InCulture Parent: Children’s Experience of Ramadan

My latest column for InCulture Parent has now been published: Children’s Experience of Ramadan  describes the way children sometimes experience Ramadan and what it means for them:

"In Ramadan, a family and community’s routines are completely changed. Breakfast in the dawn hours becomes a source of mystery to children who wake up to fasting parents. Lunch becomes a children only affair, and the breaking of the fast in the evening is looked forward to with great anticipation by the whole family–whether fasting or not.


Because children are present at the breaking of the fast, often children associate fasting with food and not hunger. When told we were fasting, my youngest exclaimed, “But where’s all of the nice food?”


The idea of fasting is also something that isn’t always grasped straight away. I have often noticed small children treating “the fast” as a physical object, perhaps because of the way we speak about it as a special responsibility. My younger sister, once asked whether she was keeping the fast, replied, “Yes, under my bed.”

Please do take a look and leave a comment, the full article is here.