Don't be discouraged! Pregnancy fatigue is *so real* and is a great reason to need to go just go to bed sometimes, entrusting to God your work of welcoming this baby as a prayer! You can pick it back up!
Love your ideas! My husband and I have been focusing on evening family prayer for a bit now.
Definitely chaotic with our three (4, 2. Newborn). I think one of the biggest things is consistency, even if there are “bad” evenings when kids run amok/don’t focus, showing up is a huge part of the battle. I like your ideas of incorporating movement/activity-our kids definitely need that right now. Two things that have worked at times for our kids are a) ‘thank you God and sorry God’ (a short mini examen, and leads to some very sweet/self-aware moments occasionally) and b) repeat after me prayers (St. Patrick’s breastplate is great for this)
Very good points, Elise! We have always done repeat-after-me prayers at bedtime with our little ones until they have memorized them.
I agree about consistency, but with generosity to the realities of life with young children, too. We aim for a few times a week for family prayers. Making it a non-negotiable, absolutely every day thing was very stressful when we hadn't managed time well or something else unusual happened. So for us, mealtime blessings and bedtime prayers for each person are daily non-negotiables, but family prayers occasionally miss a day or two here and there and we try not to beat ourselves up about it.
That is a really good point and really helpful for me! I like the individual bedtime prayer being non-negotiable. There’s definitely been days we pushed for it and it maybe wasn’t the way to go
On the really late or rough nights we pray the Lord's Prayer aloud in unison and sing the Doxology before we go our separate ways. Then we pray a short ex tempore prayer for each of them at tuck in.
We used to sing the Doxology in the church I attended as a child (Congregationalist). I still sing that version often in my own prayers. I love that you sing this prayer together!
Beautiful. There's a prayer from Compline that we often say at bedtimes: "Protect us, Lord, as we stay awake; watch over us as we sleep; that awake, we may keep watch with Christ; and asleep, rest in His peace."
Thanks for the timely suggestions! We sing some hymns as we tuck them in (holy god we praise thy name, protect us lord, our father, amazing grace, in that order or else 😅) but have only tried family night prayer together on Sundays and it’s usually discouragingly crazy, even with just a few intentions and thank-yous. Maybe doing it more frequently would actually make it less of an exciting thing? They love their cgs atrium so I know they’re capable.
Sounds like you are doing something wonderful already with the bedtime hymns-which-double-as-prayers!
Maybe you could try a different time of day or day of the week for your weekly family prayers? I know some families do better doing morning prayer, for example, because people aren't so tired/wired.
Yes! I want to make scripture a part of our morning time routine (we homeschool and usually do language arts at the breakfast table) but it’s always so much up and down, differentiated instruction/wiping baby up, refilling cups etc. haven’t cracked that code yet. Have also thought about the angelus at quiet time but it seems like the wrong time to focus their attention on prayer right when I’m unleashing them to their own devices to decompress after the morning.
What about just saying the Angelus at lunch along with blessing the food? A lot of people do that. Then they can eat and then run off.
I totally hear you about the difficulties/benefits combination that goes along with reading aloud during meals. We have had some years when we have done it successfully in our homeschool and other years when we have done read-alouds right after breakfast or lunch instead. Sometimes I can take the disruption, and sometimes I can't!
Thanks for the response :) I’m still kind of new here and Substack is a revelation!
Angelus at lunch is a great idea. And yeah maybe I just ought to wait out the baby’s squawky phase before increasing what we do at morning time. Or start waking up earlier to eat a full breakfast myself so I’m not hungry 😅
My personal reality is that this kind of routine changes year-to-year, or even every six months. When my kids (I have 4) were all quite young, I went through a long period of making a shared family breakfast (eggs, fruit, toast, etc.) every day. It cut down on bickering and pickiness and made sure that I ate well, too. A different year, everyone made their own breakfast but it was at a strictly-set time, and I read aloud from our history or language arts books while they ate (and then colored a coloring page). Last year, everyone made their own breakfasts whenever but at a certain time each morning they had to present themselves for schoolwork to begin, and read-alouds were done on the couches in the living room where they could wiggle a little but not drive me nuts like they were doing at the table.
I'm sure something different will work this year!
It's okay to make changes. At some point the baby might be quiet at juuuust the right time for a read aloud, but maybe that time is just not now!
Also, Becca, see Annelise's comment below! I don't know if you follow her Substack (you should!), but she's a wealth of humble, realistic, but also determined perspectives on the goods and challenges of mothering, homeschooling, etc.
This is so great! I sent it to our parish moms group.
I often end the day with my almost 4yo doing a thank you Jesus prayer. Thank you Jesus for... And we list everything from the day, usually starting with what we had for breakfast. I think it's a helpful review of day, so she can process what happened. But it's also good to be grateful for all the ordinary things.
This is a great list of suggestions! We've had to keep things very short and simple for everyone's sake. Usually I will do a short time of Bible reading, prayer and singing with them while they eat breakfast, or are finishing up. I had to learn to not wait for "morning time" or our read aloud time, because inevitably it would get pushed off and everyone would be off on the wrong foot. We all NEED the prayer right off the bat to help the day. It's very simple -- we read slowly through a book of the Bible, sometimes they are full of questions, and other time they give me blank stares, we say prayers, recite the Nicene Creed together (at various points it's some other verse or something we're memorizing) and sing a hymn (they usually choose and 50 % of the time it's "How Firm a Foundation". Daddy always does bedtime prayers and blessings for everyone and then mealtime prayers. I'm still trying to work out when I have any sort of devotional time, but feel like I'm in the exhausted three legged race stage of that rhythm. I was able to get out for a walk and just pray and think for 45 minutes yesterday (in almost cool, non-humid air -- a wonder! -- and it was so good for my soul) but right now the fatigue makes it difficult to stay awake. I've been trying to keep prayers handy for when I'm nursing the toddler at naps and bedtime. I have grand aspirations of how it might look, but have had to learn that simple and consistent is best for my wiggly children (and then sending them to run laps before we attempt school, haha!)
Annelise, have you read Sally Clarkson's "Mom Heart Moments" devotional? It's so short each day and yet so realistic. I really love it. Maybe worth picking up a copy if you haven't gone through it already.
I have an alarm on my watch or phone to remind me that I could pray the Angelus at noon and 6pm, and one of my kids likes to chime in too.
I also pray the St Michael the Archangel prayer with him at bedtime (he has an accretion of several prayers then that I originally wanted him to memorize, and I figured that bedtime is when he holds still long enough for that to happen, and it is when he likes a familiar routine the most so I cannot remove anything from the list now! heh.)
I was really blessed by this share, how you two sought to first pray together after getting that wonderful news. People do all kind of things under such circumstance, drink champagne, etc but to go first to a church to pray, that is really awesome to me. \0/
I love reading through all of these ideas! We have a little Bible reading time in the morning where I read the Bible and my toddler reads her Bible board book…Recently I’ve been letting her flip through one of our Word on Fire bibles because she really wanted to and she actually tries to be careful with it.
At night we pray night prayer along with the hallow chant version as we put the toddler and baby to sleep. I thought they were mostly sleeping through it until the other day when the toddler started singing “Oh God come to my sister” while reading her Bible in the morning 😂
Our attempts at daily Rosary just brought on daily family misery, which is hard given how much the family Rosary is encouraged by the Catholic Church. For a long time any sort of nightly prayer was very difficult, so we did a short morning prayer. Pat usually still leads us in this before the kids and I head out for school in the morning. And now we often do evening prayers together from the Magnificat, with time for each family member to speak his or her intentions. The kids like that it is shorter =) and a nice mix of parts that vary every day and parts that are the same every day.
Don't be discouraged! Pregnancy fatigue is *so real* and is a great reason to need to go just go to bed sometimes, entrusting to God your work of welcoming this baby as a prayer! You can pick it back up!
Love your ideas! My husband and I have been focusing on evening family prayer for a bit now.
Definitely chaotic with our three (4, 2. Newborn). I think one of the biggest things is consistency, even if there are “bad” evenings when kids run amok/don’t focus, showing up is a huge part of the battle. I like your ideas of incorporating movement/activity-our kids definitely need that right now. Two things that have worked at times for our kids are a) ‘thank you God and sorry God’ (a short mini examen, and leads to some very sweet/self-aware moments occasionally) and b) repeat after me prayers (St. Patrick’s breastplate is great for this)
Very good points, Elise! We have always done repeat-after-me prayers at bedtime with our little ones until they have memorized them.
I agree about consistency, but with generosity to the realities of life with young children, too. We aim for a few times a week for family prayers. Making it a non-negotiable, absolutely every day thing was very stressful when we hadn't managed time well or something else unusual happened. So for us, mealtime blessings and bedtime prayers for each person are daily non-negotiables, but family prayers occasionally miss a day or two here and there and we try not to beat ourselves up about it.
That is a really good point and really helpful for me! I like the individual bedtime prayer being non-negotiable. There’s definitely been days we pushed for it and it maybe wasn’t the way to go
On the really late or rough nights we pray the Lord's Prayer aloud in unison and sing the Doxology before we go our separate ways. Then we pray a short ex tempore prayer for each of them at tuck in.
We used to sing the Doxology in the church I attended as a child (Congregationalist). I still sing that version often in my own prayers. I love that you sing this prayer together!
Yes - we have loved singing the Doxology before bedtime, along with a Numbers 6:24-26 blessing over our boys (4, 3, and 1) before we close their door.
Beautiful. There's a prayer from Compline that we often say at bedtimes: "Protect us, Lord, as we stay awake; watch over us as we sleep; that awake, we may keep watch with Christ; and asleep, rest in His peace."
Thanks for the timely suggestions! We sing some hymns as we tuck them in (holy god we praise thy name, protect us lord, our father, amazing grace, in that order or else 😅) but have only tried family night prayer together on Sundays and it’s usually discouragingly crazy, even with just a few intentions and thank-yous. Maybe doing it more frequently would actually make it less of an exciting thing? They love their cgs atrium so I know they’re capable.
Sounds like you are doing something wonderful already with the bedtime hymns-which-double-as-prayers!
Maybe you could try a different time of day or day of the week for your weekly family prayers? I know some families do better doing morning prayer, for example, because people aren't so tired/wired.
Yes! I want to make scripture a part of our morning time routine (we homeschool and usually do language arts at the breakfast table) but it’s always so much up and down, differentiated instruction/wiping baby up, refilling cups etc. haven’t cracked that code yet. Have also thought about the angelus at quiet time but it seems like the wrong time to focus their attention on prayer right when I’m unleashing them to their own devices to decompress after the morning.
What about just saying the Angelus at lunch along with blessing the food? A lot of people do that. Then they can eat and then run off.
I totally hear you about the difficulties/benefits combination that goes along with reading aloud during meals. We have had some years when we have done it successfully in our homeschool and other years when we have done read-alouds right after breakfast or lunch instead. Sometimes I can take the disruption, and sometimes I can't!
Thanks for the response :) I’m still kind of new here and Substack is a revelation!
Angelus at lunch is a great idea. And yeah maybe I just ought to wait out the baby’s squawky phase before increasing what we do at morning time. Or start waking up earlier to eat a full breakfast myself so I’m not hungry 😅
My personal reality is that this kind of routine changes year-to-year, or even every six months. When my kids (I have 4) were all quite young, I went through a long period of making a shared family breakfast (eggs, fruit, toast, etc.) every day. It cut down on bickering and pickiness and made sure that I ate well, too. A different year, everyone made their own breakfast but it was at a strictly-set time, and I read aloud from our history or language arts books while they ate (and then colored a coloring page). Last year, everyone made their own breakfasts whenever but at a certain time each morning they had to present themselves for schoolwork to begin, and read-alouds were done on the couches in the living room where they could wiggle a little but not drive me nuts like they were doing at the table.
I'm sure something different will work this year!
It's okay to make changes. At some point the baby might be quiet at juuuust the right time for a read aloud, but maybe that time is just not now!
Also, Becca, see Annelise's comment below! I don't know if you follow her Substack (you should!), but she's a wealth of humble, realistic, but also determined perspectives on the goods and challenges of mothering, homeschooling, etc.
This is so great! I sent it to our parish moms group.
I often end the day with my almost 4yo doing a thank you Jesus prayer. Thank you Jesus for... And we list everything from the day, usually starting with what we had for breakfast. I think it's a helpful review of day, so she can process what happened. But it's also good to be grateful for all the ordinary things.
That's really sweet, and I bet it will prepare her well to understand how to do an examen in a few years without getting bogged down in the negative.
I think the ignatian examen is what originally inspired it!
This is a great list of suggestions! We've had to keep things very short and simple for everyone's sake. Usually I will do a short time of Bible reading, prayer and singing with them while they eat breakfast, or are finishing up. I had to learn to not wait for "morning time" or our read aloud time, because inevitably it would get pushed off and everyone would be off on the wrong foot. We all NEED the prayer right off the bat to help the day. It's very simple -- we read slowly through a book of the Bible, sometimes they are full of questions, and other time they give me blank stares, we say prayers, recite the Nicene Creed together (at various points it's some other verse or something we're memorizing) and sing a hymn (they usually choose and 50 % of the time it's "How Firm a Foundation". Daddy always does bedtime prayers and blessings for everyone and then mealtime prayers. I'm still trying to work out when I have any sort of devotional time, but feel like I'm in the exhausted three legged race stage of that rhythm. I was able to get out for a walk and just pray and think for 45 minutes yesterday (in almost cool, non-humid air -- a wonder! -- and it was so good for my soul) but right now the fatigue makes it difficult to stay awake. I've been trying to keep prayers handy for when I'm nursing the toddler at naps and bedtime. I have grand aspirations of how it might look, but have had to learn that simple and consistent is best for my wiggly children (and then sending them to run laps before we attempt school, haha!)
Annelise, have you read Sally Clarkson's "Mom Heart Moments" devotional? It's so short each day and yet so realistic. I really love it. Maybe worth picking up a copy if you haven't gone through it already.
I have an alarm on my watch or phone to remind me that I could pray the Angelus at noon and 6pm, and one of my kids likes to chime in too.
I also pray the St Michael the Archangel prayer with him at bedtime (he has an accretion of several prayers then that I originally wanted him to memorize, and I figured that bedtime is when he holds still long enough for that to happen, and it is when he likes a familiar routine the most so I cannot remove anything from the list now! heh.)
The St. Michael prayer is such a strong one for kids!
I was really blessed by this share, how you two sought to first pray together after getting that wonderful news. People do all kind of things under such circumstance, drink champagne, etc but to go first to a church to pray, that is really awesome to me. \0/
Aw, thanks! He started it all by proposing to me at a church, which I loved.
I love reading through all of these ideas! We have a little Bible reading time in the morning where I read the Bible and my toddler reads her Bible board book…Recently I’ve been letting her flip through one of our Word on Fire bibles because she really wanted to and she actually tries to be careful with it.
At night we pray night prayer along with the hallow chant version as we put the toddler and baby to sleep. I thought they were mostly sleeping through it until the other day when the toddler started singing “Oh God come to my sister” while reading her Bible in the morning 😂
Oh my goodness. That is lovely! It is amazing what they pick up. Little children have such deep spiritual lives sometimes, but they can be hidden.
Our attempts at daily Rosary just brought on daily family misery, which is hard given how much the family Rosary is encouraged by the Catholic Church. For a long time any sort of nightly prayer was very difficult, so we did a short morning prayer. Pat usually still leads us in this before the kids and I head out for school in the morning. And now we often do evening prayers together from the Magnificat, with time for each family member to speak his or her intentions. The kids like that it is shorter =) and a nice mix of parts that vary every day and parts that are the same every day.
Unsurprisingly, this is very much like the Lanes' journey through family prayer formats :)