Last year, I began to feel called to the devotion of praying the rosary daily. Just recently, I wanted my children to join in with my devotion. I know how important it is to begin catechizing your children young and not to wait until they are older. Many families say a daily rosary together, so I wanted to begin that tradition with my family.
Although I did grow up praying as a family, we did not pray the rosary every night. I have heard about a number of traditional Catholic families praying this together. I did want to adopt this tradition as well, but thought that it was very difficult, especially for young children.
In a Catholic homeschooling group I am part of, I shared that I wanted to adopt this tradition and that my oldest was interested in praying it as well. One mom said that this was an absolute blessing and that I needed to encourage this! So as hard as it was for me, I began to include my oldest in these prayers. Another mom suggested that we use a video or a YouTube channel with images for each changing decade. One other suggestion was to save some images associated with each decade and to click on each image for each decade.
I decided to go with a YouTube video for each daily rosary we prayed. This has worked beautifully! Even my youngest has a little bit of interest and comments on the images. My oldest actively prays with me with interest when I play the videos. This is the channel I use. The images are beautiful that are displayed with each part of the rosary. In addition, the background music is Debussy and it is not only beautiful, but helps to set the mood.
My other tip is to have beautiful rosaries. You can find a number of them here. The ones pictured were wedding gifts for my husband and me, blessed by Pope Francis when he visited the US. My parents gifted them to us at our wedding rehearsal dinner and they were very special and meaningful gifts. I am blessed to be able to share them with our children now. My daughter loves to use my rosary while we are praying it together. I allow her to because I want her to be interested and to love it. She was not as interested when she was using a plain one.
Finally, I think it is important for the entire family to pray the rosary together daily as a habit. Do your best to make it happen! Your children will see your example and remember and the statistics indicate that couples who pray the rosary daily have a 1 in 200 divorce rate, way better than the national average. I hope these tips are helpful to you. Please let me know if you have other good tips in the comments!
