How important is it for my children to kneel and fold their hands and close their eyes?

There's no magic in the position we choose for prayer or in what we do with our hands or eyes. We find in the Bible examples of people praying in various positions and postures and in various places.

The Bible tells of people praying in a variety of different positions Daniel knelt, Elijah put his head between his knees, Solomon raised his hands, David danced, and Moses either stood or lay down flat on his face. None of these positions was required; in each case the position was chosen by the person praying and reflected his attitude or mood.

Whatever position your children prefer to pray in is appropirate, whether it be lying in bed, sitting in a comfortable chair, kneeling, or some other posture. But you can help your children understand that sometimes it's good to choose a different position for their prayers. For example, if they say their prayers lying in bed at night and keep falling asleep in the middle of prayer, perhaps a less comfortable position would help their concentration. (Remind them that God is there with them, and he really is listening. Would they consider falling asleep while talking with one of their friends?) You can also let your children know that it's perfectly fine to change position while praying depending on what they're talking to God about. For example, they may usually pray lying down, but if they have something special and serious they want to talk to God about, they might want to get on their knees beside the bed.

The same is true of what we do with our hands. If your children are fidgeting when they should be concentrating, they may find that flasping their hands helps them focus, but there's no single prescribed way for holding our hands in prayer.

Having eyes open or closed while praying is a more significant issue. Although there's no biblical mandate to close our eyes, closed eyes are for most people more conductive to prayer. It's considered polite to look at someone we're in conversation with, as an indication that we're interested and listening. That suggests open eyes, but not when the conversation is with God. When we're tlaking to God we obviously can't see him with our eyes, but we know he's present when we pray and can be seen with our hearts. You can explain to your children that in order to show God that we're interested and concentrating, we should close our eyes so that we can focus on him with our hearts, our thoughts, and our feelings. The more time we spend with God, concentrating on him and communicating with him, the more real he'll be to us, visible to our hearts.