PenPenWrites

parenting blog, memoir notes, family punchlines & more

recent posts

© 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.

recent posts

© 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.

Category: boomerang kids

  • Refilling the Nest: Two is company, three is crowded

    The semester is almost over. The students who went off to college as overgrown teens are heading home for the summer as adults. A friend's son, after two years of struggling with college courses, is coming home for the duration–to figure out what he'll do next, what he wants out of life, whether further schooling…

  • Empty Nesting: The honeymoon’s over when the kids come home again

    No less a source than Newsweek is tackling the empty nest syndrome. They start off with this good-news phenomenon: "Rather than feeling bereft without kids, many couples find themselves swept up in what's commonly known as a second honeymoon after their kids leave. There's even scientific backing for the notion that a marriage gets a…

  • De-Nested: When adult kids move back home, politeness is strained.

    I'm a sucker for a new phrase, especially when it captures the definition of the moment. Here's my most recent find: Economy of gratitude. It refers to the breakdown in the way we treat each other–we being the parents and ourr adult children who have moved back into the family nest. It's when family members…

  • Boomerang Kids: Return to the empty nest

    A little historical perspective: We may all hear about–and some of us experience–a return of our adult children to the nest–but their leaving before marriage is a relatively new phenomenon. And one some of us may view from a biased perspective.  Michael Rosenfeld, a social demographer at Stanford University says almost 41% of singles ages…

  • Re-Nesters: Profile from the UK on kids moving back home

    We are not alone. The phenomenon taking place here is also raging in the U.K. According to this survey of British home life, Nearly one in ten parents have grown-up children living with them–young adults who have been "priced off the housing ladder." The parents are not only looking after their kids well into adulthood,…

  • Helicopter landings: Overprotecting adult children does not pay off

    There’s an interesting discussion on the perils and pitfalls of helicopter parenting–of the sour fruits parents reap when they don’t let their grown children grow up and take care of themselves–at this web site. While many of us think of the moms as the overprotective parent, this is a story about a dad who does…

  • Money Matters: Helping support a grown child

    At last, a financial planner who isn’t all bean-counter and estate-protector. There is, says Aaron Katsman, more to having an adult child move back home than rental agreements or fees for food. And more to providing them with a temporary stipend than a loan contract. Keying in on the recent, economy-based phenomenon of older adult…