Teaching your child to pray is not hard at all.
My first advice is to pray every night as a family. Take turns praying out loud. In our family Eve (the youngest) starts praying first and my husband prays last. From experience I know that if you have them praying out loud at a young age they will be confident to pray for others and prayer will come much more naturally. I never prayed out loud when I was growing up so when my husband asked me to pray out loud (when we just got married) I felt very uncomfortable and unsure of myself.
My second advice is to have prayers at your house or go to prayer groups. Over the years we have had many different kinds of prayer groups at our house. I encourage everyone to have a prayer group or bible study. Or attend one near you. Bring your children with you. My children have sat listening to the word of God and participated in sharing their thoughts and ideas about God and the bible. My older two have also prayed in front of our bible groups without us asking or telling them to.
To teach a young child how to pray you might want to say a prayer and then have them repeat after you. It will not be long until they can pray on their own. Start having them pray young. Eve started praying at around 1 1/2 -2 years old. She watched us all pray and of course wanted to join us. Her prayer started out as “Thank you Jesus. Amen. “
If you notice that one of your children is repeating the same prayer over and over ask them to share with Jesus what he/she is going through or feeling.
My third advice is to read the bible before prayer. This way the child can understand Gods character and has more things to pray about. Lets say you read (1 Samuel 17) about David going to visit his brothers (who are at war) to bring them food. David saw Goliath and how all the Israelites were terrified and retreated. At this time David’s oldest brother heard David speaking to an Israelite man and his brother got angry and started to say mean things to David by putting him down. Now David could have listened to his brother and could have went home to tend to his sheep but he didn’t. He killed Goliath with one stone. Wow !!!! After reading this you could point out that God has great plans for your children and for them not to listen to others who tear them down and put them down but to know that God made them perfect in his image and he will do great things through them. Now your child has more things to pray about and can thank God for having great plans for them.
Prayer is a way for us to talk to our Lord Jesus. I don’t know where I would be in my life if I did not have prayer. It is a way for us to share our joys and sorrows. I hope that when trouble comes in our Children’s ways that they will turn to Jesus in prayer.
Have fun spending time with Jesus.:)