What information on our children can we hide to a godparent?

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How lovely. I hope that you are having a wonderful time selecting a baptismal gown 🙂
 
We don’t have selected already a date, and don’t have any idea if we will organized a party to make ours families (that is far away to come!). We lack motivation!

I don’t plan to slect a new baptismal gown! I have dresse my 1st one with the one I wear when i am little, so I plan to do the same! I hope it will not be too little, because he will be older!

I would prefer to have the child baptized prior to any medical intervention, that may be done.
 
My children have all been Baptized in a special gown that my grandmother had all of her children and grandchildren Baptized in. She embroidered all the names of the children along the hem.
 
What a beautiful tradition, Allegra!

That said, in the baptism preparation for our first, baptismal gown was not requiered or even asked for. The priest was surprised when we said the child will have a baptismal dress.
we were speak of a white clothes, such as vest or a stole to put on the child on his ordinary clothes after the baptism to symbolize his passage.

Is this something more “traditional” in the US?
 
We have the godmother, the prospective godfather never give us an answer.

We don’t have make them aware of any birth defect/health issues.
 
I think most people put their baby in something white. Here’s what ours looks like. (Please Note: This uploaded content is no longer available.)
 
I am not sure why you would hid a disability / health issue to the godparents. I for one would never have god parents for my child that I could not share anything with them including something wrong with my child. In time of need I would want to draw on their support if need be. Plus how can you expect the godparents to spiritually guide them if there is a hidden Health / disability that could effect their guidance.
 
Thanks you for your view. I agree that hide some health/disability may affect guidance. I don’t think it would be now, but maybe if we consider the very long term or middle term. Or if someone want to care of the child as a young child.

i don’t plan to hide issues such as autism or epilespy.
Yet, I want to protect our privacy as a family and the one of the child. medical invasion is enough. Some issues are more serious than others. Some are more shamefull. Some are more controversial.
I don’t want to share informations than even our close family is not currently aware of. I don’t want wrong unsollicitated advises at the family dinner, imagination that run etc.
At one point I am sure that more person than I would would known. So may be the godparents.
 
It is more me who is ashamed. I don’t want my child feel shame for how he is, but I don’t wish that everybody know because I know what the reactions could be (mostly of others childdren). And I think, unfortunately that It cannot be hide forever. Medical invasion is enough for me.
More I know that It can impact his child’d life and more his adult life.

Thanks you, I know that you are right, but it is a balance between the person concerned by and the others people around. It may not be serious, but it is not easy for me.
 
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Please, reach out to support groups for parents and people with whatever disability this is. I promise there are private Facebook groups where you can talk to others. You have nothing to be ashamed of.

It is never easy to have a disabled child. Have you read “Welcome to Holland”?

WELCOME TO HOLLAND​

by
Emily Perl Kingsley.

c1987 by Emily Perl Kingsley. All rights reserved

I am often asked to describe the experience of raising a child with a disability - to try to help people who have not shared that unique experience to understand it, to imagine how it would feel. It’s like this…

When you’re going to have a baby, it’s like planning a fabulous vacation trip - to Italy. You buy a bunch of guide books and make your wonderful plans. The Coliseum. The Michelangelo David. The gondolas in Venice. You may learn some handy phrases in Italian. It’s all very exciting.

After months of eager anticipation, the day finally arrives. You pack your bags and off you go. Several hours later, the plane lands. The stewardess comes in and says, “Welcome to Holland.”

“Holland?!?” you say. “What do you mean Holland?? I signed up for Italy! I’m supposed to be in Italy. All my life I’ve dreamed of going to Italy.”

But there’s been a change in the flight plan. They’ve landed in Holland and there you must stay.

The important thing is that they haven’t taken you to a horrible, disgusting, filthy place, full of pestilence, famine and disease. It’s just a different place.

So you must go out and buy new guide books. And you must learn a whole new language. And you will meet a whole new group of people you would never have met.

It’s just a different place. It’s slower-paced than Italy, less flashy than Italy. But after you’ve been there for a while and you catch your breath, you look around… and you begin to notice that Holland has windmills…and Holland has tulips. Holland even has Rembrandts.

But everyone you know is busy coming and going from Italy… and they’re all bragging about what a wonderful time they had there. And for the rest of your life, you will say “Yes, that’s where I was supposed to go. That’s what I had planned.”

And the pain of that will never, ever, ever, ever go away… because the loss of that dream is a very very significant loss.

But… if you spend your life mourning the fact that you didn’t get to Italy, you may never be free to enjoy the very special, the very lovely things … about Holland.

http://www.our-kids.org/Archives/Holland.html
 
Thanks you, I note the idea of private support groups. It may be a good solution.

It is not a “disabled” child. Just a child with a birth defect. Seems nothing, but it may have impact on on daily life, and any family life/marriage/conception of children that he may wants.

Yes, i have already read “welcome to holland”.
 
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Interesting, I literally have never heard of this before. Really weird. I suppose back in the day of the French Revolution, the powers to be thought they had to provide an alternative to many of the key rituals if they were going to get the common people to throw off all of their old “superstitions”. Not for sure why anyone would do it today.
 
I understand, and I think it is not coming across clearly because the word “shameful” has a very negative connotation. You are shameful when you have done something wrong. A baby with a birth defect has no reason to be ashamed, but they are still personal and a person has a right to their privacy.
 
Tafan2,

In the French Old regimen, it was the priests who take the registers of baptism, marriage and burials.
After, it was the Civil state (so the town) who takes the official population records, so of births, marriage and death.
A republican baptism was created to be substitute to the Christian baptism. This baptism has no legal value, so the godparents had no legal bound with their godchildren, even if many think so.

This possibilty is widely know, and not a lot be praticed, but I know two people who had been. The reasons are mutiples:

In the first case, I see no chance that baby “Mohammed” be baptized as a Christian! More, I think that the mother of the 3 half siblings who had been “baptized” together wa to secure their future, if she died, and the children may stay together with their godfather and godmother instead of being separate and place in the custody of their respective fathers. And she may be more anxious because she has the full custody of her baby but the father does not agree, so there is a legal battle. (of course, I don’t see any court that will give the custody of a child to a godparent if he had a father).

In the second case, it is a family of nominal “Catholics”. The parents are married in the Church, the older daughter is christened in the Church, but the younger one had had a republican baptism, instead of the Catholic one. The reason advance by the father? The catholic baptism is only “honorific”, but the true baptism is civil, because it gives her “true” godfather and godmother. (that is not the case, legally).
He add that her daughter could choose as a adult to be baptized in the Church, and as she is in a Catholic school, she had an opportunity to choose this religion.
 
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We just had a refusal of the prospective godfather we choose. His reasons is a fear of an uncertain future, so he feels that he cannot engaged himself to our child.
I guess, that he thinks like you said, that he would have to raise this child if we died!

Strange idea! I think we should call him to be sure that he understand clearly what a “godfather” is!
 
The function of a godparent is to be responsible for the child’s Catholic education if the parents die.

It doesn’t mean the godparent is going to assume physical responsibility for the children, as in adopting them, if the parents die.

I don’t see how the godparent would need to know, or care, about the physical health of the child.

My parents were the godparents of the neighbor kid across the street who was born a couple years after me. They were friendly with the neighbors but not close friends, and they certainly weren’t privy to the neighbor children’s health care information. No one would have expected that stuff to be shared outside the family, unless the kid had some obvious, visible disability in which case a family might explain his condition to others, partly as a way of teaching the world about the condition.
 
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