Asma Balfaqih
Faith in daily life
Small prayers for the day
Children like short sentences that repeat. That is exactly why prayers are so accessible to them. They are short, they belong to a particular moment and they come back every day.
What matters is that a child knows what it is saying. A memorised sentence without meaning remains a sound. That is why in my books a translation of the meaning stands underneath every Arabic text, so that children and parents can talk about the content.
And I learned something else while teaching. A child who is allowed to put its own prayer into words prays more attentively. The words do not have to be perfect. They have to belong to the child.