How to Pray When Your Child Has Special Needs: Part 1
If you’re the parent of a child with special needs, you may have questions about how to pray for your child. This four part series will suggest ways to pray for a child whose future may look quite different from that of a typical kids.
Different Prayers
How to pray depends, in some measure, upon your child’s condition or prognosis. Your petitions on behalf of your child will vary in different situations, such as:
- delayed cognitive development
- a chronic physical condition with no cure
- a highly curable physical condition
- a mental or behavioral disorder
- a learning disability
- a terminal condition
In A Different Dream for My Child: Meditations for Parents of Critically or Chronically Ill Children, parents of children with a wide range of special needs explain how they prayed or pray for their kids. Their advice can provide both guidance and comfort as you begin to pray for your child.
Similar Prayers
But no matter what your child’s condition may be, some of your prayers will be the same as other parents’ prayers. This is doubly true if you are a Christian and pray God’s promises to his children on behalf of your children. So you can pray:
- asking God to grow your child’s knowledge and love of Jesus at whatever level they can achieve.
- to give a child’s life, no matter how short or difficult, purpose and meaning.
- giving thanks for the gift of your child’s life.
- for your child’s provision and protection when you are not with him or her.
- for the fruit of the Spirit (love, joy, peace, patience, gentleness, faithfulness, goodness, kindness and self-control to dwell within your child. (Galatians 5: 20-25)
- to use your child’s struggle to build perseverance, develop character, and bring hope. (Romans 5:1 – 5)
Examples, Please
If these ideas seem more like theory than practice, more abstract when you need concrete examples, don’t despair. The second post in this series will provide specific examples of how to pray for your child with special needs. But until then, leave a comment about how you pray for your child.
Praying for my kids,
Jolene Philo
