Graduation Gift Giving!

Dear Kimmie,
I have a niece, three cousins and three second cousins all graduating from High School this week. Last Saturday night I attended a party to celebrate 2 of their graduations. I bought and brought a gift for each of them. But since then I have been wondering if I need to send gifts to the other ones? If I remember correctly, I didn't get any money or gifts when I graduated High School (granted that was 15 years ago.) I did however, receive gifts/money when I graduated from college. I know graduating High School is exciting, but isn't that sort of expected? "Wa-hoo you survived 12 years of public schooling. Just like everyone else." Please tell me if times have changed and people are now expected to give gifts/money to High School graduates. And if that is the case, how far down the family tree should I give gifts?
Sincerely, Perplexed about protocol

Dear Perplexed about Protocol,
Call me old fashioned, but the only thing I got when I graduated from highschool was a job, at a Dry Cleaners.
Don't get me wrong, I LOVE giving gifts! I am always buying presents for people and getting my kids junk from the Dollar Store to reward them for every little thing they do. However, it should not be expected, and kids should not feel entitled to it. I can recognize that graduating from high school is an exciting time, but people should not feel pressured to write checks everytime anyone reaches a milestone.
I've seen that show "Silver Spoons." I know what happens when you just start handing kids money. You end up with a bunch of Ricky Schroders, riding around on giant choo-choo trains inside their house, expecting to get everything handed to them.
The reward for graduating from high school should be your education, not a pile of checks from distant relatives and friends of your parents, whose tax dollars have already paid for your schooling.
Now, if you are close with the graduate and you want to give them a gift/money, then by all means, do it! It's fun giving gifts to celebrate with the people you care about, but do not feel obligated to respond to every graduation announcement you get in the mail with a gift of money, and especially not to second cousins. You probably know your mailman better than your second cousin, and you don't buy him a gift card to congratulate him everytime they raise the price of stamps.
If you don't want to give a gift or you can't afford to, you can still recognize the graduates accomplishment by giving them a letter, expressing specific, positive qualities you've noticed in them as an individual and how proud you are of them and the person they've become. That should mean more to them than a check. It may not, but it should. Absolutely everyone deserves to feel special and be congratulated, but celebrating someone's achievements doesn't always have to cost money. In the wise words of Art Buchwald (and Pinterest) "The best things in life are not things." And that's a more important lesson than anything they'll learn in school!
Sincerely, Kimmie