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: emerging adulthood
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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…
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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…
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During the pandemic lockdown many of us experienced a strange shift in the balance between us and our grown kids: Instead of our previous parental controls, they were "ordering" us around–telling us we had to stay home, stop going out to buy groceries and order take-out food delivered. It came, of course, from an overabundance…
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"And then suddenly you turn around and they are all grown up…" This is the lament I found on Facebook by a dad who posted a photo of his daughter dressed up for her high school's Senior Ball, looking sophisticated and ready to take on the world. The posting seemed to capture the moment the…
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Scratch someone who doesn't have children and they'll probably tell you: Too much. That would be in answer to the question: Do parents do more than they should for their adult children. I had a single co-worker who dubbed my husband "Daddy Indulgence" for such "crimes" as paying for our children's college tuition. (We had…
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painting: Edward Hopper (at National Gallery) Some of our grown kids have come home to ride out the Covid-19 crisis. We may be happy to have them under our roofs again and to provide safe shelter in the corona storm. But the impact on us is not negligible: Keeping the refrigerator stocked. Cooking bigger…
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He's a psychologist who specializes in adolescence but Carl Pickhardt also has a lot to say about the next stage: young adults (roughly twenty-somethings) and their natural and inevitable independence from us, their loving and occasionally controlling parents. In a recent newsletter, he laid out the basic changes in our relationship with our grown-up young…
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By the time they're 22, our children should be financially independent. It's a milestone most of us think they should reach as young adults. At least, that's what a survey by the Pew Research Center finds. The reality (now it's U.S. Census analysis doing the finding) is that only a quarter of today's 22-year-olds have…
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