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: grandchildren

  • Observation: A dad realizes his daughter is all grown up. So does his mom.

    "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…

  • Graduation Day: Traditions in the time of Covid

    Middle- and High School graduations are in high season. Some schools are providing zoom-only events–grandparents can watch from the comfort of their home screens. But with the weather warmed up and the outdoors deemed safe by the CDC, the in-person event is also happening. And we're allowed to attend. School rules vary but last weekend…

  • Post-Vaccine Adventures: Grammie and PopPop get their hugs

    There is some confusion about what we can and can't do unmasked, how we should or shouldn't behave in close-together spaces. That confusion gets mixed in with social anxiety. As we inch toward the full opening of a post-pandemic world, a lot of us are nervous about how we'll navigate our former social lives. Going…

  • Supporting Adult Children: We’ve shifted with the times

    Who says we're stuck in the old ways of doing things? Our roles as grandparents have been keeping step with the times. There's a study with lots of data to show how we've shifted the way we help our grown children and the impact that's had on our grandkids. Teresa Cooney, who analyzed data from…

  • Grandparenting: Play is more than play when we play with our grandkids

    For years one of my granddaughters and I had a favorite game: I would be the "doctor," her stuffed animals the patients. One by one she would bring them to me, tell me what was wrong with them and assist while I treated them for, say, a broken leg or a tummy ache. I loved…

  • Covid, Kids and the Comfort of a Hug: Is it safe to travel to see our kids and grandkids?

    The headlines have been reassuring: "Grandparents are getting to hug their grandkids for the first time after getting vaccinated." Well, that's fine for grandparents who live near their grandkids or within driving distance. Those of us who have to fly–well, that's another story. In the best of all possible worlds, we should hold off on…

  • New Grandparents: Do we have babynaming rights?

    Many of us have been proactive when it comes to our handles as grandparents. We feel free to tell our kids–the parents of our grandbabies–what we would like to be called.  Whether it's PopPop or Nana or something we make up–I've chosen PenPen–it doesn't feel intrusive or controlling to choose our name. But the naming…

  • Report on Virtual Thanksgivings: Zoomsgiving fun.

    My friend Jo planned her virtual Thanksgiving with her three children, who live in three different time zones, around cocktails. She offered each child a time slot–5:00 their time zone on one of the days of the Thanksgiving weekend. She did not aim to bring everyone together–not with one child in Copenhagen, one near her…

  • Pandemic Fallout: Where did the family get-togethers go?

    Thanksgiving is only one of the family get-togethers upended by the coronavirus. Summer vacations, family reunions, birthday celebrations, Father's Day, Mother's Day, even funerals–lots of us have been unable to celebrate or observe any of these in person with our children (and their families) since the coronavirus barged into our lives. How are we coping…

  • The Good, Bad and Wondrous: Our grown kids are sheltering with us during the pandemic. Is multigeneration housing the future?

    Friends spent the first five months of the pandemic housing their daughter, her husband and three-year-old Lucas. The young family had been living in Manhattan when New York City became the hot zone for the coronavirus. They felt unsafe and moved in with her parents in suburban Maryland for what everyone assumed would be a…