Thoughts For Thoughtful Prayer

We've been taking a delightful parenting class during Sunday School 2nd hour. Today was the last in the series; for me, it was also one of the best (this was entirely because Miss Sunshine co-operated so that I could learn about parenting instead of parenting Sunshine out in the hallway). Due to herrare moment of contentment, I happily got to listen to the whole lesson! A great discussion on improving family prayer arose and I heard wonderful ideas from my fellow ward members on things they had done that helped the quality of their family prayers. They were so insightful! What inspiring people surround me! I wanted to write these ideas down in order to archive them for future reference and also you, dear reader, may find them useful in your own quest for consistent, thoughtful prayer*.

Here were some of my classmates ideas:

Pick a song as a "gathering tool". Instead of shouting out to everyone to come to prayer, they know when they hear the song being sung that its time to meet. This could be a primary song or even the simple classic "The More We Get Together."

Assign a day to each person in the family and have them pray all the family prayers for that day (this is especially good if one kid keeps trying to evade their turn, or the opposite when one kid wants to say all the prayers all the time.)

Focus on gratitude. The pray-er has to try to come up with 10 specific, new things to be thankful for.

For the "sporty" family, have a family chant/motto after prayer: every body put your hand together in a circle and shout, "team style." For example say "Goooooooooo Team Jones!" or "Smith's make a difference!"

When you pull up to the house in the car together in the later evening instead of dispersing into the house and then having to gather again, why not say your prayer right there in the car while everybody's still got their seat belts on?

Take turns giving compliments. The person who gives the prayer also gets an individual verbal compliment from each family member.

At family prayer time, have each member of the family take a turn to tell one thing the family members could each be praying about for them in their individual bedtime prayers. This encourages the children to say their own individual prayers and also helps them learn the importance of being specific and unity through praying for each other.


All these great ideas to try!

Tonight I decided to experiment with this last suggestion of having each family member request something that we could each be praying about on their behalf during our individual prayers (individual prayers being an area we could use some improvements on). Granted, we've only done this one night now, but I'd say it went well. Most people requested help in the areas of "health" (colds) and sleep (bad dreams or frequent night wakings). Sam, in his sweet little 4 year old way said something like "please pray for me that I'll be able to follow Jesus Christ." He was so solemn with this that I had to stifle a laugh. My hope is that with a specific list of concerns the older kids will be more motivated to remember their bedtime prayers.

I'm sure that if you'd been in our class today you would enriched our discussion. Please add any ideas you might do with your own family and we'll grow the list.

Good Sabbath and Happy Prayer time to you!


* This idea list's main focus was for families with younger kids, but of course each idea could be adapted to individual situations.