How to teach your kids to pray

Sometimes I think my daughter understands prayer even better than me. The other day I opened a door on my toe and injured it pretty badly. As I was cleaning it up, my daughter hovered near me and reminded me to pray for my toe so God would heal it for me. I love simple child-like faith and I wish I had some more of it myself. My brain was telling me that I just needed to wash it out, bandage it up, and in a few days my body would have it all repaired. My daughter reminded me that the Great Physician should also be included in the process.

Prayer is one of our most important assets in our Christian walk. We can speak to the Creator of the Universe at any moment, anywhere, about anything, and no one can take that away from us. God is always with us, ready to hear us, ready to speak to us, ready to help us and answer our prayers.

This is such an important lesson for our children to learn. It’s amazing to be able to empower our kids with the simple knowledge that the God of All wants to hear from them and help them all day, every day.

Prayer can feel tricky sometimes. We are talking to an invisible God after all, we can’t see Him, we can’t really hear Him, we can’t touch Him, we just have to trust that He is there, that He is listening, and then notice when He responds. Teaching our kids to pray can be intimidating. Where do we begin? What if we teach them wrong? How do we make them recognize the value of prayer?

I’ve come up with some ideas that I’ve been using to help teach my children to pray. I’ve tried to stick with the acronym P.R.A.Y.E.R. to try and make these suggestions more memorable as your teach your kids to pray. This isn’t just a one time lesson that we can teach to our kids and they’ll have it figured out for life. This should be a regular topic of discussion, and the lessons will expand as our children grow.

Prepare.

If praying is a new concept for your kids, the first step is to talk about it. Explain that prayer is a conversation with God. God is with us at all times, wherever we are, and He longs to have a relationship with us. Prayer is our way of communicating with God throughout our day. Make sure they realize that we can talk to God just like we can speak with each other.

We can take anything to God in prayer, and He will help us, He wants to hear from us. It’s important for kids to realize that there is nothing too big or too hard for God, nothing is too small and insignificant to take to God in prayer, and nothing is too bad, we can talk to God even when we make mistakes.

Routine.

There is great value in making prayer time a part of our daily routines. It is so easy to go days without thinking about God or saying a single prayer. I’ve had days where I’ve barely had a real conversation with my husband and we sleep next to each other every night. It’s even easier to forget to talk to our invisible God, but so much more important. This is why prayer must become a natural part of our day and a scheduled part of our routine.

I actually don’t like the standard routine prayers, such as praying over a meal. It feels too forced, everyone grumbles over whose turn it is to pray and no one really pays much attention because all they want to do is eat! And prayers before bedtime are hard for me because I always fall asleep.

But consider what parts of your day could you add prayer into your routine? Maybe you can pray with your kids during your morning drive to school each day. If you talk to your kids about their day each evening, maybe you could end your talk with prayer, helping them thank God for the blessings in their day or praying for wisdom over the hard parts.

Think through your routines and find times that you can pray with your kids every day to show them the importance of bringing God into our everyday lives.

Allow them to pray freely.

The prayers of children are some of the most honest and sweet prayers that you will ever hear. But they might also be long-winded. Child prayers might also be confusing and not make any sense (“thank you God for pickles and cats and my friend Tony picked his nose today…”). When children pray it can sometimes be embarrassing (just ask your kid’s Sunday School teacher what your child’s prayer requests are like). Kids don’t always understand how prayer works and they might be confused about this concept of speaking to an invisible God.

Let them pray how they pray. Don’t interrupt. Don’t cut them off. Try not to correct, and don’t even worry about asking questions for clarity. God knows exactly what they are praying for, He is God after all. And He loves to hear from them. Encourage your kids to pray, even if they don’t quite know how it all works. They’ll get better at it with practice and a good example to follow.

Your Example.

“God is great. God is good. Let us thank Him for our food.”

I realized some time ago that this was about the best prayer that my kids had ever heard from me. I have several of these memorized prayers that I can recite at dinner time, so I’ll throw one of them out there just to show my kids that we should pray before we eat, and then we move on to our meal (again, I hate mealtime prayers that are only done because we’re “supposed to”). Most of these memorized poems aren’t really even prayers. We’re talking about God, when we should be talking to Him.

Children learn what they see. If we want to raise children who have a strong relationship with God and a deep dependence on Him, we must show them what that looks like. Teaching our kids “prayer poems” might seem cute, but it doesn’t teach them anything about the real purpose of prayer. Kids need to intimately see what a relationship with an invisible God looks like. They need to hear prayers that are fervent, real, and unrehearsed. They need to recognize what it looks like when God speaks to His people. None of this can be accomplished if we don’t pray real prayers, regularly, in front of our kids.

If you are going to pray at mealtimes, pray a real prayer. When you or your child gets hurt or have a hard day, stop and pray together. When you are leaving to go on a long car ride, pray with your kids for protection. At bedtime, pray another real prayer. When your kids talk about their fears and anxieties, help them bring them to God in prayer.

So often we talk to our kids about their issues, we give them advice, we brainstorm ideas with them for how to solve their problems, but we never help them take their problems and concerns to the only One who has the power to truly resolve any situation. Be the example for your kids, show them how to pray, when to pray, what to pray, and why to pray.

Encourage.

Just like my daughter encouraged me to pray, we need to encourage our children to pray. It’s important to actually pray in their presence so they see the ins and outs and hows of prayer, but we also want to make sure that they get a chance to pray as well. My daughter will often feel very disappointed if I end my prayer without letting her add her prayer. Encourage your children not just to listen to your prayers, but to pray right along with you, and to add in anything you might have missed.

It’s also important to remind kids to pray when you aren’t around. When your children talk about the challenges that they face in their day, remind them that they can always speak to God, anytime of the day, anywhere that they are. If they are sad at school and missing home, tell them to talk to God about it. If they are being bothered by a bully at the playground, remind them to pray about the situation (and for the bully). If they hurt themselves at recess, make sure they know to pray for their injuries.

Remember God’s Work

Sometimes it’s difficult to recognize the results of our prayers. We’ll throw up a quick prayer while going about our busy day, or we’ll spend our quiet time praying in the morning, but then the chaos of life happens and we never stop to look at the ways in which God has answered our prayers and been with us throughout the day.

One way to keep an eye on the things that God is doing is to keep a prayer journal. This doesn’t need to be anything fancy, and there are no hard and fast rules. Some people might simply make a bullet-ed list of the things that they are praying for. Some will actually write out their prayers to God. Others might include additional thoughts and reflections they have as they spend time in prayer. The point is to keep a written journal of your prayers and then go through it once in a while to discover all of the ways that God is answering your prayers, even when you’re too busy to notice.

Help your child select a journal and begin writing prayers together to help them get the hang of it. On occasion go back through their journal with them to discuss all of the ways God has helped and blessed them through their prayers.

Another great way to teach kids how God works is to share your own stories about the times in which God has come through for you in answering your prayers. Let your kids know that even as an adult you face hard days and struggles that you are able to bring to God for help. You don’t have to get into all of the adult details of your struggles, but share some basic pieces of your hard days (“my boss made me really mad today” or “I had to make are hard decision today and I didn’t know what to do”) to help your kids see not only what to pray about, but how God helped you through those difficult moments in your day.

Prayer in it’s truest form is a conversation with God. Prayer is not simply one-sided. This is a really difficult concept for most adults to fully grasp, so it’s even more important for us to help our children understand this lesson.

Take time to help your kids understand that God wants a relationship with us. He wants to be with us throughout our day, leading us, guiding us, and helping us enjoy the gifts that He gives us. And He does this by speaking with us. Not usually through burning bushes and booming voices like our Bible stories though.

God speaks through His Word. He speaks through gentle nudges, or that “still, small voice” you hear throughout your day. Sometimes He speaks to us through other people or circumstances. Introduce this concept to your kids and work with them to start noticing when God might be speaking to them in their own lives.

It’s amazing how our own prayers lives can improve when we start to teach our kids about prayer. Don’t worry so much about teaching them “the right way” to pray, just make sure your kids realize that God is real, that He is always with us, and He wants to have a real relationship with us. Because that is what life is truly all about.

How do you teach your kids to pray? What are the most memorable prayers that you’ve heard your children pray?