Praying for and with children and teens
As parents, carers and grandparents we will naturally pray for our children and teens. Here are some ideas to help you find your own way of praying for them, and encouraging them to pray too.
Praying for our kids
Rachel Turner, founder of Parenting for Faith, shares why it’s so valuable to pray for our kids: not just because God moves when we pray but because, as our children and teens hear and know that we pray, they learn to look for what God is doing in their lives in response to our prayers.
Praying for our kids isn’t always easy as this mum shares. In one of our podcast episodes, Matt Varah Wilson from PrayerStorm shares some ideas for learning to rely more on God in prayer as tired parents, and for encouraging our kids to turn to God for their needs too.
Praying with our kids
We also want to pray with our kids and help them to develop their own connected prayer life.
It’s important that we teach our children and teens to have their own connection with God, and to chat and catch with him for themselves – you can find more about that here
In an episode of our podcast, Phil Togwell, founder of Lectio for Families talked about how we can nurture healthy prayer lives in our children, and in this post, Sue describes how her family makes prayer part of their walk to school.
In one of the Parenting for Faith podcast episodes, Rachel talked about how we can introduce the idea of intercession to our children and coach them to do it, whether in their personal prayer or engaging with the corporate prayer at church.
We know that prayer isn’t always easy. Here are some ideas to help you help your kids pray about situations that seem so big or complex that you really don’t know how to get started,
And if you are waiting for your child to arrive in your family, whether that’s through adoption or birth, here is some inspiration for how to pray for them even before they arrive.