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: talking to adult children
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When our kids are planning to visit us–be it to drop by for an hour or to come home for a weekend–we’re usually alive with anticipation. Ah, the the joy and positive energy a visit brings. The question is, are they feeling as positive as we are?Yes, they are! That is, they share in the…
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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…
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Our adorable children. Sometimes it's hard to realize they're adults now. They may not be quite as cuddly as they were when they were three years old but more to the point, they probably don't want us hovering over them or offering advice. Here are two tales that tell you what I'm talking about–plus bonus…
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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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Best if we had started when our kids were teens but it's never too late to remember that we have moved from being the boss of them to being consultants to our grown children–even as it's hard to act on that in the heat of a "moment." This is what Amy Joyce wrote about in…
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A few weeks ago, I posted an observation from Meghan Leahy on the limits we should impose on ourselves. That is, we should not offer our adult children advice on parenting their children–unless they've asked us for it. In that post, a grandmother was concerned about the chaos of her grandchildren's bedtime. In this post,…
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The two most boring words in a parent's vocabulary: Estate Planning. Within that world, the most volatile words are Unequal Shares. Whether we have a gargantuan billion-dollar estate to divvy up among our children or just a small savings account to apportion (or somewhere between those two extremes), we may have reasons to deviate from…
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After an argument with his step-father, a 29-year old son slammed the door and left the house. He then began pulling away from his mother. Their communication, the mom says, "dwindled to a slow trickle of texts." One point her son made on one of those texts was that during the 20 years of being…
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