Teaching Kids Spiritual Disciplines: Reading the Bible and Prayer

Send us Fan MailIf your family’s Bible time feels like a chore chart and prayer feels like a performance, you’re not alone and you’re not stuck. We sit down with our Boys Ranch ministry team to get brutally practical about spiritual disciplines for kids and how to teach them without turning faith into pressure.We discuss: spiritual disciplines are practices that shape a real relationship with God, not hoops that earn love.We walk through what age-appropriate family Bible reading can look like from pre-K to high school. For little ones, we talk picture Bibles, story-driven rhythms like Advent, and making a child’s first Bible a big deal. For elementary and middle school, we lean into narratives and curiosity with two prompts that change everything: “I notice” and “I wonder.” For teens, we name the temptation to chase “relevance” and instead encourage you to stay the course, let the Bible be central, and create a safe place for real questions.Then we shift to teaching children to pray. We break down healthy, real prayer as a conversation with God, including listening, not just talking. We share easy frameworks like the Taco Prayer acronym (Thanksgiving, Adoration, Confession, Others, Self) and a simple three-part prayer any family can use. Along the way, we tackle common misconceptions like treating God as a genie, assuming silence means God is absent, and trying to force consistency through guilt instead of grace.If you want practical Christian parenting tools for faith formation that actually work on busy days, press play. Subscribe, share this with a parent who needs it, and leave us a review so more families can find the show.Contact:[email protected] To Donate: https://secure.calfarley.org/site/Donation2?3358.donation=form1&df_id=3358&mfc_pref=TTo Apply:https://apply.workable.com/cal-farleys-boys-ranch/j/25E1226091/For More Information about Cal Farley's Boys Ranch:https://www.calfarley.org/Music:"Shine" -NewsboysCCS License No. 9402