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: grandparenting
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"Only connect." That's the guiding principle of E. M Forster's Howard's End. And it applies to our lives as they revolve in and around our grown children and their progeny. We're always looking for that special way to connect–to say something meaningful or just amusing that hopefully they'll remember us by or think of us…
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I have a case of parent/grandparent envy. My friend Jo has her work cut out for her in the next few weeks. Her daughter (the mother of Jo's twin grandsons who have just started kindergarten) has to leave on a business trip. She'll be gone for three weeks–a first for the young family. Jo already…
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When our children were young and living in our house, we made decisions about their lives–where they would go to school, how they would dress, whether they would be allowed to drive our car. As parents of adult children, that's no longer our terrain, and that can be painful when our children make decisions that…
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Midway through our family vacation in Vermont, the Grands put on a magic show. As dusk fell, we adults–Paterfamilias and I, Uber son and wife, Alpha daughter and husband–sat inside and nursed our wines and hot teas. The Grands were outside on the lawn plotting and putting together a grand extravaganza for us. As darkness…
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My heart goes out to Alpha Daughter: her daughter is in tears. There's one more week before school starts and my granddaughter just learned that she has to go to camp that week. Dad's work is starting up again; so is Mom's. After a long vacation, it's back to the real world. But now my…
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"Go long, buddy, go long." That's my grown son talking to his son. They are throwing a football back and forth on the solid ground of the dead end street that fronts their house. Long, wide, down the middle–dad and his buddy are giving that football and themselves a workout. "Keep your eye on the…
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You never know where that special bond with a grandchild is going to come from. Paterfamilias has long had a special relationship with his grandson, who's now 11. When we go visit our son and his family or they come visit us, PF and grandson kick the soccer ball, throw basketballs through hoops, have a…
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The invitation was a gift in itself. Pam and Dan's son invited them to join him and his family on a trip of a life time: He and his wife, their two children [ages 8 and 11] and the other grannie [who was also the full time nanny] were heading to South Africa for a…
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Two years ago, I posted a blog about a runaway grandpa. It was a tale of family woe: In his 75th year–and 50th year of marriage–a retired, New England professor ran off to California to live with a woman he'd been wooing for a year. Not only did his wife feel abandoned, so did the…
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When they were babies and toddlers, conversation with Grands was babytalk. Easy to manage. As they hit their stride as youngsters, we began to have more challenging but interesting conversations with them– chats about ideas, family history, life, school, friends. They didn't sit on our laps anymore, but we could have heart-to-hearts. But oh those…
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