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: grandchildren
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The Holidays may still seem far away, but that isn't the frantic take you get from the Halls of Commerce. Not only is Black Friday starting earlier, the holiday decorations are already up in many malls and along city streets. But I digress: If you're looking for a gift for one of your little Grands–for…
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Every summer, friends' grown child comes to their house at the beach for a two-week vacation–rent free, of course. Every winter, my friends take this daughter, their son-in-law and two children on a long-weekend ski trip. My friends pay for the condo and the lift tickets. The daughter lives near my friends and is frequently…
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I've been thinking a lot lately about my legacy to my grown children. By that I don't mean how much money Paterfamilias and I will leave them–who knows what will be left to leave should PF or I hit a serious-illness streak. I'm thinking more about what I'll leave that lets my grown children and…
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I haven't added to my Notes to Self in well over three years. But I came across this suggestion from Susan Adcox at About.com.Grandparents: "Overlook it. If you can't overlook it, forgive it." I take it to mean we shouldn't get hung up on our grown children's indiscretions, forgetfulness (in, say, calling us) or outright…
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When my daughter asked if I would come up and "babysit" her daughter–my Grand–for three days, she had her reasons. She had to travel for her job. Ordinarily, if she had to be away, she and my son-in-law would patch together a series of babysitters and play dates to cover the time away. But it…
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My mother's tea cups: three cups and saucers, gilt edged and hand-painted–each with a different flower. When my mother died several years ago and I flew down to Florida to clean and clear her apartment, I placed those tea cups on a heap marked "donate." When Alpha Daughter arrived to help out, she scarfed them…
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When Lola's daughter had Lola's first set of grandchildren, Lola was just a tiny bit jealous of the other set of grandparents. They had sold their condo in Florida and moved to Nashville to be close to their only son and his children. They were there to do the burping and diaper changing; they were…
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When my granddaughter was 8, she and her parents lived in Berlin for a year. It wasn't easy having meaningful or even fun conversations with her when we were limited to a time certain and to a not-in-the-same-room factor. One couldn't just wait for an entry point to make its way known. I did discover…
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Jill and Lenny had made it a very pleasant habit to take their grown children on vacation with them. First they had a condo at the beach. Once they sold that, they rented at interesting, far-away places–one or two condos so everyone could come together and relax as one big, happy family. They're not so…
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When we were young parents with small children, paterfamilias and I suffered from a strange paradox. We would pay good money to hire a babysitter so we could go out to dinner without our children. But then we would spend the better part of that dinner hour talking about our children–their amazing strengths, the anathema…
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