Christmas Gift Ideas for a Grandchild Who Has Everything

Every November, the same message lands in a lot of family group chats: “I need more ideas. I need more ideas.”

It’s usually a grandparent, staring down another Christmas, convinced there must be something their granddaughter or grandson doesn’t already own. And it’s usually met with a quiet sigh from a parent whose living room is already full.

We surveyed 89 people and spoke to parents and grandparents directly to find out what’s really going on with Christmas shopping for grandkids — and what actually works when the child in question genuinely seems to have everything.

Do people even want to be asked what they want?

Before assuming every grandchild needs a detailed wish list, it’s worth looking at what people actually prefer. In our survey, respondents were split on whether they’d rather be asked what they want for Christmas or simply surprised with something the giver thought they’d love.

45% said they’d rather be surprised. 33% still wanted to be asked. The remaining 22% had no strong preference either way.

Do people actually want to be asked what they’d like for Christmas?

The takeaway for grandparents: a wish list isn’t the only route to a gift that lands well. Trusting your instincts — or choosing something that isn’t really about “stuff” at all — is just as likely to be appreciated as ticking off a list.

What our survey revealed about grandparent gift-giving

Our respondents — mostly parents of children aged 3 to 14, alongside grandparents themselves — described a pattern that will sound familiar to a lot of families: grandparents who love to give, and grandchildren who genuinely don’t need more.

One mother of three, aged 9 to 14, explained that Christmas list requests start as early as October — before her children have even had their November birthdays. She tries to keep it modest, but says the pressure comes from the grandparents’ side, not the kids’: “Constantly I’m getting texts mostly from my mum… ‘I need more ideas.’ Isn’t there more to life than shopping?”

A recurring theme was space. Several respondents described grandparents turning up with far more presents than a family’s home could realistically absorb. One parent recalled deliberately unpacking a grandparent’s gifts from storage and laying them out in the living room so she could see, in person, just how much space they took up — only to be told, “Oh, maybe this year I’ll just get them something small.”

Another common thread was the pressure to keep things “even” between grandchildren, gift for gift, pound for pound — something respondents pointed out repeatedly that the children themselves never actually noticed or cared about. As one parent put it, the effort to balance the books often meant she ended up “doing the shopping for myself and her all season long.”

But the survey also surfaced a clear, popular solution: buying experiences instead of things. Respondents suggested family passes to aquariums, museums and amusement parks, a season of movie tickets, or contributing to a child’s hobbies directly — new dance shoes, a softball bat, or a “field trip fund” for school trips. One respondent summed up the appeal simply: unlike another toy, “most of those passes can be used anytime in a year.”

Why the research backs this up

It isn’t just our survey. Academic research into Christmas gift-giving points in the same direction.

A study analysing 314 letters written by UK children to Santa found that the overwhelming majority expressed simple wants and desires for things, rather than more meaningful hopes or dreams — leading the researchers to describe Christmas, from a child’s perspective, as having become a surprisingly “unspiritual festival concerning having things” (Halkoaho & Laaksonen, 2009). It’s a useful reminder that children’s Christmas requests are rarely a reliable guide to what actually matters to them.

Separately, a study by Griffith Business School surveyed hundreds of parents of children aged 3 to 8 about their own Christmas gift-giving habits. It found that how much a parent values the act of gift-giving and how much they value giving branded, popular items are only weakly related — in other words, giving a meaningful gift and giving an expensive or trendy one aren’t the same thing at all (Clarke, Griffith Business School). For grandparents worried about competing on price or brand names, that’s genuinely reassuring: what makes a gift land isn’t the label on it.

Put together, the research and the survey responses tell a consistent story: more stuff isn’t the answer, and neither is a bigger price tag. What actually stands out is something personal, something shared, or something a child couldn’t simply ask for themselves.

Comparing gifts that create time together

Since experiences kept coming out on top in both our survey and the research, it’s worth comparing the most popular options side by side — including where a personalised book fits in.

Gift type	Examples	Why it works
Experiences	Aquarium or museum family pass, cinema tickets, amusement park season pass	Reusable all year, no extra clutter, memories over materials
Contribution to hobbies	Dance shoes, sports equipment, music lessons	Fills a real need instead of adding a new one
A mini trip together	A weekend away with grandparents and grandkids	Time together becomes the gift itself
Field trip or activity fund	Covering school trip costs, treats and souvenirs	Practical, appreciated by parents too
A personalised keepsake	A story or gift made just for them, featuring their name and likeness	Can’t be bought by anyone else, and doesn’t take up a toy box’s worth of space

 

Family passes and day trips are wonderful, but they only create togetherness when you’re actually out and about, and they don’t leave much behind once the year’s pass expires. A personalised adventure book does something the other options can’t: it turns fifteen minutes of bedtime into one-on-one time with a grandparent, again and again, for years — and unlike a ticket stub, it’s still on the shelf long after Christmas.

The gift a grandchild can’t already own: themselves in a story

If a granddaughter or grandson really does have every toy, gadget and game a child could want, the one thing they don’t already have is a story that’s about them — starring them and their grandparent, together.

That’s the idea behind Tototale’s personalised adventure books, designed to be exactly the kind of gift our survey respondents kept describing: something that isn’t just more stuff, but something to actually experience and share.

For Grandad and their grandchild

Grandad and Grandchild Book – Tototale

In this personalised story, Grandad and his grandchild step through a secret door into a magical world, meeting a funny monster, a lonely strawman and a giant baobab tree along the way. The child’s name, look, and what they call their grandfather can all be personalised — along with Grandad’s own likeness — so it becomes a story that belongs only to the two of them.

For Grandma and their grandchild

Book of Grandma & Grandchild – Tototale

Grandma and her grandchild take to the skies in a magical red balloon, braving a fiery dragon, tiptoeing past a giant snoozing snake, and cheering up a giggling whale before reaching the grand finale at the Phantasmagorical Lighthouse. As with the Grandad edition, both characters can be personalised to actually look like the real-life pair.

Unlike a toy that gets played with for a week and forgotten, a personalised book gets reread — becoming a bedtime ritual, a keepsake, and eventually a memory of exactly how close a grandchild and their grandparent were that Christmas.

A quick note for grandparents this year

If you’re the one being asked for “more ideas” every October, our survey suggests a simple approach: pick one experience, one practical contribution to something your grandchild already loves doing, and one gift that’s genuinely personal to your relationship with them. That’s it. Skip the pressure to keep pace, gift for gift, with every other grandparent — the children, according to every parent we surveyed, never noticed the tally anyway.

The best Christmas gift for a grandchild who has everything was never going to be another thing. It’s something that says: this was made for you, and only you.

Research sources

Halkoaho, J., & Laaksonen, P. (2009). Understanding what Christmas gifts mean to children. Young Consumers, 10(3), 248–255.

Clarke, P. (Griffith Business School, Griffith University). Parental gift giving behaviour at Christmas: An exploratory study.