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: refilled nests
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Our Gen Z kids are nestling into their old bedrooms, sleeping in our basements or otherwise making themselves at home in our homes. The post-college life is unfolding under the parental roof. It isn't just our kids here in the U.S. Parents in other first-world countries are finding their 20-somethings–and even 30s–reversing trends and coming…
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Emotional Misery. That's what I remember about those first few months of becoming an empty nester. After we sent our youngest child off to college, my husband and I had the blues all through that September. There was a sadness in coming home from work to a house that was too quiet–no music seeping through…
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I remember it well: The thrill of graduating from college, getting my first "career" job and, highlight of highlights, moving out of my parent's house in the suburbs and into a one-bedroom apartment in The City with my best friend as a roommate. A generation later, our kids graduated from college and did things a…
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We have come through (are still in) harrowing times–not just the pandemic but partisan divides and a Fascist-like call-out of one group or another. It isn't just Twitter storms or Facebook harangues. As any of us who follow the news know, violence against people from various ethnic or religious groups is on the rise here.…
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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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Ever since the pandemic descended on us in March, there's been a noticeable uptick in an ongoing trend: Our adult kids are moving in with us. For some the reason is financial: the economy crashed and with it, their jobs. For others, it's emotional: the loneliness of living alone in a small apartment under quarantine…
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Back in March, when the coronavirus pandemic had most of us sheltering in place, some of us did so with our grown kids and even grandkids. Where they had been living independently, now they were with us under our roof or we under theirs–or we were within a pod of safe visitors. Who knew the…
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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…
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This is the emptying nest season. A lot of our kids have left for college and parents are wistful and lump-in-throat sad to see their empty place at the kitchen table. We wish they were still youngsters living under our roof. Or so we think. But four years hence, we may not be so thrilled…
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