Mommy doesn't daven

amother

Pink

Sun, Aug 19 2018, 3:29 pm

My kids have never seen me daven outside of shul. For one thing I feel weird davening in the presence of others except in shul and for another I daven early in the morning long before anyone else is up. If my dc thought I never davened it doesn’t seem to have affected their own devotional development. School appears to have been a much stronger influence than home.

But we were a shulgoing family and when our kids were small dh davened hashkomoh so he could stay with the kids when I went to shul on Shabbos and YT. If you’re in circles in which women don’t go to shul I don’t have an answer.
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amother

Pumpkin

Sun, Aug 19 2018, 4:17 pm

Growing up, my mother always made me crazy about davening. I avoided it as much as possible, first of all because I was a little kid, and second, because I never ever knew her to daven other than on rosh hashana and yom kippur, when she made a big production of it. (Making me sit in shul all day, swat on the hand if I lost the place). Believe me, she had time in the morning to daven, as I'm one of three and we were very widely spaced, but she preferred to stay in bed until 9 am every day.
Needless to say, when she wasn't present to bully me into it and make me feel horribly guilty, I did not daven at all.
Fast-forward to my adulthood: I began to daven for my own sake, and by the time I had children of my own, I davened daily. When my kids were very small, I would keep it pretty short and sweet (brachos only, sometimes), and as they got bigger, I managed a whole shacharis. Now they're all old enough that I can daven all of shacharis every day. And they know it, even if they sleep through my davening time.
And the way I handle their davening?
I don't. I tell them it's between them and G-d. I offer my sons a ride to minyan. they've almost never missed it. My daughters (high teens) daven every single day and I never remind them. When they were younger and weren't so into it, I never pushed it. I'd say things like, "We'll go out shopping once you're dressed and davened," but I never checked up to see if they were or guilted them if they didn't.
I don't know how much of this is me, or them, or the wonderful inspiring teachers and rebbeim they've had the privilege to know. But I'm pretty sure that making them crazy about it wouldn't help.