How does your family pray together?

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Benjinho

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I’ve heard the #3 best way for children to maintain their faith into adulthood is to pray as a family often (#2 is talking about religion with dad, #1 is talking about it with mom).

How does your family pray together?
 
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My family is mostly irreligious or pagan, so we don’t pray together.
 
Benjinho said:
I’ve heard the #3 best way for children to maintain their faith into adulthood is to pray as a family often (#2 is talking about religion with dad, #1 is talking about it with mom).

How does your family pray together?
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Actually several surveys have shown that it’s the dad’s religious conversion and practice, not the mom’s, that has the biggest influence if their children continue with the faith. Dr. Scott Hahn discusses a couple of these surveys in this talk he gave in 2018:

 
My kids are still little (6, 5, 4 and 1) I’m sure it evolves as they age.

Grace at meal times.
Sometimes novenas.
Sometimes learning a new prayer as a family or tacking it on the end of mealtime grace. (Usually related to a monthly devotion.)
Sometimes the morning offering.
Lately we have been using YouTube videos to lead family rosaries because the bead tracker means I get interrupted less with questions about what bead we are on.
Spontaneous prayers.
Daily Mass readings while they eat cereal.
Hail Mary’s when we hear sirens
Sign of the Cross when you drive by a Catholic Church.
Eternal rest prayers for the dead.
Litanies of Saints.
Practicing silence.

My family didn’t pray together growing up, so it’s just a lot of trial and error over here.
 
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Oh and Adoration. We have been able to go in little bursts. Even just a year ago that wasn’t possible. Picture whisper-shouting about the red candle.
 
Unfortunately we don’t. I drag the kids to mass every Sunday (hoping something will stick) but am looked on as a religious nut. My wife would class herself as “Catholic” but really she’d be areligious, my 14yr old son is an atheist and looks like my daughter is going that way. Very depressing.
 
Thanks, that’s what I’m hoping and praying for but sometimes I wonder am I turning them off religion? I’m a Secular Franciscan in formation so slightly more religious than what passes for normal and sometimes wonder if its too in their face although I try to keep it on the down-low.
 
Xarto said:
Unfortunately we don’t. I drag the kids to mass every Sunday (hoping something will stick) but am looked on as a religious nut. My wife would class herself as “Catholic” but really she’d be areligious, my 14yr old son is an atheist and looks like my daughter is going that way. Very depressing.
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Don’t give up hope. What will turn your kids around is when they realize they’ve had an encounter with Jesus outside of a church setting. Doing corporal works of mercy with them could be one of the ways.

Also (if you haven’t done so already) encourage them to pray to Jesus for help with their school work. That’s one of the things that strengthened my own faith in the Lord when I was young: when I realized I did better on exams and assignments when I prayed to Jesus for assistance versus the times I did not. It demonstrated to me — in a concrete way — the efficacy of praying to our Lord for help and guidance in regards to matters of everyday life.
 
I pray that my children meet good people ,Catholics through their work and socialising .
 
Xarto said:
Unfortunately we don’t. I drag the kids to mass every Sunday (hoping something will stick) but am looked on as a religious nut. My wife would class herself as “Catholic” but really she’d be areligious, my 14yr old son is an atheist and looks like my daughter is going that way. Very depressing.
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Try to to take your family to a Latin mass maybe it will help.
 
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Xarto said:
I’m a Secular Franciscan in formation so slightly more religious than what passes for normal and sometimes wonder if its too in their face although I try to keep it on the down-low.
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They may feel you need to be a dad and husband first. Save the rest for after they leave the nest? I can see where this could be the source of a lot of resentment.
 
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