5 year old asked why her grandparents only live in the phone

mellow_trail_402016 Oct 2026

everyone in our building has family visiting for the holidays. there are grandparents on every bench downstairs in the evenings. our daughter's 5, and tonight at bedtime she asked why hers 'only live in the phone'. both sets are far away and travel isn't easy for them. we do video calls, but they're random, whenever someone remembers, and she usually wanders off after two minutes. i didn't have a good answer and i'm still thinking about it.

2 comments

lilac_trail_425016 Oct 2026
we'll be in this exact spot in a few years. both families far. reading the replies
bronze_bookmark_127517 Oct 2026
We had a 'phone nani' phase around 5 too. What worked was making it a fixed thing, Sunday morning, and giving the call a job. My mother read her one story, same book every week, and kept the book at her end. Random calls never stuck. She's 12 now and messages her nani more than she messages me 🤷
- velvet_river_690317 Oct 2026
  Did the story calls hold her attention at 5? Mine is one and loses interest in the screen within a minute, so I'm curious when that changes.
- mellow_trail_402017 Oct 2026
  giving the call a job is the bit we've never done. ours are just 'say hi to nani', which gets about one word out of her. going to ask my mother if she'd do a story.
- coral_drum_445217 Oct 2026
  Our parents live nearby, so I can't speak to distance. One thing I did notice when my daughter was five: she talked far more to her grandmother when she had something to show, a drawing, a loose tooth, a new frock. Open-ended 'how was school' calls went nowhere. You could let her choose what to show before you call.