"Be still, and know that I am God."
Many times, I’ve wanted to quote this to my neurotypical daughter Annie who never wants to sit still or my neurodivergent son Nate who fidgets constantly. But "be still" in that psalm isn't an instruction about sitting still. The Hebrew word carries the sense of letting go, of ceasing to strive. The psalm is set in the middle of chaos: the earth giving way, mountains falling into the sea, nations raging. God isn't telling His people to stop fidgeting. He's telling them to stop struggling and remember who He is.
Understanding that changes how we think about time with God for our children. The goal isn't a child who can sit motionless with a Bible on his lap. The goal is a child who knows where to turn when life gets hard.
For some children, the barrier to that is a body that won't stop moving. For others, it's a mind that won't stop spinning. Many of our children have both.
For Active Bodies
If your child thinks better while moving, forcing stillness doesn't produce focus. It produces a child using every ounce of energy to hold still, with nothing left over for God. Let the body move so the mind can listen.
Walk and pray. Take a prayer walk around the block or pray while shooting baskets. Jesus taught on hillsides and beside the lake; He knew His followers would be walking.
Give the hands something to do. Coloring a verse, building with blocks, kneading playdough, or fidget toys during a Bible reading. Busy hands often free up listening ears.
Listen instead of read. An audio Bible or a Scripture song lets a child bounce, rock, or lie on the floor and still take in God's Word. Even today I was talking to my oldest daughter Rachelle, and we were talking about how reading while listening to the Bible being read out loud helps us both to focus more on the Scriptures. It helps her mind not to wander.
Keep it short and frequent. Three minutes, three times a day, will do more than one twenty-minute battle. Discipleship is steeped, not gulped.
Act it out. Let children act out a Bible story. A child who has been Peter climbing out of the boat remembers it differently from a child who heard about it.
Allow for questions and responses. One important aspect of reading the Bible together for our family is allowing for lots of questions. My kids are naturally curious, and I bet yours are too, and their minds are always going. They have lots of questions.
For Anxious Minds
An anxious child often can't hear God over the noise of "what if." Unstructured quiet time can make it worse. Silence is just more room for the spiral.
Make it predictable. Same time, same place, same order. Predictability is calming, and calm makes room to listen.
Name the worry, then hand it over. Paul talks about taking every thought captive to obey Christ (2 Corinthians 10:5). For a child, that can be as simple as saying the worry out loud, or drawing it, and then praying about that one specific thing.
Give them a verse to hold. Write one verse on an index card and put it in a pocket, on the bathroom mirror, or by the bed. An anxious mind needs something solid to come back to. Philippians 4:6–7, Isaiah 41:10, and Psalm 56:3 are good places to start.
Write it twice. For children old enough to write, copying a verse by hand, then copying it again, slows racing thoughts and puts God's words where the worried thoughts were.
Keep prayers specific. "God, help me not be scared" is hard to hold onto. "God, I'm scared about the dentist tomorrow; please be with me in the chair" gives a child something real to trust Him with.
For the Child Who Has Both
Many of our kids are wiggly and worried. For them, combine the two: a predictable routine that includes movement. For example, the same short walk every evening, with the same opening question ("What's on your mind?"), the same pocket verse, and the same closing prayer. The body moves. The structure holds. The mind gets room to settle.
And for You
Don’t skip yourself. Our children's time with God will mostly be shaped by what they see in ours.
If your own quiet time has shrunk to a frantic verse-of-the-day on your phone at midnight, you're not alone, and God isn't scowling at you. But your children need to see you meet with Him, and you need it more than they do. Mixed-needs parenting runs on very little margin. Anxious parents raise anxious children, not because anxiety is a moral failure, but because children learn from what they see us do with our fear.
The same tools work for us. A predictable time. Something for restless hands. A specific worry, named and handed over. A verse, written out twice.
A Tool for the Anxious Grown-Up
I created Tame My Anxious Thoughts for exactly that. It's a 90-day guided journal for adults whose minds won't slow down. Each day gives you space to capture the spiral, notice where your thoughts turn into anxiety, and take those thoughts captive. You'll write out a prayer, copy a verse at least twice, and respond to what God says in it. It's built around the PEACE framework, and it's undated, so you can start any day.
It's designed for adults, and teens in 7th grade and up can use it too. For younger kids, ages 9 to 12, I'm finishing a children's version called Thought Tamer, coming in November. Join the mailing list to hear the day it releases. Join the mailing list and get three free resources.
Tame My Anxious Thoughts Journal
This month we've been steeping in truth together. Time is the T that makes the others possible. You can't steep tea you never pour water over. Give your children, and yourself, time to sit in God's presence, even if "sitting" looks like a prayer walk around the block.