The Kind of Devoted Mother I Want to Be

This might sound like I’m dreaming big or looking at motherhood through rose-colored glasses. Maybe I am.

There is still so much I don’t know about being a mother. Salem is only six months old, and I’m still learning how to be his mother. But I love day dreaming about the kind of home I want to create.

I’ve been thinking a lot about the kind of mother I want to be. I want my children to grow up surrounded by faith, education, love, tenderness, and a home that feels deeply connected.

The Kind of Mother I Want to Be With the Qur’an

I want to be the kind of mother who recites the Qur’an beautifully in her home.

The goal is for the Qur’an to shape the way I speak to my children, treat my husband, and carry myself. I want my children to hear it in my recitation and eventually recognize it in my character.

I only learned how to read Arabic last year, and I’m still working on my pronunciation. There are ayahs I struggle to read correctly, and I have so much more to learn. But sometimes I think about what it might mean for my children to watch me learn.

Maybe they won’t remember whether I recited perfectly, but they’ll remember that their mother loved the Qur’an enough to keep learning it inshaAllah.

My favorite time to study is in the morning, so my ideal morning routine has always sounded simple: pray Fajr, spend some time studying Qur’an, and then go make breakfast for everyone.

I love the thought of my children growing up with that rhythm because I want faith to feel woven into the ordinary parts of our day.

The Kind of Mother I Want to Be as a Teacher

My husband and I have always shared a strong belief that education plays an important role in shaping our children’s lives. We’ve also agreed that I will be their primary educator at home.

Yes, we plan to homeschool.

A lot of people assume my decision comes from distrusting the education system where we live. That is part of the conversation, but it’s only a small piece of why I’m drawn to homeschooling.

What excites me most is the closeness.

I want to know my children well enough to notice what makes them curious. I want to see the subjects that light them up and recognize when something suddenly becomes difficult for them. It would be such a privilege to understand how they think, how they learn, and where they need encouragement.

Homeschooling, to me, offers the possibility of growing alongside my children rather than receiving updates about their lives after they’ve spent most of the day somewhere else.

I know my children won’t be my friends, and I don’t want to blur our relationship. But I do hope they trust me. I hope they feel comfortable coming to me and my husband when they need advice, when they’re confused, or when they simply need someone to listen.

I want education to give us more than knowledge. InshaAllah it gives us opportunities to build trust.

The Kind of Mother I Want to Be in My Marriage

One of the most important things I want my children to see is a mother who is nourished by her marriage.

This might be a little vulnerable to admit, but I would love for my children to grow up and say, “My mom and dad loved each other so much, and they respected each other.”

That matters a lot to me.

I honor my husband’s leadership in our home while still recognizing the kind of leadership I carry as his wife and the mother of our children. Those things do not compete with each other. I see them as different strengths working together.

My aunt once said something that stuck with me: “The man is the head of the household, and the woman is the neck.”

It made me laugh when she first said it, but I understood why it resonated with me once I became a wife.

I love the idea of bringing a quiet kind of strength to my family. My husband has strengths that I don’t have, and I have strengths that he doesn’t have. I want my creativity, organization, and attention to the details of our home to support the way he leads our family.

It is beautiful to see a husband and wife bringing different strengths into the same home and allowing those strengths to complement each other.

I would love to be the mother who lights up when her husband walks through the door.

I’m already excited for the day when my children are old enough for us to yell, “Papi is home!” and run to the door together to greet him.

Ideally our children would have an understanding that their father matters deeply in our family and that his relationship with me is something worth honoring.

I don’t want them to grow up thinking one parent matters more than the other or that our partnership constantly keeps score. I want them to understand that their mother and father bring different strengths into their lives, and that both relationships are precious.

The Kind of Mother I Want to Be at Home

When I imagine what my house will feel like, the first word that comes to mind is safe.

I want my children to look forward to coming home. It would be such an accomplishment if they felt like home was a place where they can exhale after a long day, find relief, and rest.

I think that kind of safety begins with the things I’ve already talked about: the relationship between my husband and me, and my relationship with Allah.

My relationship with Allah is foundational to the kind of mother I want to be. I can’t tell my children that prayer is a priority in our household if I’m not treating it like one myself. Keeping the promises I’ve made to Allah and taking the obligations of our religion seriously will shape the foundation I build with my children.

I hope the barakah spills over from there.

Then there is warmth.

I don’t think a warm home requires amazing decor or a decked-out playroom. I think it can be as simple as caring for the home we have, cooking good food, and sitting down together at the dinner table.

Family dinner matters a lot to my husband and me. I love the entire process of it: taking fresh vegetables from the earth, preparing them with my hands, putting food on my children’s plates, and eventually sitting down together to eat. Then we have enough nourishment to go on with the rest of our evening.

That cycle is so beautiful to me.

I grew up eating dinner with my grandmother and all of my cousins around the table, and I remember how naturally food brought everyone together. I can imagine my own home carrying that same feeling someday with the smell of the cooking, everyone gathered around the table, children satisfied after a long day, and the house slowly settling into evening.

The little details matter to me too.

Imagine colorful furniture and decor, plants scattered throughout the house, reds and greens and blues and oranges wherever you look. Imagine twinkling lights in the windows and lamps turned on as the sun goes down. And the house smelling like whatever I’m cooking that day.

Those last details are not necessities. But they are the kinds of details that create an atmosphere that I want my children to associate with home.

Truly, I want there to be no place like home.

The Kind of Mother I Want to Be on Fridays

One of the traditions I’m most excited to create is our Friday routine.

My aunt recently asked me, “What is a tradition you are trying to implement as a mother?”

I immediately thought of Jumu’ah.

The routine of Friday is already so beautiful in the Sunnah. We’ll spend the morning grooming ourselves, getting ready for congregation, putting on clean clothes, and going to the masjid.

But first, after Fajr, I’m making pancakes.

I want Jumu’ah to smell like pancakes.

Pancakes with eggs, fresh fruit, and maple syrup. Jumu’ah is also pancake day.

It sounds so trivial, but I love the idea of my children looking forward to Friday because of all the little things we do together. Cutting our nails. Taking ghusl. Getting dressed. Eating breakfast together. Spending the afternoon at the masjid.

And I want the tradition to have the kind of consistency that childhood memories are made from.

I want my children to grow up and say, “My mom used to make pancakes every Friday.”

Not sometimes. Not only when everyone was feeling good. Every Friday.

Even when it was raining or when someone had a cold. Even when we weren’t able to make it to the masjid that week.

Pancakes for Jumu’ah.

The Kind of Mother I Want to Be With Books and Nature

My husband and I do not have a television in our home.

We want our household to encourage our children to wonder, think critically, imagine, read, write, build, and create.

Reading is going to become part of how our family entertains itself.

I read Pride and Prejudice and noticed how people entertained one another during gatherings in a completely different way. Someone might play an instrument or they might read poetry. People read stories for fun.

I think storytelling has become a little bit of a lost art.

I want our children to grow up reading aloud to one another.

And then, of course, you can go outside.

Nature is one of the easiest ways to remember Allah. I want my children to spend a lot of time outdoors, especially as I homeschool them.

We’ll stop to look at a bird and figure out what kind it is. We’ll collect rocks. We could name the different clouds in the sky.  We’ll spend an entire afternoon outside noticing what Allah created.

I want my children to grow up immersed in that kind of wonder and learn to pay attention to the world.

The Kind of Mother I Want My Children to Remember

When I imagine my children remembering their childhood, I think about the most ordinary things.

InshaAllah my children grow up thinking, “Wow, my mom was a really good cook. I miss her food.” I have a ways to go before I earn that title, but maybe my cooking skills will get there.

InshaAllah they remember family dinners and Friday pancakes. I hope they remember books scattered around the house and afternoons spent outside. Maybe they will remember their parents laughing together.

I want my children to say, “We were always at the masjid.”

The masjid should feel like their second home, a place they helped care for and a place where they knew people.

I can picture them running around with the other children after prayer, growing up alongside the families in our community. I want them to know the masjid as a place of worship, but also as a place of friendship and learning.

When I think about the kind of mother I want to be, I’m really thinking about the kind of childhood I want to give them inshaAllah.