8 year olds and prayers...

[mama2cntrykids]

Sorry if that's worked funny. Anyway, my oldest ds is 8.5 years old and I've been doing prayers with him since he was a toddler. Over the last few months I've been trying to get him to be more independent with his prayers. He was doing them for awhile on his own, but now he's saying that "it's boring" and he doesn't want to.

 

He gave his heart to Jesus a couple of years ago and was even baptised on his own accord last summer.

 

Should his lack of wanting to pray on his own even be a concern or issue?? When do (or did) you start shifting that responsibility to the child? Maybe I'm just over reacting. That's been known to happen a time or two:lol:.

 

Thanks for any input!

[i.love.lucy]

My dd does this too. It's frustrating. I hear her say the exact same words each time she prays. I think modeling praying, and how to talk and what to say is good. I have even encouraged my dd to make a prayer journal (which she hasn't done yet) to give her ideas that she'd like to pray about. I just got her a girls devotional that has some days of study about prayer and I am hoping it will help her.

 

To me the only way to pray is to really really know God is listening. Until God is real to you, you might as well be talking to the pillow. Helping kids feel God's presence is important, so we do a lot of talking about God's wondrous creation all around us, how we can "hear" God speaking to us through others or our conscience, things like that.

 

Ultimately it could just be an age thing that they will mature out of. :confused:

[Ginger]

My ds just turned 9 and sounds just like yours. He has been 'saved' and baptized. But he seems to have no desire to pray. I never went through that with his older sister, who is always anxious to talk to God. I wish I knew how to encourage it, too. Sometimes at night I'll pray with him, and sometimes I'll kiss him and tell him to make sure he says his prayers to try to give him the opportunity to do so for himself (but don't know if he does). I think his little sister (5) is going to be just like him....sigh.

[Jean in Newcastle]

Prayer is a difficult thing because you're asking a child to have a conversation with someone that while he believes in, is still invisible.

 

I start my kids first with a prayer for food where the subject matter is simple "Dear God, Thank you for the food. Amen." (or whatever variation you might use).

 

Then (or at the same time) I teach them a prayer of confession. "Dear Heavenly Father, I want to tell you my naughty things. I did _________". I sit with them and help them gently to say it. I tell them that while I'm requiring them to say it at this point, that it really doesn't mean anything unless they want to say it to God.

 

During our family Bible time we've just started to pray "round robin". The kids will say a few sentences. For my dd7 the sentences are often the same each time but that's ok. She's learning.

 

Prayers at night, at least for my kids, are special times with me. It isn't so much that they don't want to pray as much as they don't want to lose that specialness of me praying for them.

 

I think my ds12 is only now starting to really pray on his own.