How to Teach the Lord's Prayer to a Child

Your six year old is standing next to you in the service, half a beat behind everyone else. “Hallowed” comes out as “hollow-ed.” “Trespasses” is anybody’s guess. She is not praying. She is doing a very good impression of praying, which is an entirely reasonable thing for a six year old to do with sixty words nobody has ever explained to her.

That is the honest starting point for most families. If you want to teach the Lord’s Prayer to a child, the first thing to accept is that the prayer is short enough that we assume it explains itself, and it does not.

Start with why teaching the Lord’s Prayer to a child takes weeks, not one night

Kids learn the sound of this prayer long before the sense of it. That is not a failure. It is how liturgy has always worked, and there is nothing wrong with a child who can say it before they can unpack it. Most of us learned it the same way, and if you are honest, there are probably still one or two lines you say every Sunday without thinking about what you are asking for.

So the goal is not a lecture. It is one line at a time, spread over a few weeks, at the pace of an ordinary bedtime.

Pick a single line. Say the whole prayer as you always do, then stop and talk about that one line for a minute. Use it again the next night. When it lands, move on. Six lines, six weeks, and no night of it takes longer than the toothbrushing did.

The Lord’s Prayer in a child’s words

Here is each line with a plain translation you can say out loud. Use your own words, not these, if yours are better.

• “Our Father in heaven” God is a good dad, and he is not far away. Annemarie Scobey-Polacheck, writing in U.S. Catholic, points out that Jesus used the word Abba, “which scholars say is closer to Papa or Daddy than it is to the more formal Father.” That is worth telling a child directly. It changes who they think they are talking to.
• “hallowed be Your name” Your name is special. We say it carefully, not carelessly.
• “Your kingdom come, Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven” Please make things down here go the way you want them to, the way they already do where you are.
• “Give us this day our daily bread” Please give us what we need today. Not everything, and not forever. Today.
• “And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors” I am sorry. And help me not stay angry at people.
• “And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one” Keep me away from the wrong things, and keep me safe.

One kindness while you do this: your church may say “trespasses” or “sins” where the text above says “debts.” All three are in use, Luke’s version of the prayer says “sins,” and a child who hears the words two ways will be fine. Tell them that plainly so they are not thrown when they hear it elsewhere.

Two lines that will do more work than the rest

Daily bread is the line that keeps paying off. Scobey-Polacheck suggests reaching for it “when discussion of the ‘need’ for a new cell phone seems to have gotten out of hand.” It is a small, dry, useful line to have already loaded in a nine year old’s head, and you did not have to make it a speech.

Forgiveness is the one they learn by watching. Her counsel there is not about words at all: “Let your children see you and your spouse say you’re sorry after an argument. After you forgive your child for something, don’t revisit it in the next week.” A child who has watched an apology land in their own kitchen understands the fifth line without a definition. She calls that “a lifetime gift,” and it costs nothing but consistency.

The part Jesus put right before it

It is easy to hand a child this prayer as a performance to get right. Jesus introduced it as the opposite. Just before the words themselves he says, “And when you pray, do not babble on like pagans, for they think that by their many words they will be heard. Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask Him.” (Matthew 6:7-8)

Then the prayer: “Our Father in heaven, hallowed be Your name.” (Matthew 6:9)

A child who mumbles half of it has not failed at anything. The prayer was given to people who did not know how to pray. That is the whole reason it exists, and Luke records the request that prompted it: “Lord, teach us to pray.” (Luke 11:1)

Tonight

Say the whole prayer the way you normally do. Then go back to the first line only, “Our Father in heaven,” and ask one question: “What do you think a good dad is like?” Listen to the answer, do not improve it, and leave the other five lines for another week.

Bedtime Bible Stories includes 37 prayers written in the plain language a young child can actually pray back to you, which is a gentle place to start on the nights you would rather not explain anything.