In wake of the sad plight that sees the need for a month designated as Child Abuse Awareness and Neglect Prevention Month, the following prayer is offered:

A Prayer for Children

We pray for children

who sneak popsicles before supper,

who erase holes in math work books,

who can never find their shoes.

We pray for those

who stare at photographers from behind barbed wire,

who can’t bound down the street in a new pair shoes,

who never “counted potatoes,”

who are born in places we wouldn’t be caught dead,

who never go to the circus,

who live in an X-rated world.

We pray for children

who bring us sticky kisses and fistfuls of dandelions,

who hug us in a hurry and forget their lunch money.

We pray for those

who never get dessert,

who have no safe blanket to drag behind them,

who watch their parents watch them die,

who can’t find any bread to steal,

who don’t have any rooms to clean up,

whose monsters are real.

We pray for children

who spend all their allowance before Tuesday,

who throw tantrums in the grocery store and pick at their food,

who like ghost stories,

who shove dirty clothes under the bed and never rinse out the tub,

who get visits from the tooth fairy,

who don’t like to be kissed in front of the carpool,

who squirm in church or temple and scream on the phone,

whose tears we sometimes laugh at and whose smiles can make us cry.

And we pray for those whose nightmares come in the daytime,

who will eat anything,

who have never seen a dentist,

who aren’t spoiled by anybody,

who got to bed hungry and cry themselves to sleep,

who live and move, but have no being,

We pray for children who want to be carried and for those who must,

for those we never give up on and for those who don’t get a second chance.

for those we smother —

And for those who will grab the hand

of anybody kind enough to

offer it...

Please offer your hands to them so that no child is left behind because we did not act.



Marion Wright Eldeman



It is the hope of the Tyler Star News staff that the need for a poem like this, or a month needed to remind us that there are abused and neglected children, will one day be needed no more.