Answering Amen to a Preschooler’s Blessing

Answering Amen to a Preschooler’s Blessing

When children reach gil chinuch (the developmental age for instruction) their parents are obligated to train them in mitzvah observance. Among other milestones, it is the stage when the Shulchan Aruch authorizes elders to begin answering “Amen” to their brachos. But the prevailing custom is to teach immature children—three or four, or even younger—to recite blessings. May we answer “Amen” to the blessings of a toddler, even though the Shulchan Aruch seems to rule it out?

Our purpose in teaching little ones brachos is to educate them, even though they have not officially reached the maturity of gil chinuch. Answering “Amen” to their brachos is likewise enacted as a form of education, and is therefore permissible even for brachos recited by very young children (when they are in earshot). This is so even if we are in the midst of davening, at a point where we are not permitted to speak out—except to answer “Amen”—and even in a situation where the toddler reciting the brachah has a soiled diaper (but only if the parents are in such a position that they are unaffected by the smell).

Such is the extent to which we guide our youngest in proper chinuch.

 

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Practical Halacha: One minute a day. By Horav Yosef Yeshaya Braun, shlita, Mara D'asra and member of the Badatz of Crown Heights.