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Live Quran Lessons

When a Child Refuses to Sit in Quran Class

What do I do when my child refuses to attend Quran class?

The short answer

Refusal is almost always about the lesson, not about the Quran. The usual causes are a slot that lands when the child is exhausted, a teacher who moves too fast or too slow, or a child who is embarrassed because they cannot keep up. Change the hour first, the pace second, the teacher third, and do not make the Quran the thing a child is punished over.

By Nauman Ahmed, Founder of Live Quran LessonsUpdated 2 min read

Find out which refusal it is

“I am tired”

Usually literal. A lesson at seven in the evening after school and homework is asking a child to concentrate on their worst hour of the day.

“It is boring”

Often means the pace is wrong. A child repeating the same page for weeks is bored, and so is a child being dragged past a letter they have not got.

“I do not like the teacher”

Ask one more question: is the teacher strict, or is the child embarrassed in front of them? These need opposite fixes.

Silence

The hardest one. Sit in on a lesson yourself before deciding anything. You can open the link without arranging it.

Change these, in this order

  1. The hour

    Move the lesson to before the evening slump, or to a weekend morning. This alone fixes more refusals than anything else.

  2. The length

    Drop to 30 minutes if you are doing longer. Short and daily beats long and dreaded.

  3. The pace

    Ask the teacher to spend a week on revision your child can already do. Confidence is what refusal usually costs, and it comes back quickly.

  4. The teacher

    If none of the above moves it, change the teacher. Ask for the same slot so the rest of the routine stays.

The one thing to avoid

Do not use the Quran as the punishment or the thing that gets taken away. “No tablet until you finish your sabaq” puts the two in the same sentence in a child's head, and that association lasts longer than any argument you win this week.

Better: let the child see you reading, keep the lesson ordinary and unremarkable, and praise the reading rather than the obedience.

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Is refusing about the Quran?

Almost never. It is about the hour, the pace, or being embarrassed at not keeping up. Treating it as a religious problem turns a scheduling problem into an argument the family cannot win.

What should we change first?

The hour. A child who is exhausted at half past seven after homework is often a different child at half past four with a snack first. Change that before you change anything else.

Should we make them attend anyway?

Attend, perhaps; engage, no. If the lesson has become the thing they are punished with, the attendance is bought at a price you will pay for years.

When is the teacher the problem?

When your child reads happily at home and goes silent on the call, or when the same correction has been repeated for weeks with no change. Then ask for a different teacher, and you do not have to give a reason.

Should we stop for a while?

Better to reduce than to stop. Dropping to one or two short lessons keeps the habit and the reading warm while the pressure comes off.

What do we avoid?

Making the Quran the thing a child is threatened with, and bribing. Both work for a few weeks and both leave the lesson worse than they found it.

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