Praying With Your Children Before They Are Old Enough to Understand

One of the quiet privileges of parenting is that you get to say things over your children that they cannot yet say for themselves. Psalm 20 is exactly that kind of speech. The congregation stood and prayed over their king: may the LORD answer you in distress, may he protect you, may he give you the desire of your heart. The king did not have to earn those words. They were spoken over him because he belonged to the people who were speaking.

Parents can do the same. Deuteronomy 6:6-7 instructs Israel to keep God's commandments on their hearts and to impress them on their children, talking about them when sitting at home, walking along the road, lying down, and getting up. Notice that the setting is not a classroom. It is the ordinary rhythm of a day. Bedtime, breakfast, the drive to practice. Faith is meant to be handed down in the cracks of household life.

Here are a few practical ways to do that, especially with children who are too young to follow a full prayer or too restless to sit through one.

Bless them at bedtime with a psalm. Put a hand on your child's head or shoulder and say a short verse over them, the same one each night for a month. Psalm 20:1 works well: may the LORD answer you when you are in distress; may the name of the God of Jacob protect you. Change the you to your child's name. A four-year-old will not understand the theology, but they will understand that a parent is asking God to look after them, and by August they will be able to say it back.

Pray out loud in the car. Children absorb more from overheard prayer than from instructed prayer. A short sentence before pulling out of the driveway, thanking God for the day or asking for help with what is ahead, teaches that prayer is a normal thing adults do and not a performance reserved for church.

Let them hear you pray for other people. Psalm 20 is intercession. When a child hears their parent name a neighbor, a grandparent, a friend who is sick, they learn that faith turns outward. Invite them to add a name. Most will, and some of the names will surprise you.

Use their questions. Deuteronomy 6:20 anticipates that a child will one day ask what the commands mean. Do not dread the questions or over-answer them. A short, honest reply is better than a lecture. If you do not know, say so and look it up together.

Keep it short and keep it going. The goal is not a long devotion once a week that everyone survives. It is a thirty-second habit repeated hundreds of times until it becomes part of the furniture of childhood. Psalm 78:4 speaks of telling the next generation the praiseworthy deeds of the LORD. That telling happens in small daily doses.

Finally, remember that you are not the guarantor of your child's faith. Only God can give them the desire of their heart and make it a godly one. Your job is the blessing, spoken again and again, over a child who cannot yet understand it. His job is the answering. Trust the division of labor, and keep praying.