Short answer
Keep reminding them with patience, set the example, make dua, and keep the relationship warm. After puberty prayer is your teenager's own obligation, and you cannot force faith into a heart. Harshness, hitting or cutting them off usually pushes them further away. In the Hanafi school a Muslim who skips prayer is a sinner, not a disbeliever.
Prayer is fard on every Muslim from puberty, and abandoning it is a major sin. A parent's duty is to enjoin it with wisdom and patience. The Hanafi school does not judge a believer who neglects prayer out of laziness to be outside Islam.
Other madhhabs
- Hanbali
- The relied-upon view is that someone who abandons prayer entirely, even out of laziness, is a disbeliever once called to it and refusing.
Explanation
Allah told the Prophet ﷺ: enjoin prayer upon your family and be steadfast in it. The word for steadfast implies patience over time. A sound hadith also warns that between a man and disbelief is leaving the prayer, which shows how serious it is. Hold both: the matter is grave, and the cure is patient, loving persistence.
What helps:
- Talk, do not lecture. Ask what is going on: doubts, shame about missed prayers, feeling it is meaningless, or just tiredness and phones.
- Make it easy. Pray in congregation at home, wake them gently for fajr, keep the prayer mat ready.
- Answer doubts honestly, or connect them with a good teacher or youth mentor they respect.
- Praise every prayer, without sarcasm about the missed ones.
- Make dua for them, in front of them sometimes: Ibrahim asked Allah to make him and his descendants establishers of prayer.
What usually backfires: shouting, shaming in front of others, threatening to disown, or hitting. The permission to discipline at ten was for children, with strict limits, and it is not for teenagers. See hitting children.
Keep the door open. Many young people return to prayer in their twenties because a parent never stopped loving them. If missed prayers worry your teenager, explain that they can make them up steadily; see making up missed prayers and the salah tracker.
The evidence
Quran, Surah Taa-Haa 20:132
وَأْمُرْ أَهْلَكَ بِٱلصَّلَوٰةِ وَٱصْطَبِرْ عَلَيْهَا ۖ لَا نَسْـَٔلُكَ رِزْقًۭا ۖ نَّحْنُ نَرْزُقُكَ ۗ وَٱلْعَٰقِبَةُ لِلتَّقْوَىٰ ﴿١٣٢﴾
And enjoin prayer upon your family [and people] and be steadfast therein. We ask you not for provision; We provide for you, and the [best] outcome is for [those of] righteousness.
Parents keep enjoining prayer, with patience.
Quran, Surah Ibrahim 14:40
رَبِّ ٱجْعَلْنِى مُقِيمَ ٱلصَّلَوٰةِ وَمِن ذُرِّيَّتِى ۚ رَبَّنَا وَتَقَبَّلْ دُعَآءِ ﴿٤٠﴾
My Lord, make me an establisher of prayer, and [many] from my descendants. Our Lord, and accept my supplication.
Ibrahim's dua for his children's prayer.
Sahih Muslim 82
Sahih... بين الرجل وبين الشرك والكفر ترك الصلاة ...
"Between a man and shirk and disbelief is abandoning the prayer."
Shows how serious leaving prayer is.
Where the ruling is recorded
- al-Durr al-Mukhtar, Kitab al-Salah, opening section. One who leaves prayer out of laziness is a sinner (fasiq), not a disbeliever, in the Hanafi school.
- Kashshaf al-Qina', Kitab al-Salah, ruling on one who abandons it. The Hanbali view on the one who abandons prayer.
Checked by our team. For a more accurate answer to your own situation, consult a scholar. Quran translation by Sahih International. Hadith Arabic from the standard editions of the six books and the Muwatta, with gradings as recorded there; the English is our own rendering. Spotted a mistake? Tell us.