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: empty nests

  • A New Baby: Offering help in one form and another

    There's a lot of excitement in our small family. We have a new baby–that is, Uber Son and his wife have brought forth their third. Babies are something we know something about. And we also know–experience cannot be denied–how hard it can be to juggle taking care of a newborn while also meeting the needs…

  • House and Hearth: The grown kids buy their first home

    When paterfamilias and I bought our house–the one we're still living in–our children were five and six years old. My mother flew up from her condo in Florida to help with the dirty work of moving in. She and I hand-transferred to the new house a fragile antique wall clock and a gold-framed mirror that…

  • Re-Nesting: It’s not just the 20-somethings who are moving back home

    Here's a shocker of a report: Grown children are moving back in with their parents. Not just the 20 somethings who are starting to make their way in the world, but the 40s and even 50s who have been out in the world and on their own. The slumping economy and credit crunch have a…

  • Money Matters: When is it time for “the chat?”

    During the last few years of my mother’s life, a visit to her (she lived in another city, an airplane ride away) generally meant a peek at a little list she kept.  She wanted me to know what her assets were and where–a CD at this bank, a safe deposit key at another one.  I…

  • A Big Event: Who has the bragging rights?

    Our friends the Ds are having a baby. Let me rephrase that: Their daughter is having a baby. Her second. Their fifth. Their daughter’s husband called at midnight with the good news: healthy 8-lb boy. By 12:02, Mrs. D was at her computer sending out an email announcement to family and friends.So far, so good–except…

  • Money Matters: A reverse cash flow from the Kippers to the Saps

    And now for something competely different. While all the recent studies show how generous we aging Baby Boomers have been to our adult children, a study just out of Great Britain suggests our children have been equally as generous to us. The study found that one in 10 of our adult children have given us…

  • Life Styles: The stats on kids living at home

    One of the big three ways in which parents help their adult children is by providing them with a roof over their  heads: the parent’s own roof. In the past 20 years in Canada, the percent of adult children (20 to 24 years old) living at home has gone from 41 percent to 57 percent.…

  • Living at Home: Does what happens in London, stay in London?

    Here’s an interesting tidbit from a British survey: The credit crunch now means we may never have an empty nest.A story that ran recently in a British newspaper reports that "67 per cent of all potential first time buyers are being forced out of the market due to tightening lending criteria and are having to…