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© Penelope Lemov and Parenting Grown Children, 2025. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given.

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© Penelope Lemov and Parenting Grown Children, 2025. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given.

Visiting Privileges: A second opinion on visits with grown children

When our grown children come home for a visit, we juggle many things–from what to cook [who likes what?] to where will they sleep [who gets the guest room, who the blowup bed on the floor of the TV room?]. If more than one grown child is coming home for a holiday or family celebration, remembrance of sibling rivalries past may flit through our heads–and remind us to tiptoe carefully around those minefields.

I recently came across a blog by Cynthia Samuels that gives her take on the highs and lows of such visitations. You can read it here. One of her points is this: "When your kids grow up there’s not a lot you can do for them besides feed them and not pressure them to be around when they can’t."

She also has this advice: "…one of the two [of her sons] is married and that makes temperate, respectful exchanges even more important. The worst thing in the world is to have to choose between parent and spouse. I work hardest to keep that from ever happening, not only about when they come and how long they stay but also about whether we serve beef (nope) or schedule a lot of activity (also nope)."

In other words, those visits are not all about us.

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2 responses to “Visiting Privileges: A second opinion on visits with grown children”

  1. Katherine Avatar
    Katherine

    I wanted to share my sister’s comments on a related topic — a visit to the homes of grown children. (She just got back from a Thanksgiving visit.)
    She said that when she was the young mother/wife, our mother and her mother-in-law would both annoy her — the latter would plunge into the kitchen and try to be super helpful, but would always do things wrong in her view. On the other hand, our mother would wait to be asked to help, reluctant to interfere in someone else’s kitchen. It grated on my sister that our mother wouldn’t volunteer to do more.
    She’s now following our mother’s pattern — waiting to be asked to help, not interfering — and she worries that this is aggravating her daughter-in-law. She is newly sympathetic to our mother, who, unfortunately, is no longer around to hear that.

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  2. Linda Avatar
    Linda

    It’s almost funny, in a way, how much we juggle our lives to fit them when they come back. Most of the time while they were growing up, they had to juggle their lives us. Time certainly changes things.

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