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: supporting adult children

  • Refilled Nests: Do we help or hinder our kids if they move home again.

    Okay. So Gen Z kids are living under the parental roof again and in greater numbers and percentages than our generation did at their age.  I wrote about that in my previous post. The reasons are mostly economic–housing costs are high; they're saving money for their future. The good news from a Pew Research survey…

  • Grandparenting: Offering parenting advice to an adult child and family.

    Our kids are having kids. We have grandkids! Such good news. But what happens when we believe our children are taking a wrong tack in parenting those children? We know–or, if we've read any advice columns on the topic, should know–that the answer is, we keep our mouths shut. There are two important caveats to…

  • Money Matters: Our helping hand is bigger and broader than ever before

    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…

  • Young Adults: What to know about the quarter-life crisis

    We've all heard about the midlife crisis and how, midway through our lives, we question ourselves about the road we've taken, whether this is all there is to life and other existential questions. It's a period of transition where we may struggle with our identity and self-confidence. This is old news. The new deal I'm…

  • Observation: Why it’s so hard to launch 20-somethings.

    In an interview with Laurence Steinberg, NPR reporter A Martinez asked the psychology professor about challenges we parents face in dealing with our 20-something adult children–children who should be more independent than they are or than we were at their age.  Here's Steinberg's observation. STEINBERG: Parents don't fully understand how hard it is to be…

  • The Grandchild IOU: Can we sue if our kids don’t reproduce?

    Here's the premise: After we've helped support our adult children through college and early work years, they (and their spouse)  owe us grandkids. If they don't deliver, they should pay us back. Moreover, we can sue them if they don't fulfill their part of the next-generation equation.  Hah! A laughable notion, right? But in India,…

  • Our Children’s Love Lives: What to do when we object to their choice for a mate.

    We're not always happy with our child's choice of their future spouse or significant other. Our reservations about them may not be centered on the old standby, "No one is good enough."  We may have valid concerns about the future mate's values, behavior or distressing cultural differences. Unless there are signs of physical or emotional…

  • Post Pandemic Issues: Can we close our helping hand to our non-vaxxed kids

    The country is riven by the vaccinated versus anti-vaxxers. Infection rates are escalating among the unvaccinated. That's allowing new, virulent variants to thrive, threatening our health and the return to normal, whatever that may be. What happens when the unvaxxed hits home, when it's not the rogue uncle or distant cousin but your adult child…

  • Supporting Adult Children: We’ve shifted with the times

    Who says we're stuck in the old ways of doing things? Our roles as grandparents have been keeping step with the times. There's a study with lots of data to show how we've shifted the way we help our grown children and the impact that's had on our grandkids. Teresa Cooney, who analyzed data from…

  • Daddy Indulgence: If we’re guilty of over-helping our young-adult children, is that bad?

    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…