By Amy | Leave A Comment
As parents of a 4-year-old, 2-year-old, and 4-month-old, my husband and I deal with this every day. We want our children to have a relationship with Jesus; we want them to know Him in every way. Right now, the best way for them to do this is to talk to Him. This happens through prayer.
But, what do you teach children to pray about? Let them pray about anything… even their favorite stuffed animal. This is one way to teach our children compassion for others.
Another way is when you pray, pray slowly and specifically. This way, your children can hear and understand you.
Key ingredients for a prayer could be:
- Tell Jesus you love Him.
- Thank Jesus for coming to the earth to rescue us.
- Thank Jesus for your family.
- Pray for someone with a need (sick friend/family member, etc).
- Tell Jesus you are sorry for something you have done that day (hitting a sibling, not obeying Mommy). Help your child be specific on this one so he can learn that we have to tell Jesus when we have done wrong.
- End the prayer on a happy note by telling Jesus something you really liked about the day. Let your child know that Jesus cares about us and the things that go on in our daily lives.
The biggest way to teach your child how and why we pray is through example. Our oldest daughter heard my husband pray for a student who had gotten hurt during a football game. The next night, she prayed her own prayer for the student, calling him by name and specifying his injury. She had only heard about him through her father’s prayer the night before.
Prayer is also a time to let your children know how glad you are to have them. You can also tell them how important they are to you and to Jesus. My husband prays that our daughter will follow Jesus’ path and always be the person He created her to be.
Prayer is a way to show your children that you love them.
Photo by Amy Norton
Amy is the wife of a youth pastor and has four girls that call her Momma. When she isn’t blogging about her thoughts or her girls, Amy spends her days happily homeschooling, counseling, and cleaning up after everyone. Oh, and drinking lots of coffee!
ABOUT Amy
Amy is a WAH, homeschooling Momma to three adorable girls and wife to a wonderful husband. She enjo{read more}
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These are all such great tips. I love the reminder that prayer shows our kids how much we love them.
These are great tips. Over the past few months my daughter has been praying and every prayer begins with, “Dear Jesus, thank you for our food.” So cute. Praying is a normal part of her life. I’m glad we made it a priority early on.
this is absolutely precious! and amen to ‘teaching by example”. Some ‘big people’ don’t know how to pray- my husband was one of them when we first met over 15 years ago. Not knowing how to teach someone else how to pray, I found the perfect template. And guess who put this template together for us? The man with a plan, Jesus. He thought of everything, didn’t He? It’s found in Matthew 6:5-15- known as The Lords Prayer. For years it was taught to repeat these exact words. but Bible Scholars have since uncovered that it is a ‘template’ that we are to customize and teach our children so that they can teach their children’s, children… I could go on and on. Great job on this blog!
I love, love, love, the simplicity of this. There are entire books written about teaching your child to pray. So much information to wade through, when if one were to just keep it simple perhaps the habit of prayer would actually happen.
Thanks!
This is great. Thanks. My almost 2yo loves to pray. We were praying for my grandma who just passed recently, and my daughter remembered every night to pray for her. And then the other day in the middle of dinner, she had her hands folded and was listing family member names that she knew. I was wondering what she was doing and then I saw her hands folded. I don’t know if she understands what it means, but she is a great little example of the child-like faith that God wants us to have.