Prayer, language and thought: the development of child’s religiosity

Abstract

This article will reflect on the practice of prayer during childhood and the relationship between this practice and child development. Through bibliographic review, the concepts about child development and prayer life as an expression of infant religiosity are briefly analyzed, from a Christian perspective. This article will reveal how the act of praying can be considered a natural practice in childhood, and beneficial to the processes like language acquisition and faith development. This discussion has some intersections with "narrative theology" and the "theology of the child", concepts that have attracted growing interest of theological and pedagogical researches.