Teaching Children About the Prophets Without Frightening Them

Which stories, which age

1. 1

   Around five

   Adam, Nuh and the ark, Ibrahim and the idols. Clear characters, clear events, nothing the child has to hold two ideas about at once.

2. 2

   Around seven

   Yusuf and his brothers, Musa and the river, Yunus and the fish. Longer, with a middle that goes wrong before it goes right.

3. 3

   Around nine

   The life of the Prophet, peace be upon him, in order rather than as separate incidents. This is the age where sequence starts to mean something.

4. 4

   Older

   The nations that were destroyed, and why. By now a child can ask the question that story is an answer to.

The frightening parts

Some of these stories contain drowning, fire and a father who plans to sacrifice his son. Children notice all of it. Softening it into something else does not work for long, because the child will hear the real version later and will then wonder what else was softened.

What works is telling it plainly and short, then staying for the question. The fear usually sits in a specific detail, and the detail is usually answerable. A story told in two minutes and discussed for five is better than one told for seven.

What a child should come away with

• The name, and one thing that happened.
• One thing the Prophet did that the child could also do -- told the truth, was patient, was kind to someone difficult.
• That these were real people who were frightened and sad sometimes.
• Not a moral stated at the end. Children resent those, and they remember the story anyway.

Where this sits in the lessons

The stories of the Prophets are part of the Islamic Studies syllabus here, taught inside the same lesson as Quran reading. A teacher usually gives one story across two or three lessons rather than rushing it into ten minutes.

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