Pray with Me

Book excerpt: Grace Mazza Urbanski, former director of Children’s Ministry for the Apostleship of Prayer (now the Pope's Worldwide Prayer Network), gives parents practical advice on how to help children find opportunities to pray throughout the day in Pray with Me: Seven Simple Ways to Pray with Your Children. Using warmth, humor, and passion, Urbanski draws on personal experience to show how families are brought closer together through deeper contact with God. There are opportunities for children to pray everywhere—when a friend gets hurt on the playground, before a test in the classroom, and even as they hear ambulance sirens while riding in the car with mom or dad—not just at meals and bedtime. In Pray with Me, Urbanski identifies seven ways that parents can help deepen their child's relationship with God by using everyday life as a trigger for prayer. She shows how spontaneous prayer, traditional prayers you know by heart, scripture, song, silence, and reflection help families draw closer to God and each other. Urbanski weaves personal stories with a heartfelt devotion to Christ to teach parents how to help their children learn to respond to life in prayer.