Dr. Emily AronoffI have been immersed in Tot Shabbat since I was a tot myself. One of my earliest memories is clinging to my rabbi’s leg while he delivered a sermon. That wonderful, charismatic rabbi had what many call “a gift” for connecting with children. He understood their development through lived experience and intuition, without significant formal early childhood training.
But relying on natural talent or lived experience is a risky strategy for a Jewish community. It is unreliable, inefficient, and impossible to scale.
In my consulting practice, I have heard too many stories of families who were turned off by Tot Shabbat programs that were developmentally inappropriate. These families arrive looking for connection and a spiritual home. Instead, they meet expectations that do not match their child’s stage of growth, and they leave feeling like they do not belong. I am not only talking about egregious errors, though I have heard a few of those stories. I am talking about things like:
- Kiddush cups and lit candles displayed unsupervised, at a height children can reach
- Asking kids to sit still or stay quiet for long stretches
- No stool near the sinks, so kids cannot wash their hands
- Uncut grapes offered to toddlers
- No diaper-changing area accessible to dads
All people want to feel safe, seen, and heard. Practicing developmentally appropriate practice helps you meet that goal, which is critical if you want families to come back. This is the case for a professional framework alongside personal charisma, which does take us far, sometimes.
In my 2018 dissertation, Exploring Tot Shabbat, I analyzed the state of these programs across the country. The data was clear. Tot Shabbat delivers an enormous return on investment: developmentally, spiritually, communally, and fiscally. Many leaders are well-intentioned and still lack the specific early childhood tools to create consistent, inclusive experiences. We cannot afford to leave these families to chance. The National Association for the Education of Young Children, NAEYC, has published a professional standard, Developmentally Appropriate Practice (2020), and it is the most reliable roadmap we have. Children are immature, by design. We owe it to them to understand child development, the individual child, and their specific context. When we are intentional about meeting families where they are and building environments where it is easy to succeed, we are setting up a Jewish future.
This article is the synthesis I wish every clergy member, religious school director, and Tot Shabbat leader had on their desk, and in the back of their mind, before designing the next session.
The Three NAEYC Core Considerations
The 2020 DAP statement organizes developmentally appropriate practice around three core considerations. They are interlocking. You cannot fully grasp one without the context of the others, a little like the Mishnah and the Gemara.
Commonality
Children share developmental progressions. The order in which language emerges, in which motor skills appear, in which abstract thought becomes possible, follows a recognizable pattern. Designing for the developmental stage of the child in front of you is the work. Asking a three-year-old to sit quietly through a ten-minute d’var Torah is developmental misalignment.
Individuality
Within the common progression, each kiddo is shaped by family, culture, language, temperament, and experience. A four-year-old who has been read to nightly since birth is in a different language environment than one whose primary input is screens. Both are four. Both belong in your room. Designing for both is the work.
Context
Social, cultural, and linguistic environments matter deeply. A kiddo whose home is bilingual processes Hebrew differently from one whose home is English-only. A kiddo whose family was at services last week meets the liturgy with continuity. One whose family arrived this morning for the first time meets it as a stranger. Even within one family, an older sibling who has gone to camp may walk in familiar with the ritual and surrounded by friends, while a younger one who recently overheard a headline about antisemitism may feel panicked entering a Jewish space. Context shapes everything. Thinking expansively about my audience helps me prepare.
Common Missteps
Three patterns show up across synagogues that tell me the NAEYC frame has not yet taken hold. Behavior is communication (more on that frame in my article Behavior Is Communication: A Field Guide for Sanctuary Leaders), and these patterns suggest a community will struggle to attract, retain, and sustain relationships with part of the families it hopes to reach. A small share will show up no matter the quality of the programming. I have met many a parent who tells me they are there to make the grandparents happy. To reach a larger, more diverse audience with different expectations, you may need to raise the bar.
The Same Plan for Every Kiddo
It is challenging to engage kiddos from infancy to kindergarten in one room. It is doable. Think of a family-friendly restaurant that hands out crayons and a coloring menu to keep children occupied. They planned for the needs of the child so the experience would work for everyone. When we skip that planning in our own rooms, we underserve our families. We scaffold our content intentionally to meet different stages of development, and we design experiences that offer many paths to participation.
Inadequate Intentionality
When the kids are not paying attention during the rabbi’s sermon, the most common move is to assume the sermon needs to change. It might. It might also be that they need to move first, that the expectations were never spoken aloud, or that a ritual to activate background knowledge would prime their participation. Developing the experience, implementing it, then evaluating it, including naming the goals out loud, creates the openings to discover how to be more developmentally appropriate.
Treating Grown Ups as Audience
Sometimes we can prevent the dreaded parental check-out by planning more proactively. I think of it as the “Belle at the banquet” moment. When Belle first sits down to a meal in an unfamiliar castle, she is bewildered. She does not know the etiquette, she is in a strange place, and she needs a friendly cast of characters to guide her, model the behavior, and invite her in with generous, positive reinforcement. Music can offer an expedited path to that cohesion. The grown ups in your room need what Belle needed: a little time and a few welcoming personalities to help them feel comfortable participating. We must be the ones who welcome parents into the ritual, model how to participate, offer relevant learning, and extend clear, gentle invitations. A grown up on their phone in the back row is information. When we create meaningful ways for them to contribute, we stop treating them as bystanders and start including them as the essential partners they are.
Three Design Moves That Apply DAP to Family Worship
Three starter shifts for bringing developmental appropriateness into your design.
Scaffold the Music
The same song can be approachable for a two-year-old and meaningful for a five-year-old. The two-year-old gets the gesture, the rhythm, the connection. The five-year-old gets the language, the structure, the open slot to contribute. Then layer more: a sung introduction, a visual cue in a slide deck, a spoken reflection question, each one another invitation to bring every age and stage into the experience. Most of the songs in Pray and Play are designed this way, and the guide shows you how. The design scaffolds.
Build in Movement
A child who has had two minutes of marching, stomping, or full-body movement can often sit and engage better for the next five. A child told to sit still for fifteen minutes cannot. The clean-up song, the welcome song, and the goodbye song are all chances to build regulation into the structure of the experience.
Plan for the Grown Ups as Participants
Invite them to engage with you. Prompt connection within their family unit. Provide the lyrics. Tell them what to do with their bodies. NAEYC’s family-engagement research and the dissertation findings on Tot Shabbat converge here. When the grown ups participate, the kiddos engage more deeply. When the grown ups spectate, the kiddos drift. The design choice is whether to invite the adults in.
The Theology of Your Environment
Designing for developmental stages is about more than the songs you pick. It is about the environment you build. If the goal is to signal welcome rather than mere tolerance, we have to be as intentional about the physical space as we are about the liturgy. In my consulting, I have seen again and again that the most profound theological statements are the ones we make with our setup.
Inclusive Feeding as Spiritual Practice
Offering high chairs and booster seats, being rigorous about allergy-aware policies, and providing infant-appropriate snacks is pastoral care. When you accommodate a child’s physical needs, you make room for them at the table, honor their individuality, and tell the family: you belong here.
Manipulatives as Bridges
Music is a cognitive and spiritual domain, and it needs a physical vehicle. Tools like shaker eggs for grip development, scarves for visual tracking, and rhythm sticks for motor control are pedagogical instruments. They let babies and toddlers participate in prayer through their bodies before they can participate through language. When you provide these markers of welcome, you remove the barriers that keep families from succeeding in your space, and you show them, through the furniture and the props, that you did the work to expect them.
What This Means for Your Synagogue
The NAEYC framework is the professional standard. If your synagogue’s family programming would not pass a basic DAP review by an outside early childhood educator, you have your starting point. Equip your leader. Invest in their training. Put them in conversation with the field. Give them the curriculum and the coaching that brings developmentally appropriate practice into the standard design process.
