Children learn prayer the way they learn language: by overhearing it, long before they are asked to perform it.
So pray out loud in front of them, briefly and about real things — the neighbour who is ill, the test tomorrow, the thing you got wrong at work. Keep it short enough that they never dread it.
Do not correct their prayers. A child who thanks God for their hamster is praying correctly. Do not make prayer a condition of bedtime, either, or it becomes the thing standing between them and sleep.
And let them hear you pray when you do not have the words. That is the lesson most likely to still be useful to them at twenty-five.
