When Kids Don’t Want to Pray
You know the scene: the family has gathered for prayer. Three minutes later, one child needs a drink. Another has suddenly remembered something extremely important that happened six hours ago. Someone is poking someone else. Your teenager is participating, technically, but with an expression suggesting that you have personally sentenced him to hard labor.
This is where parents often experience a myriad of emotions—sadness, frustration, exhaustion. We know prayer with children will not always be easy, or reverent in the way adults think reverence looks. And it certainly will not always produce children who appear deeply moved by the experience.
So what should parents do when children are bored, distracted, or simply don’t want to pray?
First, it helps to figure out what exactly you are dealing with.
Distraction is Not the Same as Disrespect
Some kids seem to instinctively do well with focused, quiet tasks. Some… do not. Therefore, a six-year-old who wiggles through the Rosary may not be refusing to pray—he may simply be six!
A child who draws while listening to Scripture may actually be listening quite well. A teenager who doesn’t volunteer an answer to a reflection question may still be thinking about it. A toddler wandering between parents during family prayer is simply busy with toddler things.
Since children have developing attention spans and widely varying personalities, some need movement while others process things internally. Some find sustained silence easier than others. When your child gets restless during prayer, ask yourself: is this actually preventing anyone from praying?
If the answer is no, you may not need to correct it at all. There is a difference between a child quietly fidgeting and a child deliberately disrupting everyone else. Taking a moment to note which you are dealing with can save a lot of unnecessary battles.
Boredom is Information
Then there is the dreaded declaration: “This is boring.” Our instinct may be to respond with a lecture about how prayer isn’t supposed to entertain us, and eventually children do need to learn that worthwhile things aren’t always entertaining.
However, boredom can also tell us something useful. If every family prayer experience consistently stretches far beyond a child’s ability to engage, we may need to make some adjustments. That doesn’t mean abandoning prayer time. That may mean starting a bit smaller and building up. One decade of the Rosary can eventually grow into five. Two minutes of silence can eventually grow into ten. A few verses of Scripture can eventually become a longer passage.
We have to remember (for our kids and for ourselves!) that spiritual habits develop much like other habits do: through practice. We don’t hand a beginning reader a 400-page novel and conclude that he hates reading when he can’t finish it. We begin with what he can manage and gradually help him grow. We can approach prayer with the same patience.
But Sometimes They Really Don’t Want to Pray
This is a different scenario. Eventually, most parents will encounter genuine resistance.
“I don’t want to.”
“Why do we have to do this?”
“Do I have to come?”
This can feel personal, especially when faith matters deeply to us. It is important not to react rashly or harshly. A child’s resistance to family prayer does not automatically tell you what that child believes about God. After all, children resist all kinds of things that are good for them.
We still require them to brush their teeth, complete schoolwork, apologize for offenses, and participate in family responsibilities even though they would likely rather not most of the time. Likewise, parents do not have to abandon family prayer simply because a child does not want to participate.
At the same time, prayer should not become the site of a nightly power struggle. A middle ground exists between “You don’t like it, so you never have to do it” and “You will sit perfectly still and be appropriately holy until we finish.”
A parent can calmly say, “This is something our family does. You don’t have to feel excited about it tonight, but you do need to join us.” This way there is no argument, no lengthy defense of prayer, and no desperate attempt to manufacture enthusiasm. There is just quiet consistency, which is a lesson in itself.
Know When to Adjust—and When to Persevere
This may be one of the hardest judgments parents have to make. Sometimes prayer methods or lengths need to change, but sometimes the child needs to grow. If your prayer routine regularly ends with everyone angry, it is worth asking whether the time, length, format, or expectations are realistic for your family right now.
But if you’ve already made reasonable accommodations and a child simply would rather be doing something else, that doesn’t necessarily mean you need a new prayer routine. Sometimes we persevere because children need both accommodation and formation. Wisdom guides us in discerning which one the moment requires.
Don’t Turn Prayer into a Reward or Punishment
One trap is worth avoiding altogether: “Since you behaved badly, we’re saying another decade.”
Prayer should never become spiritual detention. Likewise, if you say every single night: “If everybody behaves during prayer, we’ll get ice cream afterward,” you can subtly turn prayer into an obstacle standing between children and something they actually want.
We want children to learn that prayer belongs to family life—not that it is a punishment for being bad or a chore requiring compensation for being good. Of course, correct a child’s behavior when necessary, and a reward now and again never hurt anyone. But at the heart, prayer is its own reward.
Protect the Holy Without Demanding the Impossible
Set expectations around family prayer. This is a teaching moment. Children can learn not to deliberately interrupt and to handle sacred objects respectfully. They can learn that there are moments when the family quiets down together.
Reverence is learned, but it doesn’t always look like complete stillness. The four-year-old clutching a rosary upside down may be listening and learning reverence, as well as the eight-year-old coloring a picture of the Gospel. The twelve-year-old who says almost nothing but consistently shows up may be learning reverence, and even the teenager whose enthusiasm could generously be described as “minimal” may be absorbing more than you realize. Formation happens over years.
You Are Planting Something
Parents rarely get to see the full results of spiritual formation while it is happening—you may pray with a child for years without knowing what is taking root. Then one day, perhaps much later, that child may reach instinctively for a Rosary during a frightening moment or a familiar prayer may surface during grief.
We cannot manufacture those moments. We can only prepare the soil. So when someone wiggles, sighs, complains, or announces that this is the most boring thing your family has ever done, don’t assume the prayer has failed. Adjust when you need to, and persevere when you need to. Be sure to laugh sometimes… and keep planting.
What are your thoughts on this topic? I invite you to join other homeschooling parents and me in the Homeschool Connections Community or our Facebook group.
