Prayer (grace) with children

[anilorak13ska]

We recently attended our daughter’s friend’s birthday party (they’re not Catholic, mom is a Lutheran pastor). Their “grace” involved some “superman” fists in air to go with their prayer, something along the lines of “God is good, thanks for the food.”

Now at times our daughter starts with these arm thrusts. Neither dh nor I like this, as we see this as “dumbing down” our prayer, especially since the way we pray has been working swimmingly until now. But I don’t know how to explain why her friend prays like this and it’s fine and good, but we don’t.

We are trying to instill in her a prayerful attitude and posture during prayer, and we’re working on this during evening prayer as well (when she likes to lay down or run around while praying, when we are generally kneeling by the bed.)

Thoughts?

 

[anilorak13ska]

She’s 3 and a half. That’s why I’m asking, bc I don’t know if this should concern us or not. Mainly it’s the grace thing she picked up from her friend, it looks more like she’s doing the Y.M.C.A. dance than praying. And I’m not saying she can’t praise God dancing, we encourage her to dance during the festivals of praise at our church.

So just trying to get a feel for where the line is appropriateness is

 

[pensmama87]

She will forget it over time. At 3.5, I would not worry much about it, just model the way you’d like her to pray.

When my now 6 year old was in preschool (at our parish), they taught a prayer before eating that was a little rhyme with hand motions. For a while, that’s what we said at lunch, then the more traditional grace at breakfast and dinner.

 

[Anglewannabe]

I actually think there is more than just praying that needs to be taught here. As if you didn’t have enough on your plate already

I think it is time to teach your daughter, different homes have different rules. eg some of my friend’s mom’s use to ask I use the back door, other’s wanted me to use the front door etc. And while a guest in someone’s home, you follow the house rules. But that does not mean those rules are appropriate everywhere.

By the way, as much as I prefer prayer to be pious, there is such a thing as accepting a difference of opinion and your daughter may grow up to prefer a more charismatic approach to prayer

Angie

 

[CradleJourney]

She’s 3 and a half. That’s why I’m asking, bc I don’t know if this should concern us or not. Mainly it’s the grace thing she picked up from her friend, it looks more like she’s doing the Y.M.C.A. dance than praying. And I’m not saying she can’t praise God dancing, we encourage her to dance during the festivals of praise at our church.

So just trying to get a feel for where the line is appropriateness is

I know the exact prayer and gestures you’re talking about. It was a big hit with our kids for about six months. Each child in our family got to “lead prayer” at meal time. For awhile the youngest ones decided this was “it”. We just went along (complete with hand gestures but adding the sign of the cross before and after) and on the other nights when hubby, I and older kids did it we used the traditional Catholic prayer. They gradually outgrew it and decided to copy us and the older kids.

By not making a big deal about it, it never became a big deal

Never underestimate the power of the example you set. It will win out most of the time - it just takes awhile for the kids to come around - and the less of a deal you make about it, the faster they come back to your example.

 

[anilorak13ska]

Thanks all for your feedback!