Greeting Children

Salam is not a courtesy reserved for the important or the grown. Here the Sunnah reaches down to the smallest members of the community, the children. To greet a child with peace is to treat them as someone worthy of being addressed, to teach the greeting by living it, and to plant gentleness in a heart while it is still soft.

Notice how the practice is preserved: a Companion greets children, then explains he is simply copying what the Messenger of Allah did. The lesson is that even our manners with the young are an act of following, not just kindness for its own sake.