http://bournagain.com/2007/05/26/how-to-pray-for-your-kids/ France, faith, family... Fri, 20 Jan 2012 17:08:36 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 http://bournagain.com/2007/05/26/how-to-pray-for-your-kids/comment-page-1/#comment-21 Fri, 25 May 2007 23:38:38 +0000 http://bournagain.com/?p=75#comment-21 Yes, I wish I had the facile way with prayer when I was raising my 4 boys as I do now. We always had family prayer led by Dad (me) around a table, from their babyhood on (of course at bedside too), but it was always liturgical to a degree most people today would think absurd or "playing church", but I was a dyed in the wool high church Anglican. My boys didn't seem to mind. When we moved into Eastern Orthodoxy, our prayer life as a family backed off a bit from ceremonial, but we learned a few more that we didn't have as Anglicans, such as the metánia (praying or bowing on your knees with head and hands on the floor), kissing icons and so forth. But the prayer was simpler, shorter, more relaxed. This lasted as long as the boys were willing, till the onset of teen years. Then it gradually was replaced by reading the Bible together by turns after supper, and brief prayers before the icons sometimes in the evenings. Eventually, because everyone was getting lives of their own, it died out altogether. But my boys did learn to read by reading the scriptures aloud with us, and even though we don't pray together anymore (I regret that!) I'm hoping the Lord will draw us all back into a form of prayer again when the boys are Dads themselves. Yes, I wish I had the facile way with prayer when I was raising my 4 boys as I do now. We always had family prayer led by Dad (me) around a table, from their babyhood on (of course at bedside too), but it was always liturgical to a degree most people today would think absurd or “playing church”, but I was a dyed in the wool high church Anglican. My boys didn’t seem to mind. When we moved into Eastern Orthodoxy, our prayer life as a family backed off a bit from ceremonial, but we learned a few more that we didn’t have as Anglicans, such as the metánia (praying or bowing on your knees with head and hands on the floor), kissing icons and so forth. But the prayer was simpler, shorter, more relaxed. This lasted as long as the boys were willing, till the onset of teen years. Then it gradually was replaced by reading the Bible together by turns after supper, and brief prayers before the icons sometimes in the evenings. Eventually, because everyone was getting lives of their own, it died out altogether. But my boys did learn to read by reading the scriptures aloud with us, and even though we don’t pray together anymore (I regret that!) I’m hoping the Lord will draw us all back into a form of prayer again when the boys are Dads themselves.

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