Teaching Children the Rosary
October is the month of the Holy Rosary. Wendy discusses how to teach the Rosary to children.
By Wendy Grace
Children in Syria prayer the Rosary. (Credit: Aid to the Church in Need)
Saint Louis De Monfort said, “Never will anyone who says the Rosary every day become a formal heretic or be led astray by the devil.”
Children praying the Rosary. (Credit: Aid to the Church in Need)
This is an important reminder of how important it is to pray the Rosary in our daily lives. The Rosary is Our Lady’s gift to us to help us grow in faith and to stay on the path to heaven.
Maybe it's already part of your day, if not you might find Rosary apps or audios easier to follow along to, I did a lot of decades pacing up and down the nursery bedroom floor with a baby in my arms! You might be thinking it's hard enough for me to pray the Rosary myself each day, how on earth will I be able to get my kids to do it?
Before you had kids, did you imagine a lovely quiet calm family Rosary with everyone in blissful contemplation?! I’m sure many of you with small children (myself included) laughed out loud thinking of that dream versus reality. It’s hard for us to sit quietly praying, so it's totally understandable that young children will complain and be bored pretty quickly. You want to strike that balance of cultivating respect during prayer time while not making them resent it.
One of the buzzwords nowadays is mindfulness and meditation - Christians have been doing meditative prayer for centuries, the difference is that it is oriented toward God. The Rosary is a meditative prayer. It's good for us to explain this to our children, tell your children the history of the Rosary - that Our Lady shared it with St. Dominic to help get people to heaven, that when Our Lady appeared to people on several occasions, she asked us to pray the Rosary.
Rosary. (Credit: Aid to the Church in Need)
The hardest part is trying to engage your children in praying the Rosary. The other day my husband and I were praying the Rosary in the car. My 5-year-old then chimes in saying “You know Mommy if you just keep saying the same words over and over, they will lose all meaning”. He had a point: repetitive prayer can be hard to stay focused on for adults, let alone children.
So, start small and start simple. This might be just saying one Hail Mary together, then building up to more. Make sure they also see you pray. It's important that praying the Rosary becomes a habit in your home. A small amount of prayer with your children, no matter how young they are, is better than none.
When we teach our children anything new, it means asking for a lot of grace and patience. Consistency is what works. Start with little steps. Set something that is achievable and realistic, otherwise, it might fail, and then you just give up. What better way to start praying some of the Rosary as a family than by taking part in the ACN 1 million children praying the Rosary initiative on 18 October? Show your children the beautiful, animated video explaining the power of them praying the Rosary with other children.
Other things that can help are introducing your children to Our Lady, at a young age, as their heavenly Mother, and having Our Lady in a prominent place in your house. And maybe this October you could gift them their own sets of children’s Rosary beads (you can even get personalised ones!) encouraging them to cherish them. It helps in our house to sing the Our Father and to take turns praying the Hail Mary.
Try to pray at the same time each day, so it's part of your daily routine, maybe before or after dinner or after stories at bedtime. You might need to try a few times to see what works best for your family. If you try to wait for the perfect mood, especially if you have more than one child, it's never going to happen, and some days might be more challenging than others but try to stick to that rule of doing a little family prayer - it really is better than doing none at all. Remember it doesn’t have to be perfect, for Our Lady, your best is good enough!