Confirmation: What is the proper age?

At our parish, we have a rather odd Catechism program the employs the "help and knowledge" of the entire parish. In actuality it is pretty much the parents of the kids who are required to be there, and a few other souls like my family, that choose to support our community, more so than the program.

The way that this program works is that we meet after Mass, share a meal, and then split up into "Age" groups and learn about the topic of the session. This year the parish has been going through the Sacraments. Today's topic was CONFIRMATION. During the "adult/teen" session, one of the priests explained some of the basics of the Sacrament, and then went into some variations and issues with the way our Diocese does Confirmation.

What we learned is that teens are not confirmed until they are 16 years old in the Archdiocese of Anchorage! Which is a change from where I come from, where teens are confirmed in 8th grade. As the priest ran through the permutations of different theories behind "When is the best time for Confirmation" a few parents started to Chime in. No real consensus was found, but because this decision is done by the Ordinary at the Archdiocesan level, there wasn't much hope for change in the conversation.

But it left me thinking about it. When is the right age for this Sacrament? I think 16 is certainly too old. By this time teens are in their "disinterested" stage of life. Not only that, but how many kids are really staying in Religious education classes if they aren't attending Catholic School? Not only that, but when you are 15-16, you have a ton going on in your life: high school, sports, learning to drive, starting to get ready to apply for college, boys/girls, and all sorts of other things. Plus, as our priest put it, it lends itself at that age to seem like "Catholic Graduation." In otherwords, here is a final Sacrament, have fun at College, see you when you get Married.

Now I know a lot of this is dependent on the formation and the strength of the parental involvement, but I am talking in broad strokes here. So if 16 is too old, what about 8th grade, around the 14 year old range? In Michigan, where I come from, that is the age for Confirmation, and it seems like this is a pretty common age. I think it isn't bad, but why don't we do 12?

I seem to think the 10-12 age range might be the best age for Confirmation. It allows you to really emphasize the fact that it is a Sacrament of initiation, and allows the kids to maintain their childlike acceptance of things, while you teach them such things as the Gifts of the Holy Spirit. It also allows for a Continuity in terms of their religious education, because they can stay in religious ed classes beyond 1st Communion, and yet isn't so far off to allow for a lapse in attendance, or interference with "teen age" type things. I remember when we were youth group leaders a few years back, and lead a retreat where sophomores and juniors told us that they had about 20-40 hours of extra-curricular or job hours that they spent each week OUTSIDE of actual school time. The younger... the better it seems.

So tell me what you think? I never went through this process so I am somewhat unfamiliar with it and don't know all the ins and outs in relation to determining a good age for COnfirmation. Not only that, most of the people I know that are Catholic went to Catholic High School, where their formation came in the form of school classes, and so the age of Confirmation was less important than those kids who had to take classes after school.