Dreaming of Child in Islam

A child is read by whose child it is and by how they appeared. Your own child, well and at ease, is usually read as the state of what you are responsible for rather than as news about the child — the older interpreters were reluctant to read a dream about a living person as a message about that person. An unknown child is the fuller symbol: something newly begun that still needs tending, and whether it is welcome follows the feeling of the dream. A child crying and not comforted turns toward a duty that is not being met, or a worry that keeps returning because it has not been addressed. A child lost in a crowd is read as attention divided until something that needed it slipped out of sight. Carrying a child on a journey is read as responsibility taken along rather than left behind. A child who speaks like an adult is read as news or counsel arriving from an unexpected quarter. Teaching a child was read favourably throughout: knowledge handed on outlives the one who hands it.

The reading rests on a plain fact rather than an image. A child is a thing entrusted: it cannot hold itself up, it grows into whatever it is given, and the responsibility for it belongs to someone. The Qur'an calls children an adornment of this life (al-Kahf 18:46) and also a trial (al-Anfal 8:28), and the interpretations sit exactly between those two — a delight that is also a weight, and which of the two a dream is speaking of shows in its tone.

A dream about a child is not news about a real child's health or future, and it is neither a prediction of a birth nor a denial of one. It settles nothing and rules on nothing. Worry about a child is one of the most reliable manufacturers of dreams there is, which is a reason to be gentle with what you saw rather than to weigh it. If it left you shaken, seek refuge in Allah, turn onto your other side, and keep it untold.