Praying with Babies

When our children are barely old enough to understand what we're saying, we should begin to pray with them each night before putting them to sleep- briefly, and in simple, clear language. We should pray their prayers for them, not our prayers over them. We might start out with something as simple as thanking God for something special about our child's day and asking him to help the child have a good sleep.

As our children begin to talk and take an interest in different things, we should keep our prayers short and change our prayers regularly to reflect what's going on in our children's lives, the things they're interested in. When our children are old enough to begin to understand, we can tell them each night what we're doing: that we're talking to God, who made them and loves them and wants to take care of them.