Colin Gleason on Teaching Our Sons to Pray: Opportunities and Options

Prayer is not prescriptive. So how could we hope to teach our children a practice that St. Thérèse called "a surge of the heart"? Lower school head Colin Gleason suggests that it's about creating opportunities and options, so that our sons can naturally make a life of prayer their own.

In his talk from our Parenting Conference in April, Mr. Gleason lays out ten very practical ways to sow the seeds of prayer into our family's daily routines—in formal and spontaneous ways. He ends by reminding us that prayer is not a program. It is an orientation. And whatever we parents approach with consistency and sincerity, "the house will be filled with the fragrance of it" (cf. John 12:3).

Chapters:

00:05:28 Prayer as a relationship 00:09:53 A family plan for daily prayer 00:12:30 Introducing them to mental prayer 00:15:00 The Psalms: a handbook 00:20:37 Making opportunities and options 00:24:20 Asking them to pray for us 00:26:57 Stories for the prayer imagination 00:29:52 Prayer journals 00:31:07 Discussing prayer 00:32:46 Prayer in our daily activities 00:35:27 Making a prayer spot 00:37:32 Clearing obstacles, preparing the ground

Featured opportunities:

Teaching Essentials Workshop at The Heights School (June 16-20, 2025)

Convivium for Teaching Men at The Heights School (November 13-15, 2025)

Also on the Forum:

Forming Men of Faith by Alvaro de Vicente

Forming Families, Forming Saints featuring Fr. Carter Griffin