Fun Friday: Praying a Daily Rosary with Kids

I thought it would be a peculiarly Catholic family nightmare: it wasn't.

When I became engaged to my future husband, I was a bit surprised to find his large rambunctious family prayed an entire Rosary—five decades!—every single night. Although Marian devotion came to me later in life, I fortunately had developed some sort of relationship with Mary as a young adult, even managing to pray the Rosary somewhat regularly during my long commute to the city alone in a quiet car.

Catholics can personalize their relationship with Mary—it’s the part of the Catholic faith that lends itself to personalization—and I had done so, with my usual individual stubbornness. As a free spirited Catholic, my relationship with Mary had to be unique, different, more free from bourgeois cultural trappings: I sought out the unexpected, the ecumenical, and obscure, and took a dim view of me joining the ranks of kneeling women in mantillas fingering glow-in-the-dark plastic beads. My devotion to Mary would be more sublime, intellectual, and serious. And so, of course, would be the faith of my children.

Fortunately, my husband had none of my aspirations when it came to being a culturally superior Catholic, and let me know in no uncertain terms that he and I would be praying a daily Rosary from here on out—including after we had children.

I had a hard time wrapping my mind around this. My own birth family had always struggled to maintain a habit of praying a daily Rosary, although we managed from time to time to do it for a season, like during Lent or Advent. I knew the Rosary was a good thing but I thought of it as a boring, repetitious prayer to be endured, not enjoyed, especially when done with children.

I could not conceive of a daily Rosary with rambunctious toddlers or bored teenagers, and I was wholly ignorant of its power. I thought of it as an option, one of many available to engaged and actively devout Catholics, and preferred the complexity and variety of say, the Liturgy of the Hours, to the staid so-well-worn practice of previous generations. In retrospect, my understanding of it was so shallow—not that I have even a full realization now! I was to find out through the struggle of marriage and parenting the virtue of the Rosary as a daily family prayer.

Early on when our children were young, I helpfully suggested “changing it up” and “introducing variety” with other devotions besides the Rosary, but my husband was (fortunately) aghast at the thought of the sun setting for a single day on our family without a Rosary being prayed, and was so vociferous that I (wisely) backed down. I steeled myself to endure a lifetime of sore knees, frayed tempers, and a future of rebellious children who hated the Rosary forever because of our intransigence.

What happened was not at all what I expected.

Going on three decades of family life, the Rosary has proved itself to me—not that it needed to—as the ideal prayer for the family, for the single adult, for the laity in general. It is our prayer, given by Our Lady to we the laity—though priests and hierarchy may pray along. It is strong yet flexible, simple yet complex, lending itself to variety and personalization, suitable for any number of settings, something to grasp mentally in crisis or to heighten peace and contemplation during quiet pleasures. It unites, it clarifies, it calms, it enlivens. It can be done in darkness before nightfall around a single candle to calm children before sleep: it can mark off the hours of a long car drip: it can provide an occupation for the anxious and weary: it can bring Christ to mind quietly and unobtrusively for parents waiting between sessions of a child’s ball game or chaperoning backstage at a school play. It can fruitfully occupy the mind drawn to dangerous resentments or depression. It can be done on a hike, at the airport, on a stroll around the property. It can be punctuated with singing or accompanied by picture books of the mysteries or by allowing children to draw the mystery being meditated on—an activity which my children choose with a passion.

One of the dozens of drawings which have come out of our family Rosary.

Unlike my theoretical rich and varied patchwork of family prayer ideas, the Rosary is the perfect “spinal column” to any family prayer. It is wonderful to the exhausted mind and kind to the fertile imagination. For years we have allowed our children to draw during the Rosary, so long as they draw (or attempt to draw) the mystery being meditated on. The result has been decades of drawings of Our Lady and Christ that sometimes have made my husband and I smile, and sometimes have moved us to tears. Along the way, many of my children became fairly good artists as well.

We have done Rosary walks, Rosary hikes, Rosary while dancing in a circle (toddler-led). Hail Marys have been punctuated by bounces on the trampoline, handsprings, katana sword swipes, and the picking of roadside flowers. Our Fathers have been painstakingly enunciated by toddlers for the first time to be followed by familial cheers (a milestone having been reached). The prayers have been “prayed” by stuffed animals and dolls (using the voice of the child). Pebbles in dirt, tiny tissue paper flowers in a basket, shells in the sand, and Legos in a circle have been made to stand in for beads. Tiny Mary gardens in moss or home shrines with flowers have been created over the course of a Rosary. Some of us just need to pray with our hands before we learn to just sit and roll the beads between our fingers.

Wild roses bedraggled and boisterous, heaped at Mary’s feet… a good symbol of our family rosary.

We have used Advent wreath candles, vigil candles, oil lamps, and LED votives to add to a calming atmosphere when we pray inside. We choose statues and images appropriate to the season or feast. During Christmas, the rosary has been prayed with Nativity figures and at other times with Atrium figurines. Growing children have turned their scribbles into genuine holy pictures and paintings of Christ and His Mother. And during the COVID lockdown, my teenage son figured out how to mow a labyrinth on the lawn, and we prayed the rosary that summer by pacing through it.

Boys are fascinated by the weapons aspect of the Rosary while girls tend to be drawn to the relationship with Christ and Our Lady. Either way, the daily Rosary has born fruit. My husband frequently recalls how his reversion to the Catholic faith began by witnessing a family Rosary, and has striven to keep us faithful, day in and day out. I noticed that the Rosary comes easier to my children than it did to me. Devotions which as a child I found tedious—the scapular, the miraculous medal—they pick up without a thought. And nothing sets the tone for car rides like the rosary—we do one on the way to school and Mass automatically now (four decades in, one on the way home.)

And our children have experienced the virtue of this prayer in spiritual warfare. Whenever I had to leave the house early, I would remind the oldest child-in-charge to begin the day by leading the rest of the children in a rosary. If when I returned, I heard that the day was full of fights and complaints, I asked if they had begun with a rosary. When they admitted they hadn’t, I suggested they make a trial of the habit: pray a rosary and see if that made any difference. And they did, and discovered that a day begun with a rosary was a day with less fights and more fun, and became convinced.

My husband and I were not surprised. My husband had seen its power on pro-life picket lines, and in the course of my own life, I have seen its results in friends and myself. (My snobbery dissipated long ago, praise God, and I am humbled to join the ranks of Catholic women who pray the beads.) Even my children as adults have told me stories of how they have felt the Rosary’s presence making a difference in their lives and emotions.

If I were to meet a family with the same misgivings I had—that taking up a daily family Rosary would be too chaotic, too tricky with schedules, too boring for their children or teens—I would encourage them not to be afraid, just do it. Be messy, but be faithful to it. Our Lord is so kind to those who honor His Mother, and she will not be outdone in generosity either.

I found this image in my child’s sketchbook and it touched my heart. She said I could share it with you all. The words are hers.