Teaching Children To Pray – 6 Steps
Posted by: Zach Allred in Parenting Articles, tags: Parenting ArticlesTeaching children to pray can be accomplished with consistent application of 5 simple techniques.
1. Get caught praying. You will instill in your children a sense that prayer is reverent. Your children will see your head bowed and arms folded and will naturally do better when they pray.
2. Lost toys. I encourage my children to kneel down and say a prayer when they cannot find their lost toy. You will notice these prayers become quite fervent. Afterwords make sure your child finds the lost toy and then point out that Heavenly Father heard their prayer.
3. Repetition and rituals. Repetition is a good teacher especially when you combine that with meals, waking up and bed time. These become habit forming.
4. Teach the power of personal prayer. Accepting Jesus Christ into our lives is a very powerful experience and it comes through personal prayer. Our children can tell God anything and this is an important step.
5. Stage Fright. Do you ever feel nervous praying in public? Sometimes, just praying in front of my family makes me nervous. I try to remember though, that this is helping my children when they hear me pray.
6. Short prayer? A short prayer is better than no prayer at all. I once read a quote that I liked, “Do not say you are going to pray, just pray.” For me this means instead of saying, “Oops, I forgot my morning prayers so I better say them at noon,” stop and pray right then even if the prayer is short.
In conclusion, teaching children to pray can be fun. Using meal time, bed time, and finding toys as opportunities to get our children to pray are habit forming for children.
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