PenPenWrites

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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.

  • PARENTING GROWN CHILDREN: The children may be grown but we still have our issues.

    Leaving a Legacy:The Great Transfer of Wealth from us to our adult kids. Is it for real?

    Ferryman_ivan_canu

    Here's what the headlines tell us: The greatest wealth transfer in history is here and we are the source of those assets. Yes. Some $84 trillion in our investment accounts, wallets and collectibles are set to change hands over the next 20 years, according to various economists whose job it is to run the numbers and make forecasts.

    As far back as history goes, parents have passed on–transferred–to their children their acquired wealth. But something different is going on today. First off, there's exponentially more accumulated wealth involved thanks to a booming economy that started gaining traction after World War II and has continued to make gains. In 1989, for instance, total family wealth in the U.S. was $38 trillion (adjusted for inflation). By 2022, that wealth had tripled to $140 trillion.

    Along with that, there's a large base making that distribution. Some 73 million baby boomers are aging and are beginning to reach the end of their life cycle. So there are a lot of us who are about to spread that wealth around via our wills and estates, such as they are.

    Not all boomers are equal of course. Some of us will leave our children a few thousand dollars, a home or not much at all. Inequality reigns. But plenty of us may be able to pass along thousands if not a few million dollars worth of assets. The recipients will be our adult children and our grandchildren, that is Gen X (born between 1965 and 1980), millennials (1981-1996) and Gen Z (1997-2012).

    The transfer is already underway, thanks to how generous many of us who have the wherewithal have been.  As I've noted in previous posts, we have been sharing our good fortune in the here and now–helping our children with a downpayment on a house, paying their way through college or gifting them money for an entrepreneurial venture. As a New York Times  article on the Great Transfer put it:

    Heirs increasingly don’t need to wait for the passing of elders to directly benefit from family money, a result of the bursting popularity of “giving while living” — including property purchases, repeated tax-free cash transfers of estate money, and more — providing millions a head start.

     

     

  • PARENTING GROWN CHILDREN: The children may be grown but we still have our issues.

    The App World: Should we be tracking our grown children?

    Emma amos Selfprotrait

    Am I showing my age and my app ignorance? Well, I certainly felt the former and learned a lot about the latter from a Carolyn Hax column. The column dealt with a reader's query about tracking her young adult children–children who are in college and no longer living at home.

    The parent wrote that "EVERY single one [of her friends] still tracks their 'kids'! Including one with a married 24-year-old daughter."

    The tracking is done via a phone app and/or by airtags (I had to look it up; in case you do too, they're the tags you can use to track where your keys, laptop or lost airline luggage are hiding.) The Hax correspondent writes that when her oldest child (now 20 years old) went to college, "we took the app off their phone but could see where they were through AirTag/item trackers." Now the 18-year-old wants their phone to be tracker-free. The parent's question for Hax:

    "I rationally agree and would have been horrified to be “tracked” in college by my parents. Am I in a bubble with my other midlife anxious friends who are parents of newly launched adults? I will deal with getting rid of the app, but I wonder if we are outliers with this technology."

    Readers, am I the only one shocked by this tracking of adult children, of being able to see where they are every minute, of this intrusion on their independence and privacy?

    Evidently not. So was Hax. The opening sentence of her answer was this:

    I don’t care whether you are outliers with this technology. Or inliers, downliers or fierypantsliars. Stop tracking your kids. It encourages more anxiety than it eases, at the cost of their independence and your trust in one another. And yourselves.

    She also makes this important point that underlies almost everything we do vis-a-vis parenting our children:

    The part of child rearing where you control your kids starts ending in utero and ends-ends when they’re 18. It just does. Your job thereafter is all relationship, which is equally at your and your kids’ discretion.

    Hax summed up her long answer (which tackled the role the reader's anxieties play) with this bit of perspective:

    Yay to trackers for wilderness adventurers, solo travelers, at-risk minors, people with developmental, cognitive, memory issues that make wandering a serious risk. When trackers help families in hard circumstances, great.

    But a typical launch isn’t a hard circumstance. It’s life. So please stop grasping for access on an it-won’t-help-to-know basis. You all will be fine, or won’t, and it 99-point-whatever won’t hinge on this.

    Hax is a sensitive writer attuned to her audience. I picked up a similar sentiment on an impersonal  Q/A post about tracking apps.  It, too, said all there is to say about tracking our adult kids.

    AirTags Can Negatively Affect Parent-Child Relationship

    Things can also get tricky when it comes to older kids and teens. While it can reduce your anxiety as a parent, tracking without consent can erode trust.

    painting: Emma Amos, Self Portrait

     

  • PARENTING GROWN CHILDREN: The children may be grown but we still have our issues.

    Living Our Legacy: Keeping our kids and grandkids up to date on our past.

     

    Womanwriting at desk Lesser ury

    I recently found an essay I wrote about five years ago about sharing–or failing to–my life story with a granddaughter, of finding out she had to Google me to learn more about my career. Our lives reflect the history of our times and that's reason enough for our grandkids–and our adult kids–to know how the two (our lives and the times we lived through) intersected.  Here's my essay (updated from a previous post), warts and all, plus lessons learned.

    My Granddaughter Googled Me

    Given the teen preference for texting, an email from a granddaughter in Massachusetts to me in Maryland was a surprise. The subject line even more intriguing: Is this You? it read. The body of the message held links to articles I'd written. A click and I was reading a piece I'd penned for the Washington Post in 1978; another in 1983.

    I emailed back: “Unless there's another Penelope Lemov alive in this land, yes. that's me.”

    More to the point: Why was my 15-year-old granddaughter sending me links to long-ago and far-away articles? Why, in short, had she Googled me?

    The prosaic answer was this: She was applying to a summer program in journalism and had to write an essay about her interest in the arts of communication and the media. One paragraph was about her grandmother (that's me) being a journalist, and she evidently checked that out–looked for proof–by calling up some of my stories.

    I am still a journalist–part-time now. But when my granddaughter was born and until she turned 11 I was a full-time editor at a national magazine, having worked my way up from staff writer. 

    That being so, the question nags at me: Why did she have to Google me to find out about my standing as a journalist? When I asked the grandfather (aka my husband and a lawyer who once worked for the U.S. Congress) what he thought, he reminisced about all the legal and political issues he had shared with this granddaughter once she was old–or interested enough–to understand.

    I had not. My granddaughter knew I had had a career but she had no idea what that was all about. I never talked to her about it. When I went to visit her or she came here, I kept my grandparenting focused on the quotidian. I was observing, getting a feel for what she cared about, thought about, was interested in and how I could add background, anecdotes or information to her concerns. I didn't bring my world to her.

    I must have shared a funny story or two–when interviewing sources we journalists are a riot. Sometimes. But I hadn't discussed what I wrote about or the many climbs and plateaus, hurdles and low points I faced–from my first job answering letters to the editor at Time magazine to ending up as an editor and as a columnist on municipal finance at Governing magazine.

    "She absorbed some of it by looking around," my daughter said when I brought up the missed opportunities. My home office, which doubled as my granddaughter's bedroom when she came to visit, had various memorabilia hung on the wall for my own viewing pleasure–a plaque for a journalism award, a fake Washingtonian cover with my face on it.

    If I ever finish the memoir I'm writing about my years at Time Inc (an aggressively sexist time in the work place in general, in journalism in particular and at Time Inc especially), my children and grandchildren will know more about what this grannie did with her life and what life was like when she did it. It's an important part of the legacy we leave. The life choices we made reflect our values and give our children and grandchildren at least one road map–hopefully among many others–about what paths there are in life and ways to deal with some of the stickier issues life can throw at you.

    The written version may be where I'm heading in terms of explaining myself and my world to my grandchildren, but in the meantime, the idea that one granddaughter had to Google me to learn about my career is a reminder (note to self) to share the past–the good stories, fun anecdotes, and rich experiences–with our family in the here and now. It's an on-going story, even if we capture it in a final form some time down the road.

    painting: Lesser Ury

  • PARENTING GROWN CHILDREN: The children may be grown but we still have our issues.

    Grandparenting: Advice about giving advice

    Bonnard bowl of milk

    He may not have been writing about parents butting in on their grown children's housekeeping or spending habits or the way they parent their newborns, but Bob Dylan was of the minute on the basic concept:

    Come mothers and fathers
    Throughout the land
    And don’t criticize what you can’t understand
    Your sons and your daughters
    Are beyond your command
    Your old road is rapidly agin’
    Please get out of the new one
    If you can’t lend your hand
    For the times they are a-changin’

    In a rundown of new understandings of old practices–science has made some of our standby child-rearing standards irrelevant or even questionable–an article on Katie Couric Media hands out lots of advice on looking beyond "the way we did things." It also speaks to how we can be supportive grandparents who don't undermine our children's confidence in their parenting, especially during that fraught first year.

    While the suggestions come with specifics (pacifiers have proven to be a lifesaver not a detriment), the author Mary Agnant , a young mother, also steps back to address us–the grandparents–directly:

    Nobody knows better than you how hard being a parent is, and what we want most is to know that you think we’ll be great ones and that you’re proud of us. Having faith in us means not questioning every decision we make.

    After writing that,  she leans back on Bob Dylan (see above).

    painting: Pierre Bonnard, Bowl of Milk

     

  • PARENTING GROWN CHILDREN: The children may be grown but we still have our issues.

    Social Media Etiquette: It’s a no-no to post grandkid photos

    Toddler reading pexels photo
    Lives there a grannie or gramps so dull who is not at the ready to pull out their iPhone and show off photos of their Grands–videos and stills, group shots and solos. We're all a little besotted when it comes to sharing the adorableness of our grandkids.

    But it's one thing to let friends hold our phone and watch our precious toddler pulling a truck through a puddle–so cute. It's another to post that video or photo on Facebook or Instagram or another social media platform.

    Here's a summary of advice I read on Katie Couric's Media site about posting photos of children; it applies to us and our grandkids especially: 

    Even if you have strong privacy settings in place on your accounts, don't post photos of the grands unless and until you know the parents' social media rules and, should your grands be a few years older than toddler, ask them for permission as well. "It helps teach them how to respectfully use social media in the future," writes author Mary Agnant.

    The rules do not apply to grandpups. Here's one of mine.

    Cody in car
    photos: child, pexels; puppy, Palo Coleman

     

  • PARENTING GROWN CHILDREN: The children may be grown but we still have our issues.

    A Sad Post

    Smiling m

    Mike:  1935 to 2024

    Dad to two grown children, BaPa to four Grands, chief behind-the-ear scratcher to two grandpups and my favorite husband.

  • PARENTING GROWN CHILDREN: The children may be grown but we still have our issues.

    Money Matters: If there are strings attached to a gift, tie them on in advance

    Hilary pecis Piuecemeal rhythm

    Sometimes we surprise ourselves with our generosity. We give our children a large gift—–enough money to, say, buy a car, put a downpayment on a house or take out a first-rate health insurance policy. But then they use the money in ways we did not intend– they go on a lavish vacation or buy themselves a designer wardrobe. We end up frustrated and angry.

    What's our recourse? Here's an answer from Philip Galanes and his Social Qs.  It's to a widowed mother who offered her only child the gift of the family home. While the gift is a house per se, Galanes' answer covers all the gift bases:

    The mother in question wrote Galanes to say she had offered her son and his fiance, who live in another city, her home if they would "come back here to raise a family." The son accepted but when she suggested he build a guesthouse on the site for her, her son demurred. "They assumed," the mother writes, "I would move into a condo. I was shattered! The next day, he said he was sorry if I felt they were kicking me out of my house. I do. I also think if I don’t go along with them, they will stay where they are. "

    Here's the gist of Galanes' answer that applies to all of us gift givers. (bold face are mine):

    Your impulse to give your home to your son was a generous one. But even with gifts — maybe especially with gifts — it is crucial to express any conditions we have in mind when we make the offer. Here, I don’t think a reasonable person would expect the gift of a home to include your continued residency in it — unless you mentioned that fact.

    Now, I also know how natural it is to daydream about happy situations. For you, that may include living in an extended-family household with your son and his fiancée. And it’s easy to assume that other people want the same things we do. That’s why communication is so important: Sometimes, they don’t.

    art credit: Hilary Pecis, "Piecemeal Rhythm"

     

  • PARENTING GROWN CHILDREN: The children may be grown but we still have our issues.

    Grandparenting: Do our kids want our advice about how to raise their kids?

    Trytich oliver lee jackson

    The question does not call for a "man bites dog" answer. Most of our adult children who are raising their own children do not want to be bombarded with our parenting advice. Not because our advice has no value. It's because they no longer want to be parented. They're the parents now! They'll ask if they have a question.

    That said, I was struck by an advice column from Sahaj Kaur Kohli. She's a therapist who focuses on people with immigrant parents and on setting boundaries with parents. Here's what she told one reader who wrote about a parent who insisted on giving advice about how she, the adult daughter, was raising her child.

    I'm offering up this commentary in that it may be the other side of the coin for those of us who complain to advice columnists–and to our friends–that our children are pushing us away, that they are limiting visits or not taking our phone calls. It's about how it feels to be on the other side of the relationship where boundaries are not observed or respected. With that in mind, here's an edited version of Sahaj's advice to a young woman (she signs herself "resisting daughter") with a parent second-guessing the way she and her partner are raising their child. She wants to stay connected to her parents but does not want to raise her children the way her parents raised her.

    …. It doesn’t matter if you’re an independent adult, and it certainly doesn’t matter if you’re a parent yourself. To your mom, you’re the child and she’s the adult. She raised you, and you turned out fine. She has been through it, so she knows better. …

    This dynamic is incredibly hard to change especially when your mom may wrap her identity around her role as your parent.

    So what's the solution Sahaj offers?

    …. You may not be able to change your mom, but you can change how you respond and engage with her, and manage how her behavior affects you.

    ….Instead of trying to get her to agree with all of your choices, you can focus on how long you visit her, or how you respond and engage with her — especially because your kids are likely observing this dynamic, too.

    You don’t have to agree with your mom, or do everything she says, to maintain a relationship with her. Instead, consider what you are willing to compromise on and what you are no longer willing to tolerate to help you focus on what is important to you.

    Next Post: What we can do if our adult children are pushing us away.

    painting: Tryptich by Oliver Lee Jackson.

  • PARENTING GROWN CHILDREN: The children may be grown but we still have our issues.

    Adult Children Confess: Here’s what we do that annoys them

    Emma amos Selfprotrait

    "O wad some Power the giftie gie us, to see ourselves as ithers see us!" That's 18th Century Scottish poet Robert Burns sharing his insight that continues to hold true today.

    In that spirit, here are our adult children's top two complaints about us, as told to Carolyn Hax in an online discussion.  I am hopeful neither of these top two "annoying" habits apply to me, but I'm self-scrutinizing anyway.

    Number One: Offering criticism and unsolicited advice.

    Number Two: Ignoring cues and asking highly personal questions when no one is in the mood for sharing.

    Hax sympathizes with the adult children who responded to a reader-letter and a follow-up prompt, "What makes my parents so annoying." But she and her readers also have a few suggestions for us on how to "mitigate" their annoyance with us.

    Here are a few of them (edited version):

    Let your kids be themselves. Few annoyances are as annoying as being parented against one's will.

    Keep your anxieties to yourself.

    Learn not to feel or act hurt that your kids find you annoying. It's more positional than personal anyway.

    Learn to laugh at yourself, and admit when you're wrong.

    Don't make them spend time with you. If you have a relationship where they can say no to a visit or that they have other plans, then there's a limit to how much you can annoy them.

    painting: Emma Amos, Self Portrait

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

  • PARENTING GROWN CHILDREN: The children may be grown but we still have our issues.

    Grandparenting: The food rules when grandkids visit

    Bonnard late interiors

    When I was first introduced to grandparenting I had to adjust to rules my children set for their children's snacks at my house. One family did not want their toddler to eat certain sweets; the other forbade individual portions of boxed juice drinks. I was fine with their decisions; I just had to remember who approved of what lest I offer juice drinks to the wrong grandchild.

    My experience was in keeping with what my friends were telling me: Their children were setting down food rules for grandchildren that were bewildering to grandparents. What's wrong with home-baked chocolate chip cookies?

    I mention this because a recent letter to Carolyn Hax is a man-bites-dog variation on this theme. The complaint comes from a mother whose parents are serving her children super-healthy meals that the children won't eat. The grandparents refuse to supply snacks that would assuage the children's hunger, which occasionally causes meltdowns.  The mother/reader continues:

    "While the food may seem healthier at the grandparents’, I don’t like the amount of control the grandparents hold over the food for everyone else. Isn’t the point of a holiday to eat, drink and be merry? Do you have a food solution for when families of different generations and geographies come together that could help keep everyone sane?"

    Here we are with tables turned. The grandparents aren't baking sugar-loaded cookies and letting their grandchildren snack on them all day; they are setting healthy eating standards that are over and beyond those of the parental household. So, is there a way to keep everyone sane about food? Here's part of what Hax has to say. Spoiler alert: Hax does not pour the blame on us:

    If your kids are physically, medically or religiously able to eat what the grands serve and simply choose not to, then you have a straightforward path: Recognize that it’s not your place to parachute into the grandparents’ house with pallets of cheesy poofs. If their nutritional orthodoxy strains their bonds with the kids, then that’s a natural consequence the grands can perceive and address for themselves.

    “Best-case,” though, and arguably the inevitable case, your kids will learn all kinds of things from the food gap: how different people and cultures express themselves in different homes, how to default to gratitude when someone goes to the trouble to provide them with healthy meals, how to cope when the world doesn’t bend to their will — all previously known as having some manners — and how to eat when they’re hungry.

    Meltdowns are bad, but entitlement is so profoundly worse.

    Painting: Pierre Bonnard, The Late Interiors