Thank you for telling us the truth that children can be taught. We regularly witness the newborns learning to speak, children mastering language, youngsters being trained to read, the young instructed on how to live and behave.
We ask you to help us train children. We ask you to give us a deep appreciation for your proverb that if we train up a child when he is old he will not depart from that training. Give us an understanding that when we train a young girl that training makes her a woman.
We pray for parents everywhere. Help single mothers to train their child. Be with parents who face chronic illness or who live under the stress of mental illness to do what they can to train up their youth. Help parents to see the importance of teaching their infants, instructing their toddlers, mentoring their adolescents, coaching their teens and standing alongside their adult children. We pray that parents will train up their children in the way they should go so that when they are adults they will not depart from what they have learned.
We pray for those who teach children whether it’s the people in day care or in Sunday school or in elementary and secondary education or parents at home. We pray that they will take their work seriously, that they will prepare themselves well, and that they will feel a calling to train up children. Let all teachers in all places in every nation in every faith in every village and in every city teach children to be people of character. Let them teach children to be honest, to be respectful, to be attentive, to be compassionate and to be wise.
We pray for those who deal with at risk children. Father teacher, it grieves us that so many children have been trained in so many wrong ways. We pray for those who must unteach before they can teach. We pray for those who must deal with the walls that these children have built, with the inadequacies they bring to life, with the pain which clouds their thinking and the consequences of sin in which they have been immersed. Oh Great Teacher, do not let these teachers grow weary or become cynical or become angry or depressed. Create in them a pure heart every morning. Reward them with your blessings every night.
Surround those who teach at risk children with people who encourage them. Train these trainers well. Give them insight. Help them to understand what has happened to these children. Be with them as they take case histories and as they outline a treatment plan. Train them well.
Let these trainers of at risk children do well. As they redirect and refocus and retrain and restart young lives, give them more successes than failures. Help them to see progress when change comes so slowly. Let them focus on the one step forward not the five steps backwards. Help them to see more smiles than frowns, to get more “thank you” words than rejections, to see more well-balanced graduates than dysfunctional failures.