Teaching babies about your faith doesn’t have to be complicated. The Bible‘s been telling us how to do it for centuries:
Listen, O Israel! The Lord is our God, the Lord alone. And you must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your strength. And you must commit yourselves wholeheartedly to these commands that I am giving you today. Repeat them again and again to your children. Talk about them when you are at home and when you are on the road, when you are going to bed and when you are getting up. Tie them to your hands and wear them on your forehead as reminders. Write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.
I’ve been writing about what worked for us when we were parenting babies, and along with all the physical needs that have to be met, it’s not to early to think about their spiritual needs as well. Here we go.
- Talk to them about Jesus
I talked to my babies. A lot. I was all about their language development, so I would narrate whatever we were doing. If we were taking a walk outside, I’d describe all the things around us. I tried to interject things like, “God made the trees.” It wasn’t rocket science.
I was pretty sleep-deprived during those years, so I’m sure it didn’t get much deeper than, “God made dogs.”
I’ve read that children need to hear 30,000 words (spoken live, not a toy or TV) by age three.
Thankfully, these don’t have to be fancy-vocabulary-filled, serious conversations.
But since you are talking, it seems natural that something as important to you personally as your faith…would come up in every day life pretty often. So, you’re helping your baby do better in school, be a better communicator, and develop a Christian worldview. Sounds good to me.
- Pray together
Praying with babies doesn’t have to be just at bedtime, just like it doesn’t have to be for us….you can pray things like, “Thank You, God, for socks and shoes,” while you’re putting them on in the morning. These are things we did as we were just going through our day.
I remember praying out loud for my babies to fall asleep! Oh, I remember being so tired, and knowing I had to get up early to go to work the next morning just made it worse. I figured it wouldn’t hurt for them to hear me ask for the Lord’s help, too.
It’s designed for toddlers, so each story is really short, fits on one page. The younger they were, the more condensed we’d “read” it. I remember that at the end of every story, we’d say, “God loves [Noah]….and God loves you!” Except we’d say their name, and they just loved that part. By the time they were saying their first sentences, they would join in with us at the end. Ah, sweet memories.
This naturally led to a short but sweet bedtime prayer.
All of these things that I’m saying we did…we did them most of the time. I’m not consistent with much of anything to the point that I can say I’m religious about it, {haha} but these are things we worked at making a priority. So if one day was crazy and we didn’t read a bedtime story (or any story!) well, tomorrow’s a new day. Over the course of months and years, you get a cumulative effect that makes up for a hectic day here or there.
And remember, most of the things that worked for us worked because they were things we could do when we were at home or on the road or going to bed or getting up, just like it says in Deuteronomy.
Looks like the Lord knew our lives would be busy and He gave us a plan that would work, in spite of that. Amazing, God!