Lily Couldn't Say the Closing Prayer, So We Started Smaller

Lily had been baptized for two days when she sat through forty seconds of silence on our living room rug. It was Monday, family home evening and her name was next to "closing prayer" on the chart David redraws every few weeks on the back of a cereal box. She pushed her hands down between her knees and studied the carpet. Ben, who is two and has no sense of occasion, said "Amen" anyway. Caleb said "Just say anything," which is the least useful advice you can give a person who can't find any.

I let Caleb pray instead, and later I found Lily on the third stair with her chin on her knees, and what she told me is the reason I'm writing this. "I'm baptized now. I'm supposed to be good at it." I asked her if I could put this on the blog and she said yes, as long as I wrote that she is very good at horses. She is very good at horses.

Why does a child freeze when it's her turn to pray out loud?

I taught third grade for five years, so I know what freezing looks like from the front of a room. There was a boy in my second year, Dominic, who answered every question I ever asked him on a sticky note he kept in the corner of his desk. Call his name out loud and he'd go the color of a boiled shrimp, though he knew every answer and was only doing the math on how each one would sound.

On the rug I was watching the same thing. Lily knows how to pray, she's done it beside her bed since she was three, and what she couldn't do was pray as a performance with five people watching. Baptism made it worse because in her head the bar had gone up. In her mind a person who has made a covenant ought to have the words ready, and she didn't.

With Dominic what finally worked was giving him the question before his turn and letting him tell a partner first. Somehow I'd forgotten I knew that, because it was church and not a classroom, and I'd half assumed different rules applied.

I'd also been calling her my quiet one, in front of her, at the Primary door, to her teacher, while she stood there holding a paper plate sun. The week after the rug she told me, "I'm the quiet one, I don't do prayers," and hearing my own phrase come back in her voice was an unpleasant minute. Lily isn't quiet. She will name every horse breed she has ever seen, with opinions, for as long as you let her. She goes quiet in front of one particular kind of room, and I stopped using the word.

Sentence starters, the car and the whisper

The first thing I did was take away the surprise, so on the Wednesday I told her she'd say the blessing on Friday's pizza, so we had two days to work out what she wanted to say. Then we wrote three starters on an index card in purple pen, because she insisted on purple: "Heavenly Father, thank you for," and "Please help," and "In the name of Jesus Christ, amen." She never read it on Friday. She held it in her fist the whole time, and I think it worked the way a stuffed animal works.

The car was an accident. We were backing out for the farmers' market on Saturday and I said I was going to thank Heavenly Father that the Odyssey had started, since it's been making a noise lately, and that anybody could add one. Lily rides behind me where nobody can see her face, and the engine covers about half of what anyone says. From the back seat, so quietly I almost asked her to repeat it and caught myself in time, she said, "Thank you that Waffle laid her egg in the right box." We've done a car prayer on most drives since, never more than a sentence from anyone.

The first full prayer she said was a whisper, into my ear, kneeling by her bed with the lamp off. For her it was long. The horse book from Grandma was in it and the baptism and the water being warmer than she expected. I had privately believed a whispered prayer counted for a little less, which I realize now was an odd thing to believe about someone who hears a thought before you finish having it.

When I went looking for what the Church has said about little children and prayer, I found a line that I've written on the card in my own recipe box:

"Certainly, it should not be long when little children are involved, or they may lose interest and tire of prayer." — President Spencer W. Kimball

I'd been quietly hoping she'd work up to a long prayer by Sunday. That line let me quit hoping.

By last Monday's family home evening she was ready to take the closing prayer with the card in her hand. Four sentences, in a voice Caleb later called "mouse," which I'd like the record to show I didn't laugh at. Then he told her it was a good one, without any prompting from me. She asked if she could keep the card. It's in the pocket of her swimsuit coverup, which goes in the wash tomorrow, so we'll see how long purple pen lasts.

What about Primary, where there's no car and no card?

Primary is the part we haven't cracked, because there she's asked to pray in front of a room of children, and the only warning she gets is a teacher's finger pointing at her. I've asked her teacher to text me the night before if Lily's name is coming up, and to let Lily say "pass" without anyone making a face.

I've gone back and forth on the "pass" part more times this week than I'll admit to David, which is the sort of thing I wrote about in the messy middle of parenting a while back. What I read says avoidance feeds nervousness, and I believe it. What I remember from my classroom is that a child who gets pushed in front of everybody holds on to the push far longer than she holds on to anything she said. I don't know yet where the line is between giving her room and giving her a way out, and I suspect it moves from week to week. For now she can pass. We practice the night before anyway, on the rug, with Biscuit as the congregation.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is it okay if my child only whispers her prayer?

Yes, and I resisted that for a few days when I shouldn't have. A whisper is a real prayer, and I'd rather have one every night than a loud one that costs her a stomachache.

Should I tell her ahead of time that it's her turn?

Always, and twenty-four hours is plenty. Springing it on an anxious child tells her that prayer is something that gets sprung on you.

How do I know if it's shyness or something I should ask a doctor about?

If your child talks easily at home and freezes only when people are watching, that sounds like Lily. If she can't speak in several places over many months, even to people she loves, call your pediatrician. I'd rather make that call and be told it's nothing.

What if she says she never wants to pray out loud?

Then she prays silently and says "amen" with the family and it counts. Keep asking in small ways, like "Want to try a whisper tomorrow?" without making a production of the answer. Most kids drift toward it when nobody's leaning on them.

Tonight I think I'll sit on the edge of her bed a little longer than I need to.

with love, Melissa