Faith in Parenting

This is a great question! Many of us bring a lot of formal routines to our prayer life, and to what we teach our children about prayer. These ideas include thinking we “have to” have our eyes closed when we pray, or kneel, or begin with “Father,” or close with “In Jesus’ Name.”

And for many of us, as adults, these routines are helpful. Closing your eyes and bowing your head may make it easier for you to shut out the busyness of your day. And you may feel more reverent of the Lord when you’re on your knees. That’s absolutely valid! And, I might add, these are practices that we do want to introduce our children to at some point.

But I’d also encourage you to consider timeliness. There will be times when it feels right to get on your knees together as a family. When I’m teaching Sunday School (to four-year-olds), I’ll often make a big show about spreading our arms out wide and then folding them in our laps for prayer, because it helps mark the transition for the kids between the time that we’re going around the circle and sharing prayer requests, and the time that we’re actually going to the Lord in prayer.

But that doesn’t mean that we always have to have our hands folded, our heads bowed, and our eyes closed.

My son has a book that really illustrates this concept, and it’s one that we like to read together as a family. It’s called Am I Praying?, by Jeannie St. John Taylor. The main character, a little boy named Erik, experiences lots of tumultuous ups and downs during the course of a field trip to the zoo. First he’s excited to go, then he forgets his lunch box, then he gets lost, and finally - because he forgot his lunchbox - his mom arrives at the zoo and finds him sitting in the main office. What’s so great about it is that it illustrates to children that we can pray to God in many different ways, whether we’re talking out loud, in our minds, literally crying out to God, or rejoicing. No matter how or why we communicate with God - it’s still prayer!

Log onto your local library’s web site and see if they have a copy of it, or click on the link below to order it online. It’s a great way to help your kids discover all the ways they can - and do - communicate with the Lord over the course of an ordinary day, whether their hands are folded and their eyes closed or not.

(And I have to tell you, too, that when I looked up the book on Amazon just now to get the link for you, I discovered that Jeannie St. John Taylor has some other great books about little Erik, like Am I Trusting? and How I Pray for My Friends. I can’t wait to check them out!)