When Prayer Has Gone Too Far

I think that it is really important to teach the kids to pray. We pray over at least 2 of our 3 meals a day. And then we pray again at night to thank God for all of our wonderful blessings and to ask him to keep away the monsters (because that is really important to a 2 and 4 year old). But I had to draw the line last night over excessive prayer.

The girls were playing play-doh before supper. They decided to start having pretend birthdays. After singing happy birthday, blowing out the candle, and cutting the cake, they had to pray before they pretended to eat. I was pretty much doing my own thing making supper but after a few times, they decided that since I was in the room I must also pray. We repeated the whole party/prayer routine at least 5 times. Then I had to draw the line. After a little resistance, I explained that if we just said one big prayer for all the rest of the cakes we were going to make for the rest of the night, God would UNDERSTAND.