PenPenWrites

parenting blog, memoir notes, family punchlines & more

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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.

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: college freshmen

  • Empty Nest: Support for the college-dropoff blues

    My yoga teacher is a single mom. She dropped her only child off at college a few weeks ago. The daughter is a freshman and this is the first prolonged time away from home. My yoga teacher came back a day after the drop-off with bouyant tales of the move-in, the roommate, the campus. This…

  • Empty Nesting: The college dropoff blues

    The college dropoff (freshman year version in particular) is a rite of passage as tearful as sending our firstborn to kindergarten and laden with plenty of meaning. Our kids are transitioning from the cosseted safety of home to the independence of young adult life. We're transitioning from controlling parents to advisory ones. In the moment…

  • Social Media Etiquette: Tips for staying in touch with the in-college grandkids

    Some of us have grandkids who are away at college. Naturally, we want to stay in touch. We may even expect that contact to be as close and regular as it was when they were youngsters living with their parents. And yet we may be disappointed that our in-college grandkids are a little more distant…

  • Empty Nest: Letting Go of our college kids.

    Thanksgiving is almost upon us, and for some parents, that means more than turkey: The freshman they dropped off at college just a few months ago will be returning home for a few days. Probably for the first time since they left in September.  My experience with this happened years ago and yet I still…

  • Parenting Memories: Stolen moments with our grown children, and they with theirs.

    My daughter is aglow. We are on a FaceTime call but I can see the happiness radiating from her face. Her daughter, who started college this year, came home for a day. They took a drive into the country, went on a short hike, stopped to book shop, had lunch out. They talked about everything…

  • The Pain of Parting: Lessons in Letting Go

    Our son sent his oldest child back to college and his oldest daughter off to Roma for a gap year of study abroad. He still has one child at home but his heart is aching. As his two eldest headed off, he managed, he tells me, not to tear up in front of them. He…

  • Helicopter Parenting: Does it end when our kids are adults?

    Does helicopter parenting end when our kids graduate from high school or enter the work force? Don't bet on it. But don't indulge in it either. Barnard College's  Natalie Friedman can bear eyewitness account of the dangers to our children's welfare of over-parenting or having a bulldozer or snowplow parent–or even a lawnmower. So many…

  • Young Adults: What if they call home from college and they’re miserable.

    Photo: Palo Coleman They're off to college. The empty nest looms or maybe just the diminution of the number of children at home. Paterfamilias and I have been there, lived through that. Now it's one of our grown-up children whose oldest child has bounded off happily for college. So maybe this is as good a…

  • What it feels like to send your first born off to college

    I will not name names. But this was a Facebook post written by a dad I know who drove his oldest child–his son, who happens to be my grandson–to college a few days ago and managed to keep those lump-in-throat emotions in check–for a while: And for those who are asking the obvious question, by…