CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE SAYS THAT IT IS GOOD TO ENCOURAGE YOUR CHILDREN TO PRAY AND TO PRAY OFTEN
The Truth: Johnny being a child will be asking God to do miracles. He will think of prayer more as a way to get what he wants than as a form of submission to God.
Now he will also think that others praying for something could be looking for something at his expense. Children are competitive even in prayer.
Encouraging children and teens to pray is encouraging them to want to
manipulate reality by making things happen. It makes them too selfish. This can
lead them to religiosity. Or it can lead to them ditching religion to be
selfish. In either case, they will be made too selfish because of the
irresponsible people who urged them to pray when they were in their childhood.
Religion does more indirect evil than direct evil. Don't make the error of
thinking that evil that is direct is worse or counts more than evil
that is indirect. Indirect evil tries to cover itself up more.
The result is that the openly bad person is hated while the more
devious one is loved.
Miracles help make converts to the faith. Mostly what happens is that it is not
the miracle that converts but people reading the story and thinking it rings
true. So the stories not the miracles as such do the converting. That aside,
faith is no good unless it is an act of union with God. In other words, people
use their belief to unite with God. Miracles indicate the truth of divine
teaching and the need for unity with God. So strictly speaking miracles are for
bringing others to prayer.
Many miracles such as apparitions call for prayer. So don't ask us to believe that whatever is behind them is good even if it is Jesus.
All these things make prayer a distortion of spirituality and a self-directed
lie.