Birthday's are such simple things ... one would think

I already had a picture of a birthday party in the book, and I more or less have them understanding what a party is, and that that time of party is a birthday party, and that the birthday party is for Carmen, and that Carmen is 7 years old. What i don't appear to be able to drill into their heads is that this is the "day" that carmen is turning 7 and that is what the party is for. The Chinese way to say birthday is "Shenu Ri" with a long e and a decending I, I didn't know this at the time and if I did I would simply have written it on the board next to the word birthday and they would have gotten it. I can't just say "Your borthday is the day you were born." because they have no fucking clue what the word born means, I also can't say "It's the day your mother gave birth to you." You have the same problem and the birthing process isn;t something I should eb discussing in a room of 6-8 year olds, not to mention they wouldn't understand most of what I am saying. So you see they have no real way to associate Shenu Ri with Birthday. They know how to sing happy birthday but they have no idea what the song really means, even if you ask "What day do your parent's sing you thing song?" And hand them a calander they just look at you like a deer in the headlights. I believe the only answer is to use a little Chinese in the classroom, with children this young there is hardly a way around it. It would be the only way for me to convey what I am trying to say to them, if they never have a real way to associate Shenu Ri and birthday then they are jsut repeating what your saying. Just because a student can say something doesn't mean they understand what they are saying, they're just mimiking you and that doesn't mean shit. I am not trying to teach them to be a parrot I am trying to teach them another language. This is the hardest thing about EFL teaching, sometimes there just isn't a way to effectivley keep their mother tongue out of the classroom, that's what I believe and I'm sticking to it. It shouldn't be used heavily, but when you hit that brick wall what do you do? Anyway guys I may have more later.