More Kiwi grandparents are connecting through screens rather than in person. With adult children scattered across Auckland, Melbourne, London and beyond chasing jobs and housing, the traditional Sunday roast with the grandkids has, for many families, been replaced by a fortnightly video call and a long-haul flight once or twice a year.
To be a grandparent in a different city or country is a lack of the small, accidental moments that ordinarily build a relationship. A grandchild who sees grandma every week absorbs her in dozens of unplanned ways, like the smell of the kitchen, the sound of her laugh at something silly, the comfort of simply being in the same room while she reads the paper.
Distance strips all of that away and replaces it with scheduled, deliberate contact, which can feel stilted for both generations, especially with very young children who struggle to hold a face on a screen in their memory between calls. And so, ensuring those calls are quality is key.
Grandparents who keep video chats short, frequent and built around something concrete tend to have more success than those attempting long, open-ended conversations that a toddler has no patience for.
Reading the same picture book together, with a physical copy at both ends, works well for younger grandchildren. Cooking the same simple recipe over video, each in their own kitchen, gives older grandchildren something to do with their hands while they talk.
A recurring, low-key ritual, maybe on the same day, at the same time, even with the same silly greeting, does more to anchor a relationship in a child’s mind than an occasional marathon call.
Physical mail still carries outsized weight in a digital relationship. A parcel that arrives with a grandchild’s name on it, containing something as ordinary as stickers, a drawing pad or a photo of the two of them together, becomes a tangible object a child can hold onto between visits in a way no screen interaction can match.
Many grandparents now keep a running list of small, inexpensive things to post throughout the year rather than saving everything for birthdays and Christmas, spreading the sense of connection more evenly across the calendar.
When visits do happen, resisting the urge to cram every waking hour with activities pays off. We all bond more deeply over repeated and calm moments than over a perhaps stressful, jam-packed itinerary of outings.
Letting a grandchild help peel vegetables, fold washing or potter in the garden replicates, in concentrated form, exactly the ordinary togetherness that daily proximity would otherwise provide.
None of this fully replaces living around the corner, and grandparents are entitled to grieve that loss honestly rather than pretend the distance doesn’t sting. But the relationships that survive long separations well tend to share a common thread: consistency over grandeur, and small deliberate rituals that make an ocean feel a little smaller.
