High school graduation is an exciting time for seniors including special ceremonies, junior/senior high proms and after-parties to attend, with prom safety rarely crossing their minds. High school proms can be very expensive events when you consider the cost of prom dresses, tuxedos, prom tickets and photos, stretch limos, dining in extravagant restaurants, flowers or corsages, special occasion hairstyles and French manicures, often creating an tab reaching $1,000 or more.

For many parents the biggest concern isn’t the cost of attending prom or buying graduation gifts, but parents tend to worry more about the risky behaviors associated with proms, teens driving under the influence of alcohol and/or drugs, unsafe sex leading to teenage pregnancy, and how to ensure their son or daughter arrives home safely after attending prom.

Prom night always seems to include news reports of drunk-driving accidents and deaths, date rape, pregnancies or STDs, where teens display poor judgment and make dangerous choices. The following prom safety tips can help keep you or your teens safe, lessen the fear and anxiety often accompanying prom night, thereby making this special occasion something to enjoy and remember with fond memories.

High School Senior Prom Safety Checklist:

• Who will be doing the driving? Will they drive themselves or rent a limo?

• If driving themselves, keep a list of names and phone numbers of each teen rider, along with names and addresses of all the parents. Insist that the car radio be kept at a low volume, limit the number of teen passengers to minimize distractions for the driver, and require each teen to buckle up his or her seat belt.

• Get a complete itinerary, including who your teen will be partying with, addresses and phone numbers for the prom location as well as any after-parties your teen plans to attend.

• If your teen will be renting a limo, be sure to check the limo company’s driving record, and don’t be afraid to ask the company to provide it to you.

• Does your teen know how to contact you throughout the evening? Consider arranging specific check-in times, and make sure you can contact your teen throughout the entire night.

• Communicate with your teen specifically about how she would handle difficult situations such as being offered a ride by an intoxicated driver, being offered alcohol or drugs, or pressure to have sex. Be sure to provide parental instruction on how best to deal with problems that may arise.

• Insist that there are to be no changes made to the itinerary without your prior approval, and make that a firm rule with no exceptions allowed.

• Find out who will be supervising the prom and after-parties. Be sure to speak directly with any parents supervising after-parties your teen wishes to attend, since some parents may allow underage drinking, and may not have the same set of morals and values that you do.

• Consider volunteering to assist in supervising the prom or after-parties your teen will attend, which will help ensure there are enough responsible adults watching over the party-goers.

• Have very specific and detailed conversations with your teen about alcohol consumption, driving under the influence, drug use and sex, as peer pressure often leads teens to use poor judgment before, during and after prom.

• Make sure your teen has phone numbers to trustworthy cab companies programmed into his cell phone, and plenty of money to cover the cost of a cab ride, if deemed necessary for any reason.

• Will someone in the home wait up until the teen arrives back home safely? If so, who?

Senior Prom Statistics Parents Need to Know:

• Contrary to what you may hear or see, most teens aren’t drinking. 81% of adolescents age 12 to 17 have chosen NOT to drink in the past year. [Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA)]

• 65% of 12th graders disapprove of consuming five or more drinks once or twice each weekend. [National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse]

• You may be alive today because the legal drinking age is 21. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) estimates these laws have saved over 18,820 lives from 1975-1999 [NHTSA]

• Females process alcohol differently than males; smaller amounts of alcohol are more intoxicating for females regardless of their size. [NHTSA]

• The same amount of alcohol is in a 12-ounce bottle of beer, a 12-ounce wine cooler, and a 5-ounce glass of wine.

• Among male high school students, 39% say it is acceptable for a boy to force sex with a girl who is drunk or high. [US Dept. of Health and Human Services (HHS)

• Even though youth are less likely than adults to drive after drinking, their crash rates are substantially higher. [National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA)

• Alcohol is the #1 youth drug problem [Center for Substance Abuse Prevention (CSAP); it kills six times more people under 21 than all other illicit drugs combined. [Pacific Institute for Research and Evaluation (PIRE), Ted Miller, Ph,D.]

• 70% of teens killed on prom weekends are not wearing seat belts. [NHTSA]

• Motor vehicle crashes are the leading cause of death and injury in teenagers nationwide. [Centers for Disease Control (CDC)]

• High school students who drink are seven times more likely to have had sexual intercourse and are less likely to use condoms increasing their risk of unwanted pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases.

As I told my daughter prior to her senior prom, her job was to have fun at prom and my job was to make sure she was alive and well the next day to talk about it.

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• Graduation Gift Ideas: High School Graduation, College Graduation Gifts Ideas

High school and college graduation is coming up quick, and graduates should be congratulated and rewarded with graduation gifts for all their hard work leading up to graduation day. Graduation parties are being planned, and high school graduates are excited about attending prom as well as the before-and-after parties, while college graduates have their own college graduation party to attend in celebration of their achievements.

Parents, family and friends of graduating students are busy shopping for graduation gifts that express how proud they are of their graduate, which can make searching for grad gifts seem rather daunting, as they try and decide what to buy a graduating high school or college student.

Coming up with graduation gift ideas is easier if you keep in mind the graduates future plans after they walk across the stage and receive their high school diploma or college degree on graduation day.

High school graduation and college graduation is an unforgettable occasion that graduates will remember and cherish as one of the best days of their lives. Graduation gifts for him or her that are unique, creative and personalized are at the top of the list of favorite graduation presents for high school or college graduates.

It wasn’t hard for me to buy high school graduation gifts for my girls when they graduated high school and headed off to college, because I knew what graduation gift each of them wanted. All I had to do was go to a fine jewelry store and browse their selection of graduation gifts to find the birthstone jewelry that my girls have always wanted, and they were thrilled with their gifts.

Buying my sons gifts for graduation from high school and college automatically meant shopping for electronics and techie gadgets, due to their interest in technology and computers, as well as their apparent obsession with every type of high-tech device known to man.

Personalized graduation gifts found at stores like Things Remembered, where you can have a special commemorative message engraved, is one of my personal favorites. High school graduation gifts and college graduation gifts have a lot of similarities, and you just have to decide what your gift-giving budget is and shop around for the best deals.

A family friend recently told me she made some homemade graduation gift baskets for her nieces and nephews that graduated from high school last year, and that the baskets were very cheap and easy to make. I’m not the least bit crafty, but if something is inexpensive and easy to make, I’ll give it my best shot.

One of my nephews is graduating from high school this year and going straight to college, so his “grad gifts” of choice included a laptop computer; a small refrigerator that will fit well in a dorm room; a small microwave; an IPOD, a new wallet with money in it; an engraved watch; a large piece of luggage; a new camera and a television/DVD combo set.

Unique gifts for high school graduates are not hard to find, and unique college graduation gifts just might be your graduate would like best, especially when you consider how some of the most typical graduation gifts (money, gift certificates, etc) don’t require much forethought at all.

Whatever you decide to purchase as a graduation gift for someone you know and care about, at least put some thought into it and ask yourself, Would you want to receive the same type gifts for graduation that you’re thinking of giving to a high school or college graduate?

Is someone you know about to graduate from high school or college? Are you planning on buying a gift for the graduate? What graduation gift ideas have you come up with?

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I guess it just goes to show that sometimes as a parent you can do everything possible to help ensure your kid is excelling in all areas of life, especially in school, and no matter what you do or how closely you watch their activities, they can often find themselves in trouble anyway. Argh!

I just recently learned from my daughter’s school that if she is to graduate from High School on time with her classmates in May, that I must pay over $600.00 for her to attend night school to make up grades in three classes that she’s FAILING in. To say that I was not at all pleased with this news is an understatement.

Regardless of the fact that I inquire almost daily as to whether she has homework to do, what exactly she is needing to do for homework or school projects, when each is due to be turned in etc, my 18 year-old daughter is failing in three classes. Her response to my questions as to why and how this could have happened? “I guess I just got lazy, and didn’t do my homework”. Argh!

It took me about an hour to calm my blood pressure enough to discuss the situation with my husband in order to decide what steps we would and would NOT take in this rather expensive proposition. Mind you, my daughter is 18 years old, mature enough to understand and appreciate that there are some things I just don’t tolerate. Telling me that things are going very well in school, when they are obviously NOT going so well, is the quickest way to send me over the edge. Lying is not an option in our home.

Now what are we going to do about this situation?

We are going to use Tough Love and allow her to face the consequences of her own poor choices. Not only are we NOT going to pay the $600.00+ for her to attend night school to make up for these three classes, so she can graduate with her classmates (people she doesn’t even like) on time, but she will have to attend Summer School in order to graduate.

Not only that, but she will have to pay the $600.00 tuition fee necessary to attend summer school, as we are not going to enable do it for her. Trying to dig up a part-time job that will allow her to earn the money she’ll need in time to attend summer school will be a valuable lesson. I’m also going to be speaking with the school to try and find out why I didn’t receive any notification of this pending catastrophe. Hmm, I bet I already know the answer to that one. Argh!

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