Christmas Gifts for Grandparents Who Have Everything, Except Enough of the Grandkids

What grandparents who have everything are actually short of

When a grandparent says they want nothing for Christmas, they are usually telling the truth about objects. They have the sweaters, the kitchen and the photo frames, and some are trying to own less, not more. What they lack is the grandchildren.

The AARP report's own summary puts it plainly: "Proximity strongly shapes how connected grandparents feel." Among grandparents with grandchildren more than 50 miles away, about half see those grandchildren in person once a year or less, so for many families the Christmas visit is the visit.

The useful question, then, is what would give them more time, more contact, or more proof of who the children are this year. Every good gift below does at least one of the three.

The three things a grandparent can mean by "nothing" are covered in gifts for Grandma from the grandchildren. At Christmas they share one answer: more of the grandchildren.

Gifts with the grandchild's hand in them, by age

What a grandchild can bring to a gift changes enormously between one and ten. The last column is the grown-up's part, kept as small as the age allows, so the gift stays theirs.

Two rules hold in every row: the child makes at least one real decision, even if it is only which photo, and the gift carries a date and an age, because in ten years that will be the most interesting thing about it.

The storybook in the 3 to 4 row is the kind we make: ours are written for ages 3 to 10 with Grandma and 4 to 9 with Grandpa. If the age fits, you can see your grandchild drawn as a character first, from one photo, in about half a minute, with no card and no account.

For Grandma and for Grandpa: two books, side by side

If you are buying for two, one gift rarely suits both. We make a storybook for each, built differently on purpose: Grandma's is a house that remembers, Grandpa's is a pair of hands that make things.

Both are hardcover, 30 pages with 13 illustrated spreads, written in rhyme, with the two faces drawn in the look of a modern 3D animated film, and a real artist checks every book before it is printed. The grandparent costs nothing extra: you send two photos instead of one.

What they are not: the story of your family. The house, the shed and the carvings are ours, the same for every family who picks the title, and your grandfather may never have carved a thing. What is yours: the two faces, your grandchild's name, the word they use for the grandparent, and the dedication, printed word for word after the story. Our guide to how custom children's books work applies to us as much as to anyone.

Whose book it is. The grandchild's, with the grandparent all through it, made to be read by the two of them. The grandparent's present is being drawn next to the grandchild and being asked to read it aloud. For a copy at their house, the cart offers one more copy marked for the grandparents: the drawing is already done, so it only costs the printing.

The personalized book for grandma and the personalized book for grandpa have the whole story on their pages, and both sit on our shelf of personalized books about family. Start from Grandma's photo or Grandpa's and the free preview draws them in about half a minute.

When they live far away

Distance raises the stakes, and the AARP survey shows how grandparents already bridge it: 76 percent said technology such as texting and video calls is one of the main ways they stay connected. The best long-distance gifts make that contact easier, more regular or more physical.

• A standing call with a job in it. Same day, same time, something to do: the child shows a drawing and Grandpa says what he would add. A call with a task lasts longer than one that starts with how are you.
• Video calls from the start. The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends that babies under 18 months avoid screens except for video calls with loved ones, which, as Nemours KidsHealth puts it, count as quality time. A weekly call is a gift even from a baby.
• Something in the mailbox. A drawing a month, plus stamped envelopes addressed to the grandchild, so writing back is easy. A gift that arrives twelve times beats one that arrives once.
• The same book in both houses, one copy at each end, so a call can turn the pages together. You can also add the book as a PDF, which lands in your inbox as soon as it is drawn and forwards easily.
• Shipped straight to them. Put the grandparents' address in the delivery field at checkout, and warn them a package is coming so it does not sit on the porch.

If the gift needs a photo of a grandparent you see once a year, ask someone who lives near them, early, and be specific: one clear, recent photo of the face, in daylight, glasses on if they wear them.

Gifts of time, with the dates already on them

Our reading of the AARP numbers is simple: time is the scarce thing, so give time, with the dates already written in. A voucher that says let's do something soon is a to-do. A day circled on a calendar is a present.

• One grandchild, one grandparent, one day. Not the whole family at a restaurant. In a big family it may be the first time it has ever happened.
• A standing date. The first Sunday of every month, the same grandchild, the same pancakes. Print the twelve dates on a card.
• Teach me. Grandma's pie crust, Grandpa's fishing knot, the card game they always win. Being asked to teach is a compliment that lasts all afternoon.
• A tour of their past. The street they grew up on, the first job, the place they got married, on foot or on a map with old photos. Being asked is the gift.

Put something physical in the box, because Christmas morning needs something to unwrap: the printed dates, a child's drawing of the day you have planned, the apron for the baking. Then actually do it in January.

Photo gifts, done well

Photo gifts are on every list, and for once the obvious idea has science behind it. When Emory University researchers scanned the brains of 50 grandmothers looking at pictures of their own grandchild, aged 3 to 12, the pictures activated areas involved in emotional empathy, the ones that let you feel what someone else feels. The study was published in 2021, and it looked only at grandmothers.

Our reading, for a gift: the face matters more than the occasion.

• This year's face. A photo from October is news. One from three summers ago is a memory they already have.
• The ordinary days. The child at the kitchen table on a Tuesday, asleep in the car seat, grinning around the first missing tooth.
• A calendar with a photo for each month, replaced every Christmas, which makes it a tradition instead of an object.
• A digital frame, loaded and set up, with a parent able to add photos from a phone. An empty one is a chore in a box.

A line in our grandfather book says it best. Showing the child his shelves of carvings, he explains that they are not the big days: "Weddings and leaping about, that's all photographs. These are the rest." The best photo gifts are the rest. And if you want the grandparent in the picture too, drawn beside the grandchild rather than photographed, try it with one photo of each.

What to skip, and what to give instead

Not because these are bad gifts, but because a grandparent who has everything has usually had them already.

• The blanket or sign with every grandchild's name. It is about the category of grandparent rather than about them.
• Decor, unless it is a picture of the grandchildren. Their house has been arranged for decades.
• Gadgets that need setting up. If you give technology, set it up, load it, and show them how it works twice.
• Clothes in a guessed size, which means a return trip they will not make.
• A gift card on its own. Pair it with a plan, the diner you will take them to in January with the date on the envelope, and it becomes a day.

What to give a house that is already full is something that gets used up and still carries a grandchild's hand:

• A tin of cookies the grandchildren iced, with a promise of a refill at every visit.
• The good version of something they use daily, the coffee they never buy for themselves, with a label the grandchild drew.
• Stationery and stamps, with envelopes already addressed to each grandchild.
• A monthly delivery of flowers or fruit, for the grandparent who lives alone and would like the doorbell to ring.

Grandfathers tend to get the worst of the novelty mugs and socks, and the guide to gifts for grandpa from the grandkids goes further into why. If Grandma is the one in the matching sweatshirt at the parks, there is a separate guide to Disney gifts for grandma.

The grandfather who never tells his own stories

Every family has one: a lifetime of stories, none told unless someone asks, and nobody quite sure how to ask. In the AARP survey, 55 percent of grandparents said family stories pass mostly from them to the grandchildren. With the quiet grandfather they mostly do not pass at all.

It matters. In a 2008 study from Emory University, children and teenagers who knew more of their family's history had higher self-esteem, lower anxiety and fewer behavior problems. That is a correlation, not proof the stories caused it, but it is a good reason to help them cross while he is there to tell them.

Two kinds of gift do it. One is being asked: a recorded conversation on a phone, with a grandchild asking the first question. StoryCorps, the nonprofit, publishes a free list of great questions with a section for grandparents. The other is an object that does the asking for you.

That is the grandfather The Unfinished One was written for, and nothing in it asks him to make a speech. On a wet afternoon the shed out back is open for once, and its shelves hold hundreds of small wooden animals, each one a day of his life: the day he was nine and lost and, in the end, not lost, the day of the sea, an ordinary Tuesday he calls one of the best, though it takes about sixty years to see why. The grandchild picks them up one by one and gets each day back out. On the bench, held in a clamp, one carving is not finished. It is the grandchild.

The last page of the story says: ask what Grandpa's hands know, then wait, because it takes a while. That line is the real gift, and the book is the excuse to ask. Is it a book about him dying? No. The carving was started recently, and the book ends with something handed over, not with a goodbye. Start from a photo of Grandpa to see him drawn first.

Gifts from a baby or a toddler

A first Christmas as grandparents is its own category, and the gift is mostly the baby. What a parent can add is a record the grandparents cannot make themselves:

• A dated handprint or footprint, framed, or pressed into a salt dough ornament with the year scratched on the back, so it comes out every December.
• A photo of the baby with something of theirs: Grandpa's hat, Grandma's scarf, the quilt she made.
• A recording of the baby's sounds each month, so they hear the babble turn into words.

From a toddler, add one decision the child really made, which photo or which scribble gets framed, write the date and the age on the back, and let them hand it over without a rehearsed line.

One honest note: our grandparent books start at 3 for Grandma's and 4 for Grandpa's. Below that a book is really a gift to the adults, and the handprint does the job better. The book can wait a Christmas or two, and it means more once the child can point at their own face.

How to include the kids without doing it for them

Most gifts "from the grandchildren" were bought by a parent, and every grandparent knows it. What makes the gift theirs is a few minutes of real involvement:

1. One real decision. Which photo, which color, which cookie goes on top.
2. Their words, exactly. Ask what they love doing at Grandpa's house and copy the answer, grammar included.
3. A job they can finish. Wrapping, the tag, the stamps, carrying the box in.
4. Their handover, uncoached. The rehearsed line sounds rehearsed. The real one becomes the story.

In bigger families, give one gift with a part from each grandchild: a calendar where each owns two months, a photo book with a page each. Our books hold one grandchild and one grandparent, so several grandchildren means one book each, and for every cousin in one object a shared photo book does better. For one grandchild and Grandma together, start with that grandchild's photo. And when the grandparents ask what the children would like this year, send them our guide to gifts for grandchildren.

The dedication, and the card

The words that come with a gift are often what gets kept: the card from a present long since used up is what a grandparent finds in a drawer years later and reads twice.

In our books the dedication has its own page after the story, printed word for word as you type it. In these two titles it is written to the grandchild, because the book is theirs. Leave it empty and we print ours: Grandma's says "who asked, and got the whole afternoon", Grandpa's "who is not finished yet, and had better not be". One you write is better.

If the gift is no secret from the grandparent, ask them to dictate it: three lines from Grandpa to the grandchild, typed exactly as he says them. If it is a surprise, write it yourself, with the date and the child's age.

• Date the card and write the child's age. In ten years nobody will remember which Christmas it was.
• Name one specific thing: the pancakes shaped like letters, not thank you for everything.
• Add a line that looks ahead, to the spring visit or the day you have booked.

Stuck on the dedication? We wrote a guide to what to write in a book for a child.

When to order: by December 1

Anything personalized is made after you order it, a photo book, a calendar, a portrait or a storybook, so what matters is production plus shipping, and in December both slow down.

• November is the comfortable month for anything made to order.
• Thanksgiving is your photo shoot. If the family gets together, take one clear, close photo of each grandparent's face in daylight. It is the step that slips.
• December 1 for our books. Order by December 1 and it will be there for Christmas. The book page and the cart show the real delivery dates before you pay.

If you are late anyway, print the drawing from the free preview, put it in the card with a line saying the book is on its way, and let them open it in January. That is two Christmases, not a late one.

The same ideas work for Grandparents Day in September. For this Christmas, the preview is free: see them drawn tonight and order once the photos and the dedication are right.