Ooops. Only now I see the qualifier you mentioned. Of course, I have no idea how this aspect plays out in the US.
But I'll let my post stand because now my interest is peaked. Why and how do you think this is different in the US?
I make my assertions based on my own experience coming up Lutheran in the U.S., compared to my father's experience, and also reading that I've done, which is mainly is sources that concern the Episcopal Church (the U.S. version of Anglicanism).
In my father's day, kids were confirmed maybe around the age of 12 or so, and we still have my father's copy of Luther's
Small Catechism (in English translation, of course). In my father's day, kids were confirmed, and then they were admitted to Communion for the first time; Episcopalians did it the same way. But then, according to books I've read about the Episcopal Church, around about the 1960s or so, theologians started looking into things, and the churches decided that Baptism made a person fully a member of the Church, so why should any baptized person, even a child, be denied Holy Communion?
The Lutheran Church in America (now called the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America) came up with a program of instruction for children who were in about the Fifth Grade in school, called "Welcome to the Lord's Table," which the kids took in Sunday School, and then they were admitted to Communion. I think I was a little before that program, but I do remember in Sunday School the pastor taking us up to the chancel in the church, where we gathered around the altar, and he explained about the service--what the chalice was, and so forth, that kind of stuff--and gave us unconsecrated hosts to eat--they tasted horrible then and they still do.
When I was attending a membership class prior to joining my Episcopal parish, I asked the assistant rector if the Episcopal Church had any program of instruction for kids before they received Communion for the first time. In response she gave me a blank stare and asked why that was necessary.
So anyway, thinking back, I guess I received my first Communion when I was about the age at which my father was Confirmed, but then the pastor kept putting back Confirmation for my age group in Sunday School further and further until parents, mine included, started asking questions, and so finally I was Confirmed in February 1974, when I was almost 16 years old and only a few months before I got my driver's license.
There was a special service, though we didn't use the Confirmation liturgy in the hymnal. I never laid eyes on the
Small Catechism until
after I was Confirmed, and I went to the woman who ran the church's small library and bought the books and asked her if she could get me a copy of the catechism, and she did.
You just don't hear about families making a big deal over someone's Confirmation anymore. Certainly back then, nobody made much of a fuss when I was Confirmed. About the biggest deal that I can remember is that now that we were Confirmed, we were expected to start making an Offering every Sunday!