PenPenWrites
parenting blog, memoir notes, family punchlines & more
recent posts
- Sharing Family History: What one generation owes another.
- Gifting and Getting: A wish list for gifts from grandkids
- Blast from the Past: Our youthful slang is no longer passé.
- Money Matters: Data on how the Bank of Mom and Dad is doing?
- After the Minneapolis Killings: Nora Ephron on parenting grown children
© 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
- Sharing Family History: What one generation owes another.
- Gifting and Getting: A wish list for gifts from grandkids
- Blast from the Past: Our youthful slang is no longer passé.
- Money Matters: Data on how the Bank of Mom and Dad is doing?
- After the Minneapolis Killings: Nora Ephron on parenting grown children
© 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
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It’s so hard to let go when our adolescent kids are launched into adulthood. But cheer up. Their independence is a measure of our success.
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Even Power Parents like Julia Louis-Dreyfus and Nancy Pelosi suffer the pangs of the empty nest–and factor it into their career moves.
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It isn’t just economic stress that’s driving our millennials back home to live with us. It may also be a generational change that has them feeling more comfortable with us culturally.
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We've all read or heard stories–or experienced the real thing–about college grads (or even older kids) moving back home. Thank you Great Recession and the Oh-So-Slow Recovery. But that's only part of the re-nesting story. As I've written in a previous post, having our adult children live on their own after college is a socio-economic…
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When my friend Cathy got angry at her renested post-college son–for sins like not emptying the dishwasher; not taking the job search seriously–she kicked down his bedroom door. Not that she meant to. She was just kicking his closed door to make a point and Boom, her foot went right through it. It's a moment…
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I didn't mean to eavesdrop. It couldn't be helped. I was sitting at Panera's having a late morning latte when a trio of friends sat down at a table next to me and started chatting. In my defense, they were using their outside voices–or close to it. I started picking up on the conversation when…
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He's 24. He's got a job. He's still living at home. My friend Cathy is beyond frustrated. Her son is not helpful around the house. She's tired of asking him to take out the garbage, empty the dishwasher or run an errand–in the car she and her husband are providing. Part of his inertia is…
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The travel section of a newspaper isn't the most likely place to find a story on a major parental adjustment. Dominque Browning managed to turn a trip to Boulder into a tale of her first journey, as a newly minted empty nester, to her youngest son's new nest and her recognition that she was no…
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They packed up the van and loaded my three Grands in the back. Six hours later, Uber son, wife and Grands arrived at the family manse for a weekend visit. Within minutes of their arrival, Paterfamilias and I began an immersion into their lives–in the ins and outs of who likes what for a snack…
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