We’ve already talked about how to get through puberty alive in the past, but memorizing Qur’an with a girl in puberty presents slightly different challenges given she will have her period from time to time. Since she shouldn’t be handling the mushaf (moos-haf, the Qur’an in its original Arabic text) directly, what are we to do to keep making progress?
There are various theories why someone going through puberty turns into a bit of an airhead. Whatever the truth of the matter is, it presents the necessity to review things more often and to review things you thought they could never forget. When Care Bear is on her period, we take that time to review suwar (chapters of the Qur’an) we have covered in the past. In theory, she should be able to just recite a couple suwar on the day of the week we cover Qur’an memorization. In reality, she needs to prepare for this day by listening to recitation of the Qur’an from quranexplorer.com, and read along with it. This way she can avoid having to directly touch the mushaf, relying mostly on listening to the recitation for her review. During this time we cover two suwar, starting where we left on the last time she was on her period, reviewing the them in the order they are in the Qur’an.
So, the last time we did a review, Care Bear covered Surah Burooj and Tariq (85 and 86). Next time she does a review like this, she’ll cover Surah al-‘Ala and Ghashiya (87 and 88). In contrast, when she is memorizing new suwar we go in descending order of the suwar, going from the end of the Qur’an towards the beginning. This way when we review, she is reminded of the correct order of the suwar.
It can be frustrating as the parent to watch her go from a stellar student in Qur’an memorization to what seems to be just memorizing for the day and then forgetting as soon as we walk away from the lesson. The lessons we really soak in during this stage in her development are the life lessons we learn from the tafseer (explanation and background of the verses) of the suwar she’s memorizing. We never stop trying to memorize Qur’an though, and masha’Allah, she’s 3/4 of the way done with the last Juz of the Qur’an. I know she remembers the ideas and concepts she’s learning from the tafseer, even if she forgets the Arabic recitation of the Qur’an after some time passes. At this point in her life, retaining the meaning of Allah’s Word is of utmost importance – arguably more important than rote memorization.
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