What do you think is an appropriate manner to mark a child’s grduation from HS?
My eldest is graduating from HS this week.
On the one hand, we have no desire to make a big deal out of it. Face it - we pretty much hoped she’d get this far!
OTOH - I think there is some value in acknowledging significant life-events. And while graduating HS is not a huge deal in the long run, it is, nevertheless, one of the biggest milestones in most 18 year olds’ lives.
We didn’t want to throw a party, and she didn’t want one. We recently used some of the money we had saved for college to buy her a new flute, and said it was a graduation present (she’ll be studying music ed, and got scholarships worth more than the flute.)
We ordered her a t-shirt and sweatshirt from her future college which we will give her.
I asked if she wanted to go out for dinner before graduation, or for ice cream after, but she said she’d prefer if we just cooked tacos (her favorite meal) and maybe buy some good ice cream and sundae fixins to eat at home. I guess the issue is WHEN we will do anything, as she is supposed to be at graduation at 4:30 tomorrow, the ceremony starts at 6, and ends who knows when.
Saturday I understand she will be making the rounds of several graduation parties.
So, while I don’t desire to make a big deal out of it, I guess I’m a little concerned over the possibility that it might pass without sufficient acknowledgement.
What do you think is an appropriate way to acknowledge a high school graduation?
I think I remember my folks taking me out to dinner somewhere, and I think they bought me luggage to be used for college.
Graduation needs to be marked, not becuase it’s such an impossible achievement --of course you expected this–but because it’s a rite of passage. It’s the transition from more-child-than-adult to more-adult-than-child. It’s good for both of you to mark the transition because it will serve as a reminder of your changing roles–her waxing responsibliities and your waning ones. Think in terms of marking that–which can be done by having a fancy dinner, by handing her a glass of wine, by telling her (graduating) friends to call you by your first name now, or by any number of other ways. As cliche as it is, what is important here isn’t that she’s completing high school, it’s that she’s commencing adulthood.
Heh. 'Round these parts, graduation celebrations are way overdone. It’s customary to make tons of food—sandwiches, salads, cake, punch—and have everyone you know come to an open house in the graduate’s honor. Friends, family members, and acquaintances traipse through your house, have lunch, and bring you money. I did it too, but think it’s a bit over the top. Last week I attended my cousin’s open house and they had a catered buffet, punch, beer, and about 250 people there. I liked my college graduation celebration much better. My parents, siblings, grandmothers, fiance (now husband), his parents, and his sister joined me for a nice lunch out after the ceremony. Maybe you could plan something similar on Sunday, since tomorrow and Saturday don’t work? It doesn’t have to be big or fancy, just a time for the graduate and loved ones to celebrate a milestone. Oh, and my parents gave me luggage for my high school graduation too.
It’s kinda wierd that I’m wondering what we should do to mark the event, because I don’t think my kid is too concerned about it.
We are lucky that she - and my other kids - seem to enjoy our company. She doesn’t really have any favorite restaurants - we generally eat most dinners and weekend lunches together as a family at home. I guess we could use a tablecloth and the good china, maybe light a couple of candles…
And tho she spends plenty of time with her BF, one of my kids’ favorite things is when we just rent a couple of movies and watch them as a family.
One thing that is a little awkward is my wife and I have some siblings in the area, and there are cousins graduating just about every year. My sister is having a party next week for her HS grad. We’ll bring some $ in an envelope. It’s great if anyone wants to give something to my kid, but I sure hope they don’t feel obligated to do so. And I hope my sister doesn’t think we owe her a party!
Qadgop - She’s going to a state college - ISU, and we’ll be paying most of it. Basically tuition, room, and board. Like I said, she got some as a scholarship, and her grandparents put some money aside for each kid that will pay for at least a semester. She's worked the last couple of years and has enough saved to pay her incidentals. If one of my kids wants to go to a private or out-of-state college, I assume we’d expect them to take out some of it in loans, but we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.
When I graduated HS, I went out to a really nice dinner afterwards with my parents and godparents (the only other people I chose to invite to my HS graduation). I think I went out to the movies with a bunch of friends that night, or something. Quite a few people I knew did much bigger stuff, and a few did little to nothing special. I tend to think occasions like that aren’t very important… but I also tend to think the celebrations are at least as much (if not more so) for the family/friends than they are for the graduate. This goes double for college, which I’m in the midst of now (a few more parties still to be thrown) - I would have been QUITE happy if the ceremony itself was a third as long, and the dinner with my parents afterwards was the only major celebration. I don’t think the extended family would stand for that, though, since I’m one of the oldest and the first one to graduate from university.
(speaking of which, I s’pose I should change my location tag now. As much as I disliked it sometimes, I miss Baltimore already :()
My parents gave me a backyard BBQ, desi-style (kofta curry and tandoori chicken instead of hot dogs) and invited my friends and their friends and their friends’ children.
Congratulations to your daughter, Dinsdale! Is that Illinois State? I went to UIUC (for graduate school) and had a lot of classmates from all over the Illinois state schools.
Hell, its worse than that.
It is not at all uncommon to have parties to celebrate elementary or middle school graduation (generally 5th or 8th grade). And it is more and more common to have ceremonies - including caps and gowns - for “graduation” from pre-school or
kindergarten (4-5 year olds)
Other more traditional “celebrations” of youth are religious - first communion or confirmation - generally 3d or 7th grade or so, or bar/bat mitzvah (13-ish).
On one hand, many folks simply approach such events as a handy excuse to throw a party. More cynical folk may suggest, however, that it is a symptom or the “all about the kid” culture so apparently prevalent in the US.
Our traditions are the big open-house parties, with everyone trooping in and out as they please. Generally it becomes a bit of an all-day family reunion for the relatives and the local friends and classmates do the trooping in and out part. In fact, my parents are driving 250 miles to my house tomorrow to stay the night and then pick up an elderly aunt and take her along to a great-neice’s party on Saturday, an additional hundred miles away. So my family places enough importance on graduation events to make huge road trips, but it’s also dual-purpose to get to spend time with the extended relatives.
This year is the first time I’ve been invited to an 8th grade graduation, a bit over the top IMO but it’s a small charter school and apparently that’s just what’s done there so my friend is throwing a small party for her daughter in a shameless keep-up-with-the-Jones’s way. :rolleyes:
For many of us without communion and bar/bat mitzvah traditions, it seems to make more sense to celebrate the other rites of passage.
Our traditions are the big open-house parties, with everyone trooping in and out as they please. Generally it becomes a bit of an all-day family reunion for the relatives and the local friends and classmates do the trooping in and out part. In fact, my parents are driving 250 miles to my house tomorrow to stay the night and then pick up an elderly aunt and take her along to a great-neice’s party on Saturday, an additional hundred miles away. So my family places enough importance on graduation events to make huge road trips, but it’s also dual-purpose to get to spend time with the extended relatives.
This year is the first time I’ve been invited to an 8th grade graduation, a bit over the top IMO but it’s a small charter school and apparently that’s just what’s done there so my friend is throwing a small party for her daughter in a shameless keep-up-with-the-Jones’s way. :rolleyes:
For many of us without communion and bar/bat mitzvah traditions, it seems to make more sense to celebrate the other rites of passage.
We had a little family get-together…along the lines of a subdued adult birthday party. I got some practical things for the post-graduation-backpack-across-Europe trip I was about to embark on and for college- luggage (a travel backpack, by far my favorite thing that I own), dishes, computer upgrades…that sort of thing. Most of my family gave me a check for $50-$100.00.
Honestly I was so pooped out from constant partying with my friends/school events that it all passed in kind of a haze. It is a good memory for me though. Even though passing high school is not all that tough, it still required a large time investment and it’s still not something that everyone does. It deserves to be acknowledged as an acheivement. Maybe it’s hard for you to picture it going the other way, but that possibility was there. 3 of my best friends- some of them pretty smart kids- dropped out before graduation. The big stumbling blocks are drugs and sheer boredom, and it sounds like your kid passed those tests.
It’s also the last time your kid will have all of her family around her like this. Soon “home” is going to be somewhere else.
My friends mostly also had small adult family get-togethers, though some had slightly more formal extended-family-and-family-friends garden parties- sort of a delayed debut.
Also a Canadian here, and I had dinner at an expensive restaurant with family and family friends - it is customary here to have a grad dinner with your family before the evening ceremony, so friends would get together at the aftergrad party held by the school (or the rebels would not go to the school one and just do their own thing). That’s the way we set things up. Formal ceremony and diploma giving was in the morning, then noon-evening was yours, so generally you’d go to the hairdressers and get your makeup done and get dressed, go to supper, then go to the evening ceremony (our version of prom).
My father gave me a Canon AE-1 for graduation. I took pictures with that badboy for years. Some kids got cars…and some wrapped them around trees. Some were given heirloom items, which they probably lost or pawned in college for a keg. (Great Grandpa’s 1880 pocket watch probably shouldn’t be handed over until they are graduating college)
That flute…that she’ll use and use and use. It won’t get tossed out in the ‘junk box’ as she moves from dorm to apartment or back again. That was a Good gift.
I’m not one for pageantry of any sort, and I graduated ahead of my class so I didn’t even attend the ceremony. My folks paid for my ticket to Florida, where my friend and I stayed with her brother for a week. It was nice.
I don’t know whether my American (as in the white kids I grew up with) had them. Some seem to have had private, expensive dinners with their parents, a few had a casual outside BBQ/gathering like I had (I am Indian). But I know that in the Indian community I grew up in, everyone throws their kid a high school graduation party and usually all the guests give the kid 25 to 30$ as a gift. I would say about 95% of people do NOT get a college graduation party and then anyone who seems to graduate from a doctoral program which is pretty much everyone I ever grew up with (law/med/ph.d) or m.b.a. gets another blowout for the grad degree and this one is usually held at a restaurant and catered. My parents threw me a law school party last year but they’re not terribly down with the restaurant gig (cheap) so we had it at home again, but my mom had half the food catered and it was more formal and lavish than my high school BBQ. I think I got close to a 1000$ in gifts.
My mom wanted one way more than I did, and so my extended family that lives a good distance away are coming in for a few days. Just a good excuse to get together and all that. That will be this weekend, actually.
By far my favorite thing about it is the cake, which should read, if they will bake it as requested, “Who wrote on my cake? I’m serious. - Class '06”
I was class of '79, from a Toronto high school. I don’t recall graduation parties being popular, although I’m sure a few (but only a few) parents held them for their kids. If there were any, they were so few and so private that most of my class had no idea they were occurring.
It sounds a little crass to put it this way, but I can’t think of any other way to put it: my parents didn’t do much for me for graduating high school. IIRC, they were at the diploma ceremony, which was in the evening. Then we went home. Then I changed and headed down to the neighbourhood pub (the drinking age was lower in those days and I was old enough to legally drink). I had a couple of beers and watched a game on TV with some friends who had also come down to the pub after the ceremony. Nothing special; except for the graduation ceremony, it was a pretty normal Friday night.
Maybe it is a generational thing, Leaffan. You and I just happened to be in the wrong generation.
