A warm, practical guide to helping grandparents become confident, screen-free play partners, without a single difficult conversation.
The single most useful thing you can do before a screen-free visit to Grandma or Grandad's house is to arrive with something to play rather than a list of rules to enforce. When children have a beautiful wooden game in their hands, or a puzzle tipped onto the kitchen table, the question of screens simply does not arise with the same urgency. The preparation is mostly about filling the space that screens would otherwise occupy, and grandparents, once they see a grandchild absorbed and laughing beside them, need very little convincing that this is better.
That said, a gentle word ahead of the visit does help. A short, warm message, something like: "We're trying to keep screens light at the moment and I've packed a couple of games I'd love the children to share with you," places grandparents in the role of collaborator rather than rule-enforcer. It works because it is honest, it is not preachy, and it gives them something specific to do. Most grandparents will rise to that invitation with enthusiasm. The sections below explain the science, the script and the toys that make screen-free visits feel like a treat rather than a policy.
There is something about a grandparent's house that already lends itself to unhurried, imaginative time. The pace is slower, the garden is unfamiliar territory, the kitchen drawers hold interesting things. Novelty itself is motivating: a different environment reduces the pull of habitual screen use simply because there is more to explore. Grandparents often underestimate how fascinating they are to a small child. Their stories, their hands, their collections of ordinary objects are genuinely absorbing. The house, in most cases, needs very little transformation. What it occasionally needs is one or two well-chosen props.
The evidence for protecting stretches of screen-free time, particularly for under-fives, is substantial and consistent. The World Health Organization recommends that children aged two to four years have no more than one hour of sedentary screen time per day, and that children under two are best kept away from screens altogether, with the exception of video-calling family. What fills that time matters enormously.
What the research tells us
Psychologists Hirsh-Pasek and Golinkoff, whose decades of research on learning through play have shaped early-years thinking internationally, describe playful learning as the primary engine of language, executive function and social cognition in the first five years. Joint play between a grandparent and a grandchild, in particular, offers something a screen cannot replicate: a responsive, emotionally attuned partner who reads the child's face, adjusts the pace and shares genuine delight.
Neuroscientist Jaak Panksepp identified play as one of the primary emotional systems of the mammalian brain, one that is active, social and profoundly satisfying when engaged with another person rather than a device. A grandparent rolling dice, turning puzzle pieces or tossing a skittle ball is not simply keeping a child entertained. They are, in the most literal neurological sense, nourishing the child's developing brain.
The conversation goes wrong when it sounds like a briefing. Grandparents who have raised children of their own do not respond well to being told they have been doing something incorrectly, and they are right to feel that way. The frame that works is one of shared pleasure rather than shared policy. Consider something along these lines, said or written a day or two before the visit:
"I've packed a couple of games I thought you and the children might enjoy together. We've been doing less screen time lately and honestly it's been lovely. I thought it might be nice to carry that on at yours if you're up for it. No pressure at all, I just thought you might enjoy having something ready."
That script works for three reasons. It positions the grandparent as the one who will enjoy it. It presents screen-free time as a positive discovery rather than a deprivation. And it removes any sense of obligation with "no pressure at all," which paradoxically makes most people want to cooperate. If there is a history of tension on this subject, it helps to focus on a single visit rather than a policy change: "Just for this weekend, shall we try keeping it game-based?" is far less threatening than "we're going screen-free from now on."
The best toys for grandparents' houses are the ones that require no instruction manual, no charging, no lost pieces and no complicated rules to explain under pressure. Wooden toys fit this description beautifully. A set of stacking rings, a peg puzzle, a set of skittles in the garden: these are toys that explain themselves the moment a child picks them up, and that grandparents find natural to join in with because the play emerges organically rather than being prescribed.
Browse Jaques wooden toys, designed to last and to be understood at a glanceJaques of London, founded in 1795 and the world's oldest games company, has been making exactly this kind of toy for well over two centuries. There is something quietly reassuring about handing a grandparent a game whose design has been trusted by families across generations. It removes the anxiety of novelty and replaces it with something that feels, rightly, like a tradition being passed on.
A note on language development
Developmental psychologist Dana Suskind, whose work on the thirty-million-word gap built on the foundational research of Hart and Risley, emphasises that the quality and quantity of language a child hears in their first years has lasting consequences for vocabulary and reading. Grandparents who play alongside a child, narrating moves, asking questions and responding to what the child says, are providing precisely the kind of rich, responsive language input that matters most.
Traditional games carry a particular kind of magic at a grandparent's house because they are genuinely shared territory. A game of skittles in the garden, a round of snap, a slow game of draughts at the kitchen table: these are activities where neither the grandparent nor the child is at a disadvantage due to age or technological familiarity. The playing field, in every sense, is level, and that equality is what makes the laughter real.
Explore Jaques traditional games, played and loved since the Georgian eraPsychologist Peter Gray, whose research on free play and self-directed learning has been widely cited in early-years literature, argues that play between people of different ages is uniquely valuable precisely because it requires negotiation, patience and mutual accommodation. A grandparent slowing down to let a four-year-old take a turn is modelling exactly the social intelligence that Pellegrini identifies as one of play's most important developmental gifts.
One of the practical challenges of a grandparent's toy cupboard is that the grandchildren who visit span a wide range of ages and developmental stages. The most useful toys are therefore those that offer what Vygotsky called a zone of proximal development: enough challenge to be interesting, enough simplicity to be achievable with a little help. Puzzles are ideal in this respect. A peg puzzle engages an eighteen-month-old; a more complex interlocking puzzle absorbs a four-year-old; and both give the grandparent a meaningful role, offering hints, celebrating success, sitting quietly alongside.
The most enduring screen-free visits are the ones that become rituals: the puzzle that lives on Grandma's shelf, the skittles that come out whenever the weather allows, the card game that has its own set of family rules accrued over years. Rituals work because they give children something to anticipate and something to remember. They work for grandparents because they provide a ready-made answer to the question every grandparent quietly dreads: "What shall we do now?"
Encourage grandparents to choose one or two games that become theirs, kept in a particular place, brought out with a degree of ceremony. That small act of ownership, "this is our game," transforms a toy into a relationship. It is, in the end, the relationship that the child will carry forward, long after the specific rules of the game have blurred into warm memory.
Have something ready to offer immediately, before the request escalates into a negotiation. A puzzle tipped onto the floor, a game handed to the grandparent with the words "can you show her how this works?" redirects attention within seconds. Children under five live very much in the present moment: a compelling alternative in front of them is almost always enough to dissolve the request. The key is speed of response and confidence of delivery. If you hesitate and discuss, the screen becomes the subject of the conversation. If you simply produce something interesting, it rarely does.
Avoid framing it as a rule at all. Rules invite debate; invitations invite participation. Focus on what you are adding, a lovely game, a chance to play together, rather than what you are removing. If your parents push back directly, the most effective response is usually calm curiosity: "I know it might seem that way. We've just found the children are so much happier when we play together." That is hard to argue with, because it is about your experience rather than a claim about theirs. Most grandparents, once they see a grandchild genuinely absorbed and joyful beside them, need no further persuasion.
Choose toys that are open-ended, robust and age-flexible. A set of quality wooden skittles works for a two-year-old and a seven-year-old alike. A simple card game such as snap or pairs requires no equipment beyond the cards and suits children from about three upwards. A wooden puzzle with chunky, tactile pieces is endlessly revisitable. The criterion to apply is this: could a grandparent get this game going within two minutes, without reading anything? If the answer is yes, it belongs in the cupboard. Jaques wooden toys and traditional games have been designed with exactly this kind of immediate, intuitive appeal for more than two centuries.
There is no lower limit, provided the toy is matched to the child's stage rather than their age. Piaget's work on sensorimotor and preoperational development reminds us that children under two learn principally through handling and manipulating objects: a chunky wooden shape-sorter or a large-piece peg puzzle is genuinely developmentally appropriate from around twelve months. By two and a half, most children can manage simple matching games and basic turn-taking with patient adult support. By four, many traditional games, skittles, snap, simple dice games, are well within reach. The grandparent's role is not to enforce the rules but to make the play joyful: precision can wait.
Britain's oldest toy maker. Every toy open-ended, wooden, and built for exactly the kind of play the research recommends.