The school holidays have a rhythm all their own. Slower mornings. Family outings. Children who seem, for a few weeks, to remember how to simply be.

And then a new term begins.

The school bag comes out of the corner. The uniform gets ironed. And in that quiet before the first alarm, there is a moment worth not rushing past.

The Prophet ﷺ said: “Actions are by intentions.” We quote this often in adult contexts, but it belongs at the school gate too. The question is not only whether your child is ready for the term ahead. It is what they understand they are returning to school for.

Not every child will articulate this. Most won’t. But children absorb what parents model. If the morning is frantic and the goodbye is rushed, that framing sticks. If the morning holds even a moment of calm, a doa said together, a word of genuine encouragement, that sticks too.

In our tradition, the pursuit of knowledge ( talab al- ʿilm ) is not a mundane obligation. It is, at its best, an act of worship. The child sitting in a classroom does not need to feel the full weight of that yet. But the parent who sees it that way will naturally raise a child who comes to see it that way too.

So as this new term arrives, resist the urge to make it only about logistics. Pack the bag, yes. Set the alarm, yes. And then, in the small space between those two things, make a niyyah, an intention, for the months ahead. 

Not just that your child succeeds. That they grow.