A warm, honest guide for parents who want more open-ended play under the tree this year, and the words to make it happen without family drama.
The short answer, if you need it quickly: tell relatives something like, "We are trying to keep screens minimal this year, and the toys that light him up most are ones he can hold, build, and play with again and again. A wooden puzzle or a simple traditional game would be absolutely treasured." That single sentence, delivered warmly and early, resolves the majority of well-meaning tablet purchases before they happen. The longer answer, which follows below, gives you the research behind that instinct, the scripts for trickier conversations, and a curated list of gifts that grandparents will feel genuinely proud to give.
Across the UK, more parents of under-fives are arriving at the same conclusion ahead of Christmas 2026: the most lasting gifts are not the ones with the brightest screens but the ones that leave the most room for a child's own imagination. The evidence supporting this is substantial, the alternatives are beautiful, and the conversation with relatives is, with a little preparation, far easier than most parents fear.
The consumer electronics industry is extraordinarily good at packaging screen-based products as educational essentials. Words such as "learning," "interactive," and "school-ready" resonate deeply with grandparents who want to give something meaningful. Yet many parents find that tablets and electronic learning toys hold a toddler's attention briefly before being abandoned, or that they create friction at bedtimes and mealtimes in ways that a wooden stacking ring never does. This is not technophobia. It is a reasonable response to lived experience, and it aligns closely with what developmental science has been saying for some years.
The World Health Organization recommends no screen time at all for children under two, and no more than one hour per day of sedentary screen time for children aged three to four. These are not cautious, fringe positions. They reflect a broad consensus built on evidence about attention, language acquisition, and social development. The American Academy of Pediatrics has similarly drawn clear limits, noting that even supposedly educational apps offer far less developmental value than unstructured play with a caregiver or a simple physical toy.
What the researchers say
Hirsh-Pasek and Golinkoff, whose decades of work on children's learning are among the most cited in developmental science, argue that the best learning for young children happens when play is active, engaged, meaningful, and socially interactive. Passive screen consumption scores low on every one of those four dimensions for under-fives.
Researcher Christakis has shown that background television alone can fragment a young child's play and reduce its quality. Meanwhile, Dauch and colleagues found that toddlers engaged in richer, more creative play when given fewer, simpler toys rather than many complex ones. The case for a beautiful wooden toy or a traditional game is not nostalgia. It is evidence.
Before drafting your script, it helps to understand the motivation. Grandparents are not trying to undermine your parenting. They are trying to give something impressive, something that signals investment and love. Tablets are expensive, which signals generosity. They are marketed as educational, which signals care. And they are familiar: many grandparents use tablets themselves and associate them with productivity and connection. Knowing this makes it far easier to respond with warmth rather than defensiveness. You are not correcting a mistake. You are redirecting genuine love toward something that will serve the child better.
The golden rule is to lead with gratitude and curiosity, never with prohibition. Here are some approaches that work well in practice.
Notice that none of these scripts use the word "no." They redirect toward something positive, they invite the relative into the solution, and they frame the request around the child's joy rather than a parental rule.
Vygotsky and the zone of proximal development
Vygotsky's foundational work on child development showed that children learn most powerfully in the space between what they can do alone and what they can do with support. Open-ended toys, ones without a single correct answer or a pre-set electronic response, keep children in that productive zone far longer than a screen-based toy that supplies its own feedback.
Panksepp's neuroscientific research identified play as one of the core emotional systems of the mammalian brain. Physical, imaginative, social play activates this system in ways that passive screen interaction does not. Trawick-Smith's TIMPANI study, which directly observed children at play with many different toys, consistently found that simple, open-ended materials produced longer, richer, more cognitively demanding play episodes. A set of wooden skittles, a puzzle with satisfying chunky pieces, or a classic family game does not direct the child. It invites the child. That is a profound difference.
There is a particular pleasure in giving a gift with genuine heritage. Jaques of London has been crafting games and toys since 1795, making it the world's oldest games company, and its pieces carry that history lightly but unmistakably. When a grandparent gives a Jaques wooden toy, they are not giving a generic object. They are giving something with a story, something that will last, and something the child will return to across years rather than weeks.
Browse Jaques wooden toys, made to be handed down Explore Jaques traditional games, played and loved since 1795The following list is designed to be forwarded directly to relatives, either as a text message or printed out and left helpfully on the kitchen table.
A note on longevity
Gopnik's research on how young children learn through exploration and hypothesis-testing suggests that toys which can be used in multiple ways support far longer periods of genuine learning than single-function electronic devices. A wooden toy that can be a building block, a percussion instrument, and a pretend loaf of bread in the same afternoon is doing remarkable developmental work.
Start by acknowledging the instinct, which comes from a genuinely good place. Then share the research briefly and without lecturing: the World Health Organization and the American Academy of Pediatrics both recommend strict limits on screen time for under-fives, not because screens are harmful in small doses, but because every minute of passive screen time is a minute not spent in the active, social, hands-on play that builds language, attention, and emotional regulation most effectively. You might say: "We looked into this quite carefully, and it turns out the research is pretty clear that physical play does more for his brain at this age. A great puzzle or a classic game is actually the more educational gift, which surprised us too." Offering a specific alternative immediately gives your relative somewhere to go with their generosity.
With warmth, always. Thank the giver sincerely, let the child explore it briefly in the moment, and then make a quiet decision later about how and when it will be used in your home. Most relatives are not monitoring daily usage. You can accept the gift gracefully without it becoming a fixture in your child's routine. If the toy is clearly unsuitable for the child's age, a gentle mention of that, delivered with humour rather than criticism, is usually enough: "He is not quite ready for it yet, but we will save it for when he is older, which will not be long at this rate."
Traditional wooden toys span an extraordinarily wide age range. For children under two, simple stacking toys, chunky puzzles, and push-along items offer exactly the right level of challenge, and the weight and texture of real wood provides sensory feedback that plastic cannot match. From age two onwards, traditional games involving turn-taking, colour-matching, or simple counting begin to become appropriate and are deeply engaging. By three and four, children are ready for games with mild rules, physical play sets such as skittles, and puzzles of increasing complexity. A well-chosen wooden toy from a company such as Jaques of London will typically carry age guidance on the packaging, and the range covers children from their first birthday through to early school age and well beyond.
Print the product name and a brief description on a piece of paper and hand it over in person, which removes the digital barrier entirely. Many Jaques of London pieces are also available through traditional toy shops and department stores, so a relative can walk in and ask by name. Alternatively, if a relative is comfortable receiving a phone call but not navigating a website, you can offer to place the order on their behalf and let them transfer the cost: the gift remains entirely theirs, and the effort is yours. The goal is to make saying yes to a screen-free gift as easy as possible, and a little practical help from you goes a long way toward that.
Britain's oldest toy maker. Every toy open-ended, wooden, and built for exactly the kind of play the research recommends.