20 Jun The Quran VS Lullabies
Most of us grew up listening to cute lullabies from our parents to put us to sleep, most of us are familiar with innocent rhymes and lovely little stories that have stuck in our minds well into our twenties and thirties.
With my son Yusuf (aged 3) from the day he was born until today, we’ve always played surah al Baqarah to put him to sleep. This was for two reasons; 1) We wanted our kids to get used to the sound of Quran and its recitation, Nd 2) Surah al Baqarah is the longest surah out there, so we could leave it on for 1 hour if Yusuf took his time to sleep.
Today I sat down to revise surah al Baqarah while Yusuf did some colouring with crayons. I took a pause in the middle of the third page as I’d gotten stuck. Calmly, Yusuf looked up at me, completed the ayah, then continued colouring.
I was baffled. But I thought it’s probably a one-off.
I kept reading, and somewhere on page 8, I got stuck again, and Yusuf completed the ayah for me again.
Now I started pausing deliberately. 9 times out of 10 he would correctly complete the ayah wherever I stopped.
This continued until I started picking random ayahs toward the end of the surah – here he was weaker but the ability to recall was still very strong.
I dont consider myself a good parent by a stretch, but I wanted to share this with every parent I know: our childrens’ brains are like sponges at this age, these are not extraordinary feats by any means. Lets fill them with Quran and every source of khair rather than anything else.
May Allah grant our children love for the Quran, skill in its recitation, and tawfiq to implement its teachings.
Ustadh Hisham Abu Yusuf
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