷺ who gave this instruction is the one you read about above kissing his grandson and saying, "He who does not show mercy will not be shown mercy." Any reading of "discipline them" that produces a frightened, humiliated child contradicts his ﷺ own way with the young. Many scholars add that if commanding, encouragement, and consequences like withheld privileges achieve the goal, that is better and fully sufficient.

To be clear about our sourcing: the permission for measured firmness at ten is the text; the detailed limits are the scholars' explanation from the sharia's general principles — and the prohibition of injury and humiliation is agreed upon.

Refs: Sunan Abi Dawud 495 (hasan); limits as explained by the scholars of fiqh

🛏️ Separate beds at ten

The same hadith adds: "and separate them in their beds." From around ten, children — brothers, sisters, and siblings of the same sex — should no longer share one bed. The scholars draw from it the training of haya' (modesty): a child approaching maturity learns bodily boundaries, privacy, and awareness of the awrah before adolescence arrives, not after.

The text says separate beds, not separate bedrooms — a family in a small home fulfils it with separate bedding in a shared room. Requiring a private room per child is a cultural expectation, not a sharʿi one.

Refs: Sunan Abi Dawud 495 (hasan)

🌒 Adolescence

There is no hadith prescribing a "teenage parenting program," and we will not invent one. What the sharia does fix is this: at bulugh (maturity) the child becomes fully accountable before Allah for prayer, fasting, and the rest. The seven-and-ten hadith is best understood as the runway to that moment — the training years exist so that accountability does not arrive as a stranger.

Beyond that anchor, what follows is general wisdom, not revealed text: keep the relationship warm enough that your teenager still talks to you, for a child who fears you will simply hide from you; shift gradually from commanding to consulting, as befits someone approaching adulthood; keep them attached to the masjid, the Quran, and good company; and let them see you practising what you preach — teenagers detect hypocrisy faster than any age group.

Refs: accountability at bulugh is fixed by the sharia; the parenting counsel above is general wisdom, not a specific text

📱 Screens, media, and companions

You will find no hadith about phones, and we will not pretend otherwise. What the deen gives you is the principle: a parent is a shepherd, responsible for what enters the child's heart and who shapes it. The Sunnah attaches great weight to the company a person keeps — a companion's character rubs off — and in this generation the "companions" who sit with your child longest are often the accounts, streamers, and group chats on a screen in their pocket. Judge them by the same standard you would judge a friend who walked through your front door.

Practical measures — delaying a first phone, keeping devices out of bedrooms at night, knowing what your child watches, filling their circle with families upon the Sunnah — are applications of that principle by parental judgment. They will differ by family, country, and child. Do not bind another parent to your house rules as if they were sharia; equally, do not use "there's no text about it" as an excuse for neglecting the flock you will be asked about.

Refs: applications of general sharʿi principles (guardianship, good company) — the specific measures are parental judgment, not text

🤱 The mother comes first

For a young child who still needs day-to-day care, the mother has the foremost right of custody. This is the plain sense of the hadith and the position of the scholars: the mother's tenderness and constant nearness serve the small child best, so she is placed ahead of the father in physical custody while the father's duty to provide (nafaqah) continues throughout.

The hadith attaches one condition to her precedence: "as long as you do not marry." If she takes a new husband who is a stranger (non-mahram) to the child, her right of custody lapses in favour of the next guardian in line — typically the maternal grandmother, and so on down the order the scholars have detailed. The reasoning is the child's welfare, not a slight against the mother: a new household headed by a man with no tie to the child may not guard the child's interests as she would. Some scholars add that if she marries a relative of the child who is himself a mahram and cares for the child (such as the child's paternal uncle), her right can remain — an area of legitimate scholarly discussion.

Refs: Sunan Abi Dawud 2276 (hasan)

🧒 When the child can choose — and the ikhtilaf

The mother's automatic precedence answers the case of a small, dependent child. Once a child reaches the age of discernment (tamyiz) — around seven, when he can voice a sound preference and no longer needs constant physical tending — the authentic hadith above shows the Prophet ﷺ letting such a child choose between his parents. This is a real point of difference among the scholars, so we state it honestly:

• Shafiʿis and Hanbalis act on the choosing hadith directly: at discernment the boy is given the choice between father and mother.
• Hanafis do not give a choice; the mother keeps the young boy until he is independent in his basic needs, and the girl until she is of marriageable age, after which the father takes charge.
• Malikis likewise do not give a choice; the mother keeps the boy until maturity and the girl until she marries.

What all of them agree on is the qualification that runs beneath the hadith: the choice is not absolute. If the child would choose a parent who will neglect his religion, his upbringing, or his care, the choice is overridden and he is placed with whoever safeguards him best. Contemporary scholars of the Sunnah act on the authentic text of choice while binding it, always, to that welfare.

Refs: Jami at-Tirmidhi 1357 (hasan sahih); Sunan Abi Dawud 2277 (sahih)

⚖️ The governing principle: the child's welfare

Custody in Islam is not a prize awarded to the parent who argues hardest; it is a trust discharged for the sake of the child. The verse above, revealed in the context of a separated couple arranging their child's nursing and support, forbids either parent from using the child as a weapon against the other, and affirms that raising and providing for the child is a shared, ongoing duty of both. The rules of ḥaḍānah — mother first, the condition on remarriage, the choice at discernment — are all servants of one aim: that the child be kept where his religion, his care, and his affection are best protected.

Practically: keep the child's welfare, not your grievance, at the centre; do not turn the child against the other parent; and where a real dispute cannot be settled, it is referred to people of knowledge and just authority, who weigh each case on its own facts. These are matters where sincere scholars differ — so a family should seek a ruling for their specific situation and not condemn those who follow another sound position.

Refs: Quran 2:233; Sunan Abi Dawud 2276; Jami at-Tirmidhi 1357