October 9, 2026
Parenting Teens
Be cool. By the wonderful Grace Farris.
Plus, some exciting news: Next Friday, we will be launching a new series called Pro Tips, where our favorite people share their best life hacks and recommendations. There are so many good ones!
Since this will be our last comic for some time, we wanted to give a HUGE thank you to Grace Farris, who has written comics for Cup of Jo for the past eight years (!). We love you, Grace, and we’re so grateful for the smart, funny, and heartwarming comics you’ve shared with us. You can read Grace’s house tour and beauty uniform, if you’d like, and find her books and prints here. xoxo
P.S. A brilliant tip for talking to teenagers and a list of things to not do if you have teens.
Comments
75 commentsLove these little practical ideas. The twin mattress tip for overnight guests is pure gold for families with teens
We’ll miss your momsters, Grace! It won’t be the same without you.
it’s as though grace farris has read my mind for eight years, and of course she has made me chuckle. i flash on her cartoons when i’m out in the world because she gets the mood just right for so many mama situations: “weekend mom — she might try a new cheese,” “she’s going to replenish her emergency chocolate chips.” perfect. wishing you every happiness from your cup of jo fanhood!
My son just came home with his major results and it didn’t take occur to me to say anything except “That’s amazing – are you proud?” Not of all of them were great but the ones he worked hard for sure were! I recently went to a funeral that was overflowing with people, and the granddaughter said “My nan always thought I was the best – when I told her my grades, she said ‘You’re so smart”, I said Gran, those marks weren’t great – and she said “Oh I could never have done half so well”. And I left that funeral thinking, I want to be that person, the one who claps the loudest for those I love. I don’t want to be. French mum or anything else.
Thank you, Grace, for all of your lovely comics over the years. They’ve helped me through the hard parenting times. I had to laugh at today’s comic because I have a senior in high school and we are going through it! I need to remember to just ‘be cool’.
Thank you Grace – your cartoons have brought all the emotions over me and I’ve loved them. I go back and read my Mom Milestones book every once in a while and it gets me every time! Wishing you all the best!
Would love tips from grace about how to stay so insanely consistent with such creative work for EIGHT YEARS !!!!!
Thank you for sharing your insights into the big and the mundane with such humor and relatability, Grace! I particularly appreciate your ability to express the joys, uncertainties, frustrations, and rewards of raising tweens and teens so accurately. You’ll be missed! (But wow – EIGHT YEARS?? my how time flies!)
Thank you Grace for your generosity and sharing your wisdom with Cup of Jo readers. I have loved your comics for years.
Grace! Thank you for so many years of delightful comics to announce the weekend. I will miss you so much. I feel like we already get so many articles with links and tips, this won’t add value. But maybe I’m just really sad to see the comic go. Change is hard, so I will give it a chance.
Oh no!! I’m going to miss Grace. I always found Grace impressive—it conveyed so many different emotions in so many different contexts! As an Argentine living in Switzerland, I often identified with her. Sometimes I’d send the comics to my sisters in Argentina, sometimes I’d talk about them during my work break in Romandie (the French-speaking part of Switzerland), or I’d share them in German with my partner. How was it possible that all of us—in such different contexts and languages—found them meaningful and funny? I’m going to miss her… and I’ll see if I can manage to buy her book in Switzerland.
I would also like to say “meh” to the pro tips idea. Grace, you will be missed. Thank you for sharing your unique insight and wisdom for so long!
If Grace is ever interested in sharing a detailed account of how she accomplishes all the awesome things she accomplishes, I would be eager to read it. Is it possible that she only works part-time as a physician (is that even a thing?). I really can’t conceive of how she does it. Even if I could cut back two hours a sleep a night and still function, it doesn’t seem possible to schedule everything she’s doing.
Lisa Damour just shared an amazing gem: never be more or less excited than your teen about anything. So hard, yet so true!
Noooo! I love Graces comics so much! They’ve been an absolute highlight these many years. Thank you, Grace!
Thank you for sharing your gift here for so long Grace. I’ll miss you! All the very best to you xx
We will surely miss you dear Grace ! We saw your kids grow in your comics and this is so sweet to all of us…you are the best, lots of love ❤️!
Thank you Grace Farris for illuminating some really intense and scary times with your gentle perceptive twinkling warmth. Wishing you all the best!
I always tell my friends that my current station with my 16yo daughter is like living with the popular girl. Every day I’m desperate that she will like me and every day it is different. I try to stand beside her, facing the same direction she is, and just inch closer until my shoulder almost – almost! – brushes her taller than mine shoulder to test the waters. It’s not always like this, but this is my sitch right now.
Thank you Grace. I love your work!
I will really miss the sweet, insightful comic strips <3. All the best. Xo
Oh, no! Not the end of Grace’s observant, wry, gentle truths here every Friday! I recently read her superb graphic memoir, See One, Do One, Teach One: The Art of Becoming a Doctor. I highly recommend it. Grace I will miss you and your work in this space. Do you have a link to where you will be posting? Sending much gratitude.
No doubt Friday “Pro Tips” is already in the mix for now, so this thought/opinion may well fall by the wayside. I really enjoy Grace Farris, and her work. I’m pretty lukewarm about Pro Tips. What would editors and readers think about a Friday art moment? Just a post of some work of art, maybe give a short explanation, or maybe just give the artwork’s title and the artist’s name? I can really sink my mind into that…
Tricia, that is a lovely idea, but give Pro Tips a chance!
“Pro Tips” kinda bums me out, I’ll wait and see but if its going to lean toward “recs” and therefore links to buy more things (which I feel we are seeing more of lately – my perception, not my quantitative analysis); it starts to turn me off a bit. Jo, you know the workings of your business and we don’t , and this may be more my personal journey than changes in your site, but “buy stuff” and “recs” just hits less well these days. Inflation sucks, job situation sucks, buying more just helps rich get richer….etc.
don’t worry, they’re not shoppable recs, they’re more like fun life observations and simple pleasures.
The Lovely Grace Farris is simply the best. I will now be forced to find her (in a totally not creepy way!) on other platforms. Thanks for being a sweet little part of my Fridays for all these years, Grace!
End of an era! Grace, thank you for those eight years and good luck on the next chapter. And y’all, Grace has a substack! https://gracefarris.substack.com/
As a teen in the 90s, my family took the Sunday paper and I loved reading the comics and the obituaries (mini biographies!). Your comics, Grace, are tender + truth + funny. It was like I was sifting to the good part of the newspaper every Friday. Thank you for sharing your heart and talent!
Oh, goodness, Grace you will be so missed! Can’t say how many of your comics I’ve cherished and in turn, forwarded to friends. I hope to see you week after next!
Grace! The best. Grace is my marker that the weekend has arrived, and I absolutely love that her work captures the universal in the specific. ❤️
Oh my, I will miss Grace’s comics so much! So warm and relatable and clever, and I often share the link with family and friends. Thank you for many chuckles and grins and nods of heartfelt understanding over the last 8 years💞
Aww, Grace’s comics have been such a glimmer on Fridays all these years. I will miss them! (PSA: I have her family wall calendar and it’s just as delightful.)
Oh this is more bitter than sweet! I love seeing Grace’s comics—as another reader put it—as a lovely bookend to the week. I will pass on the Pro Tips; in my own opinion I feel like we see a lot of the same friends’ ideas on here often, whereas Grace’s comics were a refreshing and unique part of CoJ. I hope CoJ finds another art contributor, because this has been a lovely part of each week and honestly a unique part of CoJ.
Yes! Would love for COJ to keep featuring original art. It is so wonderful and so needed.
Second this. Change is inevitable and there have been other lovely humans who have passed through the CoJ space but Grace, I saw you through your art and wise commentary and felt like you saw me, too. Thank you for sharing your heart here.
I might enjoy pro tips, or not, but I’d like to add my voice on keeping featuring original art. I have really loved Grace’s art and will miss it. Pro tips we have in plenty. Art not so much.
We will have original comics for each, and I really think you’ll enjoy it! We will see how it goes and can always reassess xoxo
Grace your graphic art has been such a soft landing to the end of the week for me — insightful, funny, and relatable. We will miss having you here!
Grace, I will miss you!
As someone trying to be a cool aunt to teens, I also feel this! I will miss Grace’s comics AND am grateful to have seen years of comics and know about her work!
Grace, your comics are the best; you have made my online reading life incredibly bright through this Friday spot on Cup of Jo — will be so much missed, and so appreciated for the 8 years!
Grace, I hope you will return. We will all miss your wonderful comics.
Awww I will miss your comics!
Grace, your comics will definitely be missed! Hope to see them back one day!
Grace, thank you so much for all of the years of comics here at CoJ! You have that rare ability to make a person both laugh and feel a bit teary by illuminating the most tender parts of daily life. I’ve also loved your books. Will, of course, continue reading wherever you publish. Here’s to your new chapter!
Oh I will miss you so much! I love your drawings. Love from Paris
I love Grace and her comics so much! Every single one of them gentle and relatable. Yesterday, my tween told me to just please stop using the word Amazing, ever (it’s just too much mom). Some random guest appearances by Grace would be much appreciated.
So sad that we won’t be seeing Grace’s comics on Fridays anymore, they’ve become a nice little bookend to the week! I hope she’s still featured sometimes!
This is so spot on! Gotta play it cool, which I am very bad at.
Grace! Love your work. I’m blown away by the few people like you that are able to bring left & right side of their brains to the table. Cannot imagine what there’s like. Really enjoyed your comics.
Please continue sharing comics regularly throughout the month, though? I love everything from Grace, Hallie, Ruth. I’d be sad to see comics totally disappear from this space.
Same! I didn’t know I needed them but I do!
Yes please
Ditto to this (and all of these comments!) Loved Grace and her sweet, funny, insightful artwork.
Yes to this – love all their art!
One of Grace’s comics about “signs you have a tween in the house” included “Trail of Socks.” That phrase has become part of our family lexicon … I stand in the living room by the discarded socks, inevitably clustered near our sofa, and loudly announce “TRAIL OF SOCKS.” It makes my kids laugh. Sometimes they even take their socks to the laundry afterward. Thank you, Grace!
My younger brother was notorious for leaving his underwear in front of the bathroom hamper each time he took a shower. One day I lost it and yelled at him, “Do you think the fairies come and place this in the dirty clothes each day?”
Ha! We call them LGS (“little girl socks” – though they’re nearly my size now). Why do children take off socks in weird places???
Oh gosh. I am 54 and though I have generally become quite organized, I still leave my socks in weird places. Oops. Lol!
Hahahahahahh it is so true !!
Me, a grown ass woman in her 40’s talking struggling to relate to our 11th grade babysitter/neighbor who we love: how was that test that you were studying for the other night? [oh gosh, am I stressing her out? is it anxiety producing to think more adults are checking in about her grades? Does she think I won’t hire her if her grade wasn’t good? what have I done?????] her: it went fine me: [PHEW] that’s great.
Will definitely miss Grace… A glimpse into her gracious look at life around us.
We’ll miss you, Grace!
Really loved Grace’s thoughtful and funny comics!
Grace is the BEST!!!
Girl dont scare us like that ! Bittersweet made my stomach drop to my feet 🤣
This is my LIFE! “Mom! Five boys have a crush on me” {Was that a double exclamation sentence? How many questions are too many questions? What do I say? Oh no! Is this pause too long? Have I made things awkward? aaaaaagh}
On pins and needles, what did you say/do?!? 🤣
Me: Yeah? Who are they? Her: {list of names} Me: Do you know any of them from your last school? Her: Yeah, X and Y Me: (genuinely curious) How’d you find out they have crushes?? Her: So-and-so, who I trust. And another so-and-so, who I don’t trust as much. Me: Huh. How does it feel? Her: I dunno. Me: What do you want for dinner? {And, scene} I think it went ok!
Cool, cool, cool!
Well done on playing it SO cool! I am constantly trying to, and failing, to play it cool :)
Update: Two days later (while we were driving) she brought up her OWN crushes and we had an amazing conversation about the magic of platonic friendships, and going at your own pace/not succumbing to peer pressure to declare your feelings if you’re not ready. I internally squee’d the whole conversation
I love Grace’s comics so much! They are a Friday highlight and always make me smile. And I’ve loved gifting her books to friends. Thank you so very much, Grace!
We’ll miss your sweet and funny and often poignant comics, Grace!