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: setting boundaries
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I must have been prescient when I wrote my previous post about people who didn’t want to be with family on Thanksgiving. That wasn’t me, of course. I was looking forward to traveling to my son’s house and being with my son, daughter, their spouses and my grandchildren. Grandpups, too. I was in fine fettle…
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Here they come again: The holidays and their feasts. As parents of adult children (and possibly as grandparents as well) we have our expectations of how joyous Thanksgiving dinner or the long weekend of togetherness will be–or how stressful and difficult. Whether we're hosting or another family member is, our grown children have their concerns…
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I was lucky. My husband didn't get along with his mother but I did. She didn't interfere (as my mother did) and, unlike most women of her generation (my mother, again) she never had a negative word to say about my pursuit of a career. Not that I sought her out as a confidant. But…
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Many of us have been here: We've fallen into the habit of picking up the bill when we take our grown child out for dinner. If we're not struggling to pay our own bills, we feel good about indulging a child who's just starting to make their way in the world. Even as our kids…
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Our grandkids are the best–precious, smart, beautiful. But what do we do if someone sees their photograph and makes an unflattering or rude comment about them? Or asks why they are so "wild" at family get-togethers? Or makes a negative rhetorical statement about someone we love. A friend who met my family for the first…
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When our kids were young, we were their problem solvers. It came with the parenting territory. We had to keep them safe, help them understand how the world works and show them how to move toward independence. Now that our kids are adults, does that territory need to be trimmed? That's an issue parenting coach…
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When I first got into the business of being a grandparent–PenPen to my son's and daughter's children–it was at a time when, not surprisingly, many of my friends were starter-grandparents as well. A common topic of conversation–or should I say stress–was the worry that the "other" grandparents would be favored, would be more "loved" than…
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The comforting way to put it is that our grown kids need space. But the far end of that need can play out in a way that translates into "they don't want us around." In answer to a reader's complaint that her daughter won't take her phone calls, discourages her from visiting (even though she's…
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