Kids Need Less: Here’s Why

In this interview filmed at Taksim Mosque in Istanbul, journalist Lauren Booth talks with Anisa Rasul, a British educator, homeschooling mother, and children’s author, about raising children with faith at the center in a world of constant wants. At its heart is one question: what if children need less, not more?

Anisa grew up in a privileged family in Newcastle, England, and attended one of the country’s top girls’ schools. She was trained to pass exams and write essays, she says, but not in life skills or in knowing her Lord. When someone close to her passed away when she was 18, she began asking what life and death really mean, and started her own journey into faith. Years later, as a mother, she wanted something different for her children: to be deeply rooted in faith, knowledge, sincerity, and love. When her eldest was five, she felt she was constantly fighting the outside environment: peer influences, and the homes, cars, and activities children compare. She notes the common view that much of a child’s personality is formed by around age seven, which made the decision feel urgent.

With what she calls courage rather than naivety, the family left their jobs and moved first to Fez, Morocco, for four years, and later to Tarim in Yemen, where her husband studied. It was not a fairy tale: there were hard stretches, her husband sometimes returned to the UK to work, and she adjusted alone to a new language and climate. But she saw her children form a strong Islamic identity in a place where life revolves around the five prayers and Ramadan is something to celebrate. She links this to intention, recalling the hadith that every person gets what they intended. Her grandfather migrated from Pakistan for a better worldly life, and his children prospered, but many lost touch with faith for a time. She chose to make her move for Allah and for her children’s faith, and is now seeing the fruit in her young-adult children. Every family’s path is different, but she encourages parents to look at their lives through a spiritual lens: is our home being nourished at the roots?

Early in her marriage, she wanted curtains; her husband, fresh from studying the Prophet’s ﷺ way of life, reminded her how simply he lived. It made her notice how much we own, how much we think we need, and how early we pass that on to children. The host cites a claim that many Western children today live like millionaires: driven everywhere, cleaned up after, cooked for, given every toy, and asked for nothing in return. Anisa says both luxury-as-protection and expecting nothing of children are problematic. Children need adults, but they also need simplicity and some hardship, because that is what builds character. She points to how the Prophet ﷺ raised his daughter Fatima with great simplicity and very few possessions, by choice and with contentment. When we strip away what we don’t need, she says, there is more space in our hearts for Allah.

Lauren shares that once, before becoming Muslim, she took four children to the desert for Christmas with just a wooden animal, a small instrument, and one new outfit each. They played all day without a single complaint. So how do parents resist marketing and the endless “everyone else has it”? Anisa’s answer: don’t be afraid to parent. Be firm enough to say no, or to limit things, for example setting aside two hours in the evening for family time, reading, or a board game. And find your tribe: children need friends and social acceptance, so rather than isolating them, place them strategically among like-minded families, even if it’s just one friend, through the local masjid or community.

On grandparents and extended family, she stresses respect and good manners. When her children were young, she asked grandparents to turn off the TV during visits, and within months it became routine. Rather than refusing gifts, she asked relatives to check with her first and suggested wooden, natural, or educational toys, or simply books. Explaining the reasons, with respect, helps families pull in the same direction.

She describes daily life in Tarim: simple mud-brick homes, long power cuts, two years with almost no internet, which she calls a blessing that freed her mind for reflection and remembrance. Days follow a rhythm shaped around worship: study in the fresh morning hours, family meals and rest at midday, visiting in the afternoon, children playing outside until Maghrib, and Quran until Isha. Her teachers there lived with almost nothing, yet were, to her, among the greatest people she had ever met.

Those teachers encouraged her to connect children in the West with the lives of the righteous friends of Allah (awliya). After early readers told her a straight biography was dull, she studied storytelling and began The Hadi Twins Adventure, a planned ten-book series of time-traveling adventures, starting with Imam Ahmad and the Bandits. The real “miracle” of these figures, her teachers taught, is consistency: staying steady in worship and service for decades.

Her closing advice to parents is simple: read to your children, from infancy, and keep going as long as they’ll let you. She read aloud to her daughters until they were about 11. Every child loves a good story, she says, even if they haven’t found the right book yet; stories are part of our nature, and Allah teaches us through them in the Quran. Put the screens away, parents included, and make a family reading hour. Anisa describes reading together as a powerful bonding activity that opens space for conversation and helps children develop vocabulary and communication skills.