How to teach your kids to pray
A personal one for me...
I fully understand not everyone who reads this will be a parent…
…but you will 100% interact with a child at some point.
So, this is relevant to absolutely everyone at different points in their life.
Teaching children how to pray is a delicate task.
My early interactions with how I was “taught” to pray was pretty heavy-handed. There was a lot of expectation for me to come to the altar at an early age, react incredibly emotionally, and even speak in tongues as part of my prayer practice.
At least, that was the direct teaching I had from my extended family.
But…how should we teach our kids to pray?
Kids will mimic and soak up a lot of what we do and try to replicate it.
So practicing prayer in your own life and doing so publicly will go a long way to teaching kids how to pray.
But…kids will also mimic actions without understanding the meaning behind the actions. So making sure to discuss why you do what you do, why you say what you are saying, etc. is important.
But, most importantly, don’t complicate it.
Kids have a beautifully simple understanding of their universe.
They don’t need deep philosophy and theology and they will ask questions for exactly what they didn’t understand and need to understand right then. They will often let you gloss over things they aren’t understanding yet, too.
And, lastly, share them the ways you have learned about prayer. Tell stories about your grandparents, the time you messed up praying out loud in front of everyone, when you felt the Spirit filling you without a shadow of a doubt.
Again, they will ask questions when they are ready to dive deeper and will move on when they’re where they are at their limit of understanding.
At the end of the day, the way you teach our kids to pray is to be involved in their prayer life and in your own prayer life.
Put your own oxygen mask on before your child’s - it applies to prayer AND airplanes.
My prayer for today
Our Father, thank you for putting children in our lives to interact with and help become faithful followers of Jesus. Give us the wisdom, grace, and confidence to allow children to learn how to pray through our example. Amen.
Remember
Pray for a child in your life this week. Not just from afar, but (after asking their parents, if you aren’t the parent) with them.