Can Children Eat Milk after Meat?

A young child has eaten fleishigs and now asks for his bottle of milk. Are we permitted to give it to him?

Answer:

The Gemara in masechta Yevamos (114a) points out that in regard to three issurim, the issur against eating blood, the issur against eating insects and the issur against a kohain becoming tamei, the Torah included minors.

That is, it is assur for an adult to feed a minor blood and insects or to take a minor kohain into a cemetery.

The Gemara applies this rule to all issurim.

Though one is not obligated to stop a minor from doing an aveirah, he is not allowed to proactively assist the minor in the commission of an aveirah.

The Shulchan Aruch (Orech Chaim 343:1) poskens that it is assur to give non-kosher food to a child.

The Mishnah Brurah writes that even if it is given to the child only to play with, it is still assur, since the child will surely wind up eating it .This issur of giving non-kosher food to a minor includes even a very young minor, who doesn’t comprehend issues of heter and issur. Though there is no mitzvah of chinuch when a child is so young, nevertheless, it is still assur to proactively make him do something assur.

Nevertheless, the Teshuvas V’hanhagos (1:435) writes that it would be permissible to give a baby his bottle of milk though he has just eaten fleishigs.

The halacha of not giving a child something assur is limited to foods that are intrinsically assur, such as non-kosher foods. The milk given to the child is intrinsically kosher; the problem is only that not enough time elapsed between eating fleishigs and milchigs.

This is different from the prohibition from which we derive the issur of giving a child something that is assur to eat. He cites a Bais Yosef (siman 269), which poskens that it is permissible to give food to a minor to eat before kiddush on Shabbos.

The Magen Avrohom, which uses the same reasoning, explains that the Torah only prohibited giving a minor something that is intrinsically assur.

However, there is still an issue of chinuch. Parents are obligated to raise their children in the path of Torah and mitzvos. It is perhaps this obligation of chinuch that would prohibit parents from giving a child a bottle of milk.

There is much discussion amongst the poskim specifically in regard to the mitzvah of chinuch as it relates to eating milk after meat.

The Teshuvas V’hanhagos writes that if the child is old enough to understand that milk and meat shouldn’t be eaten together, the chinuch requirement would be sufficiently met with a one-hour gap.

When the child reaches five to six years old, the chinuch requirement would be a three-hour gap. When he reaches nine or ten, then he should wait a full six hours before eating milichigs. Rav Yaakov Kamenetsky, in his sefer B’mchitzas Rabbeinu, writes that children under the age of three need not wait at all.

(For further reference see Teshuvas Be’er Moshe [8:36] and Teshuvas Shevet Halevi [Yoreh Deah 4:84].)

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