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: Uncategorized

  • iPhone Addiction: Is it our Kids or is it us?

    There’s only one person in this photo gripping her phone. Last week I spent a two-day mini vacation with my son and granddaughter. We stayed in the Old Town section of Alexandria, Virginia. Our one big tourist outing was Mount Vernon. Guess who decided not to bring a phone along to wander around George Washington’s…

  • Togetherness: When our grown kids are there for us

    Some anniversaries are joyful. Others are simply meaningful. And others are meaningful with a touch of sad.The weekend of No Kings marked the second anniversary of Mike’s (my husband’s) passing. If Mike hadn’t been born a political protester, he was one by the time I met him as a young man. He kept that drive…

  • In Other’s Words: How do we get through tough times?

    “The world is too much with us.” Wordworth was referring to the materialism of his time (“getting and spending we lay waste his powers.”). Yet I can’t help but think of that poetic fragment as a reference to the news and politics of our time. When the world comes crashing in–news of war, misinformation about…

  • What Matters: The importance of feeling valued

    Angry parents grumble about a lack of a thank you for gifts given to an adult child or grandchild. We may grouse that our progeny call only when they’re stuck in traffic or carp about requests for the loan of a car but not for our companionship. It’s not necessarily a sign that our children…

  • Sharing Family History: What one generation owes another.

    Author Jeff Katz (right) and moderator Marc Fisher at Wonderland Books in Bethesda, Md. Talk about intergenerational communication, of one generation catching up with the stories of another. Many of us, as we reach our more senior years, are sorry we didn’t ask our parents in-depth questions about their past. And some of us wish…

  • Gifting and Getting: A wish list for gifts from grandkids

    The gift-giving mania of the Holidays is finally over for now. We no longer have to sidestep the occasional requests for what sort of present we’d like from our kids or grandkids. Except that it really isn’t over: Birthdays, Mother’s or Father’s Days and various anniversaries are still coming up. If a grandkid or grown…

  • Blast from the Past: Our youthful slang is no longer passé.

    Whenever I use a term from my youth–like “wasn’t that a hoot” to mean, “wasn’t that funny”–I feel I have to apologize to my grandkids for being out of date, for using a phrase that’s totally dated. But now I find out that the slang we bandied about when we were in high school and…

  • Money Matters: Data on how the Bank of Mom and Dad is doing?

    Retirement looms for many of us as a signifier of our status as a mature person with wisdom to share and time to spare. Or it’s a tantalizing adventure we look forward to. But if we give up our day jobs and our kids need financial help–to, say, buy a house, pay for groceries or…

  • After the Minneapolis Killings: Nora Ephron on parenting grown children

    There are challenges to being a parent of adult children: They may not look or behave as we might want them to; our relationships can get testy; they may keep us out of the loop of their daily life and decisions. And yet there’s one constant we have: We love our children and want to…

  • Refilled Nests: “It’s the choiceful economy, stupid,” thus explaineth Stay-at-Home sons.

    I had coffee yesterday with one of the caregivers who had taken care of my husband when he was ill. Is this what corporate executives mean when they increasingly refer to consumers as being “choiceful?” Or, as a NYT story defined what the executives meant by their term: “Consumers are either spending less at retailers…