Kids and prayer

I posted a great article on Facebook about kids and church behavior. It turned into a 'Missy your kids are so well behaved in mass' comment thread. Not at all what I intended. I paid for it though... the very next Mass I went to was without Barry and the oldest three were helping serve in Mass. It was a church without a cry room.... and it was challenging. Then the next Mass I went to, again without Barry, 2 older kids not there... I did the walk of shame with a misbehaving toddler TWICE that mass. It was good. Seriously, it was really helpful to be reminded of how great the kids usually are in Mass. Anyway... If it goes anything like that Facebook post, I'm hesitant to even start this conversation for fear of what my next week or two will look like. LOL. 😁

I love praying. I feel peace and joy and love when I pray and connect with God. I pray frequently throughout the day (that could be a whole separate blog post!). One of my biggest desires is to instill this same love and joy and peace into my children. To teach them how to pray, why to pray and to desire to pray.

The beginning of the school year in 2014 (or so - I am totally guessing here), I found a great book. It can also be found on Amazon and if you are local, at the A&M store in Saginaw. This book is Bible reading, reflection and vocal prayer all rolled into one, intended for elementary age kids. It basically walks you through a mini prayer service. This book opened to us the concept of 'symposium time'. A time to gather together as a group, before the kids go off and work on their own grade specific subjects. This enabled us to pray, read, and do lots of things that are true, good and beautiful - and to prioritize them! I found that starting the homeschool day out like that made the day go smoother. It was tempting, and early on I admit I often fell for the temptation, to move on to 'more important' things - like math, reading, science, etc... how can I fit it all in? We are running late, something has to go. The list of excuses were endless. But eventually it became a solid routine. No matter how late it was, no matter how much other 'stuff' I had to get done that day, we started in prayer. And God poured the grace onto our day, into our weeks, and into our months. Note about this particular book - after the Bible passage is read, I ask 'Lectio Divina' and the kids will share what stood out to them/what spoke to them about that passage. And we do the reflection out loud as a discussion point. There is a part in there for anyone to share what they want to pray about. This part is my favorite. Listening to the kids pour their hearts out to God... there is nothing like it at all.

Gradually, as God is apt to do, I was presented with more material to use. I also found various prayers that worked really well for our family. All ages participate, even if it is not age appropriate for them. Which means the older kids are going to sit through things that could be boring to them, and the younger kids are going to sit through things they might not understand. And often times, my younger ones are introduced to an idea that might otherwise not be known to them for a few years (in a good or in a bad way - for example: abortion). Knowledge is power, and when that happens, I let the Holy Spirit lead and I explain it in a way they can understand and we move on.

Here are a few of the materials we have used recently:

~Prayer 'packet' that we pray out loud, together, every morning HERE.

~Occasionally we switch it up with this beautiful prayer HERE.

~We LOVE reading Saint books. I usually read 1-2 chapters every morning during our prayer time. We use a variety of different books. Stories of the Saints for Young People Ages 10 to 100, Encounter the Saints and/or daily reading of the life of the Saint of the Day in something like this. 

~We also love Novenas. We have not found a way to be consistent even through the weekend, but now that we are not doing electricity in the evening for Lent, I bet we could restart these and be successful. Here is a great list of Novenas.

~Our church sometimes have these for free in the vestibule. It's a great pamphlet/magazine based on the daily readings, quick, easy to read (I have one of my beginner readers own this as a read aloud to practice reading). The lessons are powerful and stick with you (I admit to learning more from this book than I  should probably admit to). I think they all got handed out before I got to them this month, and I really need to just order the subscription. They are great.

~Early in our parenting years, we started a tradition called best/worst. We would each go around the dinner table and reflect on our day and share what was our best part of the day and what was the worst. It encouraged communication, empathy and awareness of otherwise unknown situations. This was hit or miss, but the more I learned about the examen, the more I realized this was a mini examen, in a way. We now use this book each evening (or morning if we didn't do evening prayers). Even the younger ones sit and listen to the reflections. I have the oldest kids and adults journal each of the questions. I really should restart best/worst for the younger ones though! We have great memories of this sharing time together.

~Virtues! So much you can do to practice these. I found these gems while on a retreat in Ann Arbor. My kids love them. I love them. They are applicable to us in many areas of life and the pictures can be used later, recalling them and actually having the child remember, when later in the day or week trying to teach in a difficult situation.

~Gen2Rev Storybook Bible reading and picture book story wrapped into one, chronological book.

~various liturgical year supplements (Advent, Lent, etc).

Early on, we would rotate through what we would do, we would not do it all at once. When we started, we were only doing morning prayer consistently. Advent 2016 we started consistently doing evening prayers. We had a list of what we wanted to do, and it was bigger than we had legitimate time for, so we did half in the evening (and then bonus! Barry could join us!). If we happened to miss an evening of prayer, we would double up and do the full list in the morning. This would take quite a bit of time, so each evening I was pretty determined to make sure we did evening prayers. After Advent, we fell off the consistent evening prayer bandwagon, but now that it is Lent, I am determined to make it a priority again, and this time to have it last well beyond when Lent is over. For that Advent, I had each child able to read (at least enough to muddle through a small devotional) pick a book or program that they wanted to read, and that was their contribution.

Not in the Morning or Evening routine prayers:

~Mandatory weekly church attendance (and sometimes we get in a great routine of once or twice a week of daily Mass)

~We also do a weekly prayer hour in Bay City's Perpetual Adoration Chapel. We started out with all 8 kids.......... but, in order to enjoy the hour and get some of our own prayers in, we have let Mema and Papa take the two youngest and we take the other 6 to pray in the silence.



We are not perfect at it, as you can tell from the inconsistency. But when we fall, we get back up. If something doesn't work out for us, we don't toss in the whole thing - we tweak and try again.
My prayer is that you can find ONE thing to increase prayer in your family's life, get that into routine and then, God willing, add another. Even if what I said did nothing other than spark an inspiration for something completely off topic, I will feel this long post would have been worth it.

Thanks for reading and may your family feel God's grace as you pray together~