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: rewarding reads
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I've just turned the last satisfying page of Emma Straub's All Adults Here. One of the novel's remarkable aspects is how the author toggles back and forth between the mother's (Astrid, the matriarch) and the three grown children's perspectives and cause/effects of her parenting–when the children were small and now, when they're 30-something grown ups.…
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Ray Bradbury in Fahrenheit 451 writes about the meaning of our legacies–to our grown children and their children and beyond: “When people look at that tree or that flower you planted, you’re there.”
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Parenting grown children doesn’t have the snuggle-up joy of bringing up young children, but it does offer its own set of warmth and wonder.
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Alpha daughter gave me a gift a while ago. A book of Tao Te Ching poems. For months, it sat in a messy pile on my desk, unopened. I was too busy to slow down to reflect and lose myself in poetry. Time and mood conspire: I found the little book–a mere 120 pages, some…
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A novelist captures the mixed emotions of having children grow up and leave the nest. Her main character, the owner of hardware store,feels empty without his four sons around. It is a sadness that trails around with him.
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Nobody's perfect, least of all us as parents of grown children. But here's poet Philip Larkin's misanthropic perspective on how we may feel about our parents, and how our kids may feel about us–on rare occasion, of course. Pass the blame, anyone? This Be the Verse They fuck you up, your mum and dad.They may…
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. "Closeness with our adult children is not an entitlement, but it can be the goal. It is nothing we can assume. But it is something we can hope for." These quiet words of guidance are from Joshua Coleman, psychiatrist and author of "When Parents Hurt:: Compassionate Strategies When You and Your Grown Child Don’t…
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Here’s a light but trenchant observation by Nora Ephron on the adjustment to the post-college era, when the kids finally move out and are on their own–or trying to be. [Paragraphing is Ephron’s.] “But eventally college ends, and they’re gone for good. The nest is actually empty. You’re still a parent, but your parenting days…
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