Child's Play

Weekends in Ramadan are family time for me. It's the time we can all just relax and catch up without the stress of knowing that we have to be up early for work or to take the kids to school.

My cousin has two children, a boy aged four and a daughter who is two.

They both watch as their parents fast all day and eat only at night. They see them getting up to pray and to read the Quran.

For the past week or so, her four-year-old has been asking her about fasting and why she doesn't eat during the day. He even insists on joining in (something she, of course, refuses).

He is a determined little one and so has breakfast, lunch, skips his afternoon snack and eats dinner at iftar time.

This is the only compromise he would accept. This means he doesn't eat from about one or two in the afternoon to six o'clock. That's a long time in an active kid's life.

It's interesting to see how people learn about their religion by the actions of their parents, simply by mimicking them.

Though Islam asks parents to start training their children to fast and pray at the age of seven, half the battle is already won if the child understands a little about what is expected of them by seeing their parents' actions.