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No chocolate fountain, no DJ, no socks, etc. for us!
I forgot when I wrote my initial post that people might think I wanted a party-planning discussion. There is no party. For our family, this event is a religious ceremony, followed by lunch - no music, no party, small and simple. We will have a separate 13th birthday party for our son - the first and last big group party we will ever throw for him - at the local Boys & Girls club. But we are definitely not looking to have the kind of event that has become the norm around here.
I'm not passing judgement. Everyone else we know, including all our cousins, etc., have the "standard" event, chocolate fountain and all and we've enjoyed celebrating with them. It's just not for us.
So...yes, Sharon, my goal in starting this thread was to talk to other adoptive parents who are in this process who might be talking with their children about these same issues. What does it mean to have a Bar/Bat Mitzvah for your child when you (and they) know their birthparents weren't Jewish (which is the case for most of us). How are we addressing the elephant in the room (particularly for families who adopted transracially)? What do our children think and feel about this?
My son asked me if we would be inviting his birthparents to the Bar Mitzvah. They stopped all contact with us when he was four years old, so of course we can't invitie them. But what I said to him was that I thought it was beautiful and loving of him to want to include them. And if we were in contact with them then certainly we would have wanted to include them, but that it wasn't possible under the circumstances.
Anyone else out there dealing with these issues????
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