Parenting doesn't end as our kids leave home.  Grown and Flown: Parenting from the Empty Nest reflects on the entire arc of childhood right up to our children’s departure for college. We examine all aspects parenting from thoughtful discipline to over indulgence, from when to be there for them and when to back off.

We became friends while serving in the PTA trenches and, counting all five of our kids separately, we have a combined 93 years of parenting experience. We’ve been working moms and stay-at-home moms; we have shepherded our children in and out of elementary, middle and high school and, as our oldest are now in college, we have the empty nest in sight. Having “been there” we look forward to being Lifetime Moms' Mentor Moms.  

 

Lisa Endlich Heffernan is an author and wrote a New York Times Business Bestseller following a career on Wall Street.  After her career in the media, Mary Dell Harrington began working as a school volunteer and the human half of an animal therapy team with her labrador, Moose.

 

 

Q: How many children do you have?

A: Mary Dell has a son and a daughter and Lisa has three sons.  The kids range in age from 16 to 22. Our blog covers the entire arc of childhood with a special emphasis on the teen and college years. While we write about the empty nest, our high schoolers continually remind us that we are stretching the truth here a bit...

 

 

Q: Where do you live? (were you born there or how did you end up there?)

A: We live in Westchester County, New York, just north of New York City but Mary Dell is from Texas (with the accent to prove it) and Lisa is from Southern California, alas with no proof. We both wound up on the east coast for graduate school and careers; husbands and lives have kept us here.

 

 

Q: What’s your astrological sign?

A: Scorpio (MD) and Leo (Lisa)

 

 

Q: If your life was made into a Lifetime Movie, what would it be called?

A: PTA: The Survivor Chronicles

 

Q: What is one of your favorite quotes?

A: Churchill: "We make a living by what we get, we make a life by what we give."

Q: What TV or movie character are you most like?

A: Like Elle Woods, I used my sorority president credentials to get into Harvard.  Regretfully, I look nothing like Reese Witherspoon..... (MD)

Q: If you could have dinner with three famous people (dead or alive), who would you invite?

A: We have always wanted to ask Scarlett O’Hara, What were you thinking??? Maybe just the three of us could get together to think that one through.

 

Q: What is your biggest vice?

A: Interfering in my kids lives (Lisa), Taking my two Labradors’ lives too seriously (Mary Dell).

 

 

Q: What makes you feel sexy?  

A: Coffee, it used to be wine, but then I had kids, now it is coffee.

 

 

Q: What’s your most memorable ballsy moment?

A: Leaving our southwestern homes for academic adventures on the east coast.

 

 

Q: What made you starting writing about parenting?

A: We began to read blogs and realized that most of them were written by moms with young kids.  We thought there must be a place for a few been there, done that moms to speak out.