What do parents do for their kids' high school graduation?

[NinetyWt]

@elfkin477

Pretty sure it’s a midwestern term because here it means something that you hope doesn’t happen to you when you get sent to the state pen.

Oh, sorry! Everything north of Memphis is Yankee-land to me. No offense intended!

[PapSett]

I graduated high school in 1978, and I bet I’m the only one here that got a horse for graduation! A real, live 15 hand tall bay half Arabian gelding. I have l9oved horses since I drew my first breath, but living in the city it made it near impossible to own one. When I figured out there was such a thing as boarding a horse out, my parents relented and agreed to buy me a horse for graduation, but I had to pay for the upkeep.

Best graduation present ever.

They also took me out to dinner at a local bar (in the family room of course) that had the best fried chicken EVER. I miss my horse AND that damned bar…

[RedWood]

@Sigmagirl

Now that I come to think of it, my aunt collected some kind of trading stamps, the name of which I can’t remember right now. I wouldn’t be surprised at all if she used stamps to buy it. Now I"m going to be racking my brain all day to remember what kind of stamps those were. She used to make me paste them in the book, too. I can see the damn things, I just can’t . . .

My Mom collected both S&H Green Stamps and Blue Chip stamps…

[TriPolar]

My idea was to move and not tell the kids where we were going. My wife wouldn’t go along with that idea. She regrets it now.

Re: Green Stamps. In 1971 I was a teenager who had to hitchhike back and forth to a job. I carried a sign that read “I give Green Stamps”. I think I got picked up more often and more quickly because people were amused by the concept. Even a cop gave me ride once, and couldn’t keep a straight face while giving me the hitchhiking lecture. And I did give out the stamps. My parents had drawer full of them and were never going to redeem them.

[Silver_Tyger]

I don’t remember what we did for mine. I know my parents bought me a semi-nice opal ring. I was thinking we had a party, but that was when I got my AS (ironically, we did less when I got my BA, but the circumstances were different.)

High school wasn’t a big deal for me - I didn’t go to prom, the senior trip, or anything like that.

[YaraMateo]

@PunditLisa

Sorry about that.

It’s an outdoor family game and/or a drinking game, that may have been invented here in Ohio, though I’ve seen it played as far away as Florida. Kind of a cross between horse shoes and shuffle board. The object is to toss bean bags onto a slightly inclined wooden boxes, with a hole carved in the upper end, 30 feet away. Two people per side, one member per team. 4 bean bags filled with corn (hence the name, I suppose) for each person. If the bag goes in the hole, it’s 3 points. On the board is 1 point. You can knock other bags off the platform or into the hole. First to 21 wins.

Cornhole - Wikipedia

Thanks for explaining.

[BigT]

McDonald’s or Walmart. Seriously. I thought maybe I was just uncool enough not to get invited to a party, but, no, it didn’t seem like anyone had one. That’s where I wound up seeing nearly everyone. Even some of the “rich” kids were there.

Of course we handed out the graduation invitations, as you bought that with the gown. But that’s even more of a reason not to do anything special–lots of kids apparently stayed with their family who had come up.

The only parties I ever heard about were those held on the last day of school, which was well before graduation. And it was really less of a party and more of a group of people just going different places when they normally would have been in school.

[ThelmaLou]

@NinetyWt

This reminds me… remember S&H Green Stamps? You’d get them at the grocery store when you bought groceries. You pasted them into little books and then traded the books for merchandise.

My graduation gift from my parents was a little clock radio that my mom got with Green Stamps. I still have it.

Awww… that’s sweet.

When I graduated from high school in 1966, I was valedictorian, senior class president and a National Merit Finalist, but I don’t remember my parents doing anything in particular. They didn’t notice me very much.

[missred]

@Amazingrace

In Michigan, it’s basically expected that a graduate will have an “Open House.” I’m sure there were some folks who didn’t do it, but I can’t think of any. Even my dirt poor relations had one. They almost invariably, regardless of class or means:

[ul]
[li]Are 3-4 hours long[/li][li]Are on a Saturday or Sunday in the month after graduation[/li][li]Have a “shrine” to the graduate, with pictures from throughout the years, along with awards, varsity jackets, etc.[/li][li]Involve cake and punch[/li][li]Have an outdoor tent with tables and chairs set up for people to gather and eat[/li][/ul]

There’s always a buffet, which can range from a catered affair to Swedish meatballs and other snacks. Most people have their extended family there for the entirety, but in the “open house,” spirit, most student-guests travel to numerous open houses throughout the day. Parents invite friends of the family. Teachers sometimes make appearances. Some share the party with a friend or cousin who is also graduating.

Most adults will bring a card, often with a few (25 to more) dollars for the graduate. More serious gifts tend to come from family members. Often the students use the money to buy a computer for college.

I’m sure other Michiganders (or mid-westerners… I don’t know how far this phenomenon stretches) can share their tales.

I grew up in Indiana and it was the same deal. An option to the cash (at least for girl grads) was a piece of grown-up type jewelry.

When my step-kids graduated in the nineties (one in Indiana and one in Tennessee), we did the dinner thing and gave them enough money for a budget weekend trip with some of their friends. The family still in Indiana still does the open house thing (in fact, I’ll be up there next weekend at one for two of my cousins’ kids’ combined party); friends and family here in Tennessee tend to celebrate in a variety of ways.

[Walkabout]

When I graduated high school in 1979 I got a suitcase and a trip to Myrtle Beach with my friends.

When my daughter graduated high school in 2007, she got a laptop and we had a combined party for her and her cousin. It was in a church activity room and included a catered lunch, and we invited all the relatives. She was not allowed to go to Myrtle Beach with her friends because I remember what that trip was like when I went.

For her college graduation this year, we took her to lunch at a nice restaurant.

[salinqmind]

@PapSett

I graduated high school in 1978, and I bet I’m the only one here that got a horse for graduation! A real, live 15 hand tall bay half Arabian gelding. I have l9oved horses since I drew my first breath, but living in the city it made it near impossible to own one. When I figured out there was such a thing as boarding a horse out, my parents relented and agreed to buy me a horse for graduation, but I had to pay for the upkeep.

Best graduation present ever.

They also took me out to dinner at a local bar (in the family room of course) that had the best fried chicken EVER. I miss my horse AND that damned bar…

You win.

I am in awe. Fried chicken AND a half Arabian horse, two of my favorite things in the whole world! (I honestly don’t remember getting anything at all, other than a dirty look the next morning for coming home drunk at 2 a.m.)

TriPolar - I am ROTFLMAO.

Walkabout - I thought at first glance, they packed your suitcase and gave you a one-way ticket to Myrtle Beach, LOL! I kind of wish they did that with me, it would be interesting how my life would have turned out, away from all this…stuff…I deal with here and now.

[Rachellelogram]

I’m 26 so this is my not-so-recent (but not-so-distant) experience. We threw a party at a local park shelter. My maternal grandma sprung for the majority of the food (having recently received a fen-phen lawsuit settlement, and she was a generous person anyway), which was probably about $100 in fried chicken from Popeye’s. My mom’s side brought some side dishes, potluck-style, and I got small (but thoughtful) gifts from that side of the family. There are tons of kids on that side, so from their perspective it was pretty much just another party, a good excuse to have some beers and play horseshoes.

My graduation was a big deal for my dad’s side of the family, since neither he nor his 3 siblings graduated. Nor did his parents’ generation, and there just aren’t a lot of kids on that side of the family. I was the second one to graduate of that side, with just one older cousin ahead of me and my sister behind me. So I got some pretty good money gifts (especially considering what they could afford) from most of them, and my dad got me a laptop (my parents were divorced so they didn’t go in on a gift).

I can’t remember if the graduating seniors exchanged gifts or not. I think just cards… since we were all going to each other’s open houses anyway, it would have been a wash in the end (financially).