There is a particular kind of silence I used to think was necessary for prayer. It involved stillness, focus and a kind of interior calm where nothing interrupted and nothing distracted. It was the sort of silence you imagine monks having, not parents trying to gather their children at the end of a long day.

Then I started praying Night Prayer with my children.

The first night, I had a plan. We would gather together, dim the lights and maybe even light a candle to set the tone. I wanted it to feel intentional, reverent and set apart from the rest of the day. For a brief moment, it actually began that way. Then, almost immediately, the reality of family life set in. One child started fidgeting. Another whispered something unrelated. One of my younger children asked a question that had nothing to do with the psalms we were praying. I found myself trying to keep us on track while wondering whether this counted as prayer at all.

It did not feel like prayer, at least not the way I thought prayer was supposed to feel. And that realisation began to change something in me. It is still a work in progress.

For a long time, I operated with an assumption I never fully examined: that good prayer requires a certain level of control. I wanted control over my environment, my thoughts and even the pacing of the prayer itself. When those elements were in place, I felt like I was doing it right.

Children, especially my own, have a way of dismantling that illusion almost immediately. They do not move according to carefully structured timelines, and they do not divide their lives into neat categories of sacred and ordinary. Prayer, for them, is not a performance to perfect but something they simply enter into, however imperfectly.

As we continued praying Night Prayer together over several evenings, I began to notice that the distractions I found so frustrating were not going away. What did begin to change was my response to them. Slowly, I started to see that what I had been labelling as distraction was not always pulling us away from prayer. In some cases, it was drawing us into a more honest encounter with God.

Children are not less attentive than adults. In many ways, they are more attentive, though their attention is directed differently. They notice details that we overlook and ask questions we would often dismiss. Their awareness is not filtered through efficiency or expectation, but shaped by curiosity and presence.

In the context of prayer, that difference can easily be mistaken for distraction. Yet Christ points us towards a different way of understanding this when He says: “Let the children come to me” (cf Matthew 19:14). He does not set conditions of perfect focus or uninterrupted silence. Instead, He presents children themselves as models for entering the Kingdom.

Watching my children pray has forced me to confront how often my own approach to prayer is driven by a desire for efficiency. I want to stay on track, to complete the psalm and to move through the prayer without interruption. My children are not concerned with any of that. They are not trying to get through prayer; they are trying to be present within it.

That presence almost always includes random questions, such as whether a landslide is possible in our town, moments of laughter, such as when a child acts out the reading with great vigour, or comments that seem out of place. Yet even those moments can become invitations to encounter God in a way that is less controlled but more real.

There is a perspective often associated with GK Chesterton that children do not lack wonder; rather, it is adults who tend to lose it. Children approach the world as something alive and meaningful, something worth noticing. Adults, by contrast, often move quickly past what seems ordinary in order to focus on what feels productive.

That tendency follows us into prayer. We begin to treat prayer as something to accomplish rather than someone to encounter. It becomes one more task to fit into an already full day. When that happens, it is not surprising that distractions feel like obstacles, since they interfere with our sense of progress.

Praying with my children has challenged that mindset. It has reminded me that God is not waiting for a perfectly structured moment before He chooses to be present. He is already present in the small and seemingly insignificant moments we are often tempted to overlook.

A whispered question, a pause to explain something or even a brief moment of shared laughter can become part of the prayer itself. These moments do not interrupt our encounter with God; they can deepen it by drawing us out of routine and into relationship.

One of the more unexpected lessons my children have taught me is that prayer requires a certain kind of freedom, one that I often resist. This is not a freedom that rejects structure altogether, since habits of prayer are important, especially in family life. Rather, it is a freedom from the need to control every detail of how prayer unfolds.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church describes prayer as a living relationship between God and man. Like any relationship, it cannot be reduced to a system without losing something essential.

Children seem to understand this instinctively. They do not worry about whether their words are eloquent or whether their attention remains perfectly fixed. They speak, listen and respond in the way they are able, and in doing so they demonstrate a posture of openness that is at the heart of the Christian life.

As a parent, I often feel responsible for teaching my children how to pray, and that responsibility is real. At the same time, I have found that they are teaching me as well. They remind me that prayer is not primarily about what I accomplish but about my willingness to receive.

We often describe our time as a distracted age, and there is truth in that. Screens, notifications and constant activity all compete for our attention. It is natural for parents to be concerned about how these influences shape their children.

At the same time, there is another kind of distraction that can be just as limiting. It is the internal pressure to manage, optimise and perfect every aspect of our lives, including our spiritual practices. When that pressure shapes our understanding of prayer, we may find ourselves waiting for ideal conditions that rarely come.

Family life rarely offers extended periods of uninterrupted silence. It is a miracle if it lasts more than a couple of minutes. It is filled with movement, questions and unexpected moments that resist careful planning. Yet it is precisely within that environment that God chooses to meet us.

Raising saints is not about eliminating every distraction from our homes. It is about learning to recognise God’s presence within the reality we have been given and helping our children to do the same. This may look like continuing Night Prayer even when it feels imperfect, taking time to respond to a child’s question in the middle of a psalm, or simply remaining patient when things do not go as planned.

These moments may not fit our ideal image of prayer, but they can become places where grace is at work in quiet and lasting ways.

In the end, prayer is not something we perfect before bringing it to God. It is something we bring to Him precisely as it is, trusting that He is able to work within it. More often than not, the ones leading us into that kind of trust are the children in front of us, whose simple and attentive faith reveals that God has been present all along.