The Best Gifts for New Grandparents, According to Grandparents

This picture frame has a front-loading design that makes it easy to open and close whenever the grandparent wants to swap in a new drawing.

Try thesenose-clip readersfor the grandparents who aren’t quite ready to bring out the magnifying glass to read the menu (but still squint while reading your texts).

Aaron Larsen,Grandparents Academyfounder, recommends personalized artwork featuring handprints or footprints. Not only will this kit make a wonderful keepsake featuring photos of the baby and their little hands, but the making of it will be a memory of its own.

This grandparent-specificjournalwill help them recall stories about themselves with questions and prompts, which they can later pass down to younger generations.

GrandmotherDonne Davissays anything by Pulitzer Prize winner Anna Quindlen is “required reading” for new grandparents. Quindlen, who has written about family living for decades, wroteNanavilleabout the dos and don’ts she learned in her first years of becoming a grandparent.

Here’s a book geared more toward newgrandfathers. It’s chock-full of practical and creative ways to engage more with their grandchildren and help them get outside of their comfort zone.

The subscription service Caribu lets long-distance grandparents and grandkids connect virtually with a library of digital games andbooks. Byrne says the video chat is easy to set up on desktops,tablets, or phones.

Gallo also appreciates having these kid-friendly plates, so that “when they come over, they are excited to use our stuff.” This pack includes multiple colors, so each grandchild can choose their favorite.

“The carpets you have at home. They’re never clean enough for a newborn,” Ben Bornstein, a grandfather to five, says, so he suggests treating new grandparents to a play carpet that they can roll out whenever the grandchildren come over. This one, which is similar to the one Bornstein has, outlines a city where the kids can play with their cars and blocks.

Grandmother Kim Ogunkeye would appreciate any gift that establishes a tradition with her new granddaughter. In my family, the holiday puzzle tradition has remained strong my entire life.

Grandmother Ronnie Green says that she’d still appreciate gifts that honor her hobbies and passions, one of which is film. If that sounds familiar, consider this no-fuss popcorn maker, so the new grandparent can host family movie nights for years to come.

You can’t forget a practical wool banya hat (to wear for all their sauna shvitzes).

Compression socks, known for preventing heavy legs or swollen feet during a long flight, make trips to see grandkids more comfortable. Go with thistight yet stretchy pair.

Gift them a customized wallcalendarcurated with family photos. Strategist writer Arielle Avila has given one to her grandparents a couple times and suggests going with a theme — like a birthday or anniversary — for each month.

This customizable photo-memory game is a more interactive gift that’s still personalized. It lets you include up to 12 images of the grandbaby, family members, and special moments.

For the grandparent who has taken up art classes in their retirement, consider these kid-friendlycolored pencils, which are super-smooth and saturated; they can use them to teach little ones how to shade and blend.

If the new grandparent was once in a band (or maybe still is), consider this multifaceted musical instrument for babies, so they can play out new rhythms together.

Though grandmother Carla Sloan and her husband would rather not accumulate more clutter, she says the pillow she received that read “Noni and Papa, Established 2022” was a welcome surprise. You can customize this one with the new grandparents’ preferred names and the year they became grandparents.

While my aunt and uncletechnicallybought these for themselves when they became grandparents last year, my aunt Andrea gave her parentsa matching setto celebrate their new title: great grandparents. It’s a momentous promotion after all!

Sloan’s grandkids visit her often, so she says baby-related gifts are the best because “you need to build up your army of baby stuff all over again, and you don’t want to go crazy paying for it all.” Thissimple baby monitoris best for the grandparent who doesn’t want to fuss with a video monitor, but if you’d like to go all out, we recommend theInfant Optics DXR-8 Pro Baby Monitor.

If they’re prone to misplacing things around the house, they’ll appreciate the ease of an all-in-onephone caseand wallet. Grandma Marina, half of the popular Instagram accountDrawings for My Grandchildren, says hers allows her to “always have my hands free, but keeps my phone close to my body — close at hand.”

Like many new grandparents, Sloan is trying to cut down on clutter, so she likes the idea of this service, which compiles the grandchild’s drawings into a neat little book. All you have to do is send over your favorite art pieces in the provided box and approve the digital proof. As Sloan says, “Grandma and Grandpa don’t need 50,000 pieces of art in their downsized condo.”

This compacttravel pillowprevents lateral bending in the neck and was enthusiastically recommended in oursenior survey. Gift it to the grandparents with plans to visit more often.

Since they’ll be washing their hands more to play with the baby, they might as well usethis year’s status hand soapthat Bowen Yang says smells like the tomato vines in his grandma’s garden. (Plus, it’ll give you a chance to teach them how to pronounce Loewe.)

A couple grandparents expressed their interest in documenting and passing down their family history. This virtual class from the National Genealogy Society teaches students how to do just that at their own pace within a six-month time frame.

As a polyglot of note (with French, Spanish, Hebrew, and Japanese in the mix), Bornstein recommends gifting a Duolingo subscription to the grandparent who would like to keep their language skills fresh. “I’ve used it aggressively for at least three years, and my Spanish has improved greatly,” he says.

If they’re running around with the new grandchild, they’ll appreciate the convenience of anat-home foot massage. We suggest this electric option that has multiple massage modes and an automatic shutoff after 20 minutes (just in case they’re not quite tech savvy).

Digital picture frames came up again and again during my conversations with new grandparents as a way to stay up-to-date with all the photos of the grandbaby. We recommend this one because the gift giver can preload it with photos, which Ogunkeye would appreciate because, as she says, some grandparents are more technologically sophisticated than others. Sloan has one, too, and says, “I call that the gift that keeps on giving every day.”

If their little red wagon is long gone, consider giving them a new one. Gallo and her husband “put all the kids in there, and we’ll take them for a trip around the block,” she says.

If they’ve been helping you around the house while you keep up with the new baby, give them thisrobot vacuumto help lighten their own chore load.

While pricier, anexercise bikewas a popular wish-list item and favorite splurge in oursenior survey, and it will keep new grandparents active. This Schwinn bike has multiple adjustable settings and workout programs for a customized ride, and it displays your ride history.

High chairsare one of those expensive baby items that are actually very helpful for a grandparent who wants to have the grandkids over all the time. Gallo likes this one, which is also the Strategist’s best-in-class pick, because it grows with baby and can be reverted when there’s a new grandchild on the way.

Bornstein recommends gifting an electric smoker to the grandparents who love to grill. This one comes recommended by Myron Mixon, thewinningest man in barbecue.