GCD Short - The Spiritual Realm and Your Kids - Infants and Meal Time
In light of the fact that I am trying to explain, in my limited capacity, the nature of the spiritual realm, and given that I am not feeling well today and I am having trouble with the heavy research that is required, please oblige me as I post a 'Short' today that touches on, though may not go into much depth in how the spiritual realm may affect your kids and how you should engage the spiritual realm with your kids. There are different ways and lengths to which you as the parent will engage the spiritual realm depending on the stage of growth and development of your child, and today I will focus on your infants, specifically at meal time.
I want to suggest to all Christian parents that you should be praying with your infants. Prayer is not just something that you should teach your kids how to do when they become verbal; they can sense the peace of God's presence long before that time. Maybe before I go any farther, I should define what I consider an infant. In the most general terms, I would consider any child an infant from birth up to about one year old. In this stage of development, you will influence your child towards God largely through your own words and actions in front of and with your child, working to include them in those words and actions as is appropriate for their stage of development.
For example, when you are having a meal, if your newborn is awake, place them near you as you eat, maybe in a baby swing or a car seat, and engage with them occasionally through the meal.
I hope that you are praying over your food and asking God to bless it. I believe that this is not just a good or respectful thing to do, but that there is a protection aspect to this. I won't go into that in this article, but I will note it for a future article. When you pray over your food, make sure to intentionally include your infant. One or both parents can take your infant's hands, bow your heads and close your eyes and pray out loud over your food. Your infant will eventually learn that when you assume that posture, it is expected of them to not fidget and to remain quiet, though this will take a long time before they actually understand this; consistency is key. This comes into play more significantly once your child is able to sit up and they start to use a highchair at mealtimes. Once they are learning to speak, get them to say the prayer out loud with you, even if they are just making noises to mimic you.
As far as what you say as your meal time prayer, that is up to you; there is no right or wrong prayer as long as you remember the purpose of the prayer, which is to thank God for the food and ask Him to bless it. I grew up with a prayer that we said at every meal; it basically rhymes and has a meter (rhythm) to it so it is easy for small kids to learn and repeat, and this is what my wife and I used with our kids. As my kids got older I decided to change to 'one-off' prayers at meal times, and I would typically lead them. Later I started to ask my kids to take their turns praying out loud over the meal for the whole family. This was an effort to give them a chance to grow comfortable praying in front of others and to not rely on prayers that they learned by rote. After a while of this I realized that the "one-off" prayers were becoming repetitive anyway, so we reverted again back to the poetic meter type of memorized prayer. I will include a couple of examples of easily memorized meal time prayers at the bottom of this article if you want some suggestions.
Maybe the following should go without saying, but there are some strange parenting ideas out there, so I will say it; plan to share your mealtimes with your infant. Do not get into the habit of eating by yourself and feeding your child separately due to convenience. This will be unavoidable when your child is very young and is nursing or otherwise eating several times a day according to their own schedule, but once your child is settled into a regular eating schedule that is the same as yours, do not separate their meal time from your meal time. I know of some people who feed their youngest children that require a little more effort first and then they and their older children eat together. This creates a break in the family unit and is not healthy for the mental and relational health among the members of the family. There should be a family meal time.
Following are two meal time prayers that I have been exposed to throughout my lifetime, and they are both good examples of what you can use, but again, you can find or even make your own prayer; there is no specific wording that is required.
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