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: helping hand
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It's a trend that's grounded in fiscal reality. Our kids–twenty-somethings and 30s–are living with us, nearly 25 percent of them, according to several surveys. The surveys also find that they've moved into their childhood bedrooms for monetary reasons. Although many of them are on the first rung of career jobs or are earning decent money…
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Are we ever 100 percent pleased with the way our kids are bringing up their kids? There's always something we think they're getting wrong. That's what's behind Meghan Leahy's observation on our role as parents of adult children and as grandparents within their family dynamic. (Her comments are in answer to a grandmother who is…
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Many of us take great pleasure in helping out our children financially. If we have the wherewithal we're likely to help them with a downpayment to buy a house. (Roughly 20 percent of U.S. homeowners received gifts or loans to help them buy a home, according to Money Magazine, and most of that money came…
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Scratch someone who doesn't have children and they'll probably tell you: Too much. That would be in answer to the question: Do parents do more than they should for their adult children. I had a single co-worker who dubbed my husband "Daddy Indulgence" for such "crimes" as paying for our children's college tuition. (We had…
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As we welcomed in the new year of 2020, our adult kids were on a steady financial path: working, paying their rent, fiscally independent. Or they might have been in mid-struggle but showing promise. Then along came the coronavirus pandemic and its devastating effect on the economy. Our adult kids may now be in financial…
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By the time they're 22, our children should be financially independent. It's a milestone most of us think they should reach as young adults. At least, that's what a survey by the Pew Research Center finds. The reality (now it's U.S. Census analysis doing the finding) is that only a quarter of today's 22-year-olds have…
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You've heard it–I've said it–over and over: It's a tricky and emotional business lending money to adult children. We want to be helpful–if we can afford it, and sometimes even if we can't. But we worry about why they are unable to manage on their own. That said, financial advisers speak as one in saying…
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Okay. So crowdsourcing wisdom is just another way of saying Reader Comments on an issue that cuts close to many of our hearts and pocketbooks. Often, though, those comments are more than passing remarks. They carry kernals of wisdom based on years of experience. So here is commentary from my readers responding to Michele Singletary's…
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