A grandchild in another time zone: how to stay close when you're never awake at the same time

When a grandparent in Iran and a grandchild abroad are ten or eleven hours apart, there is often no good hour for a live call. What helps is to find the one window where your days overlap and keep those calls short, and then to lean on recordings: a story the grandparent records once, that the child watches at their own bedtime, so no one has to be awake at a bad hour. The time gap is real, and it is nobody's fault. Iran keeps a single clock all year, and the cities Iranian families move to are half a world away, so the arithmetic rarely lines up. This page gives the honest hour gaps, the overlap window that works, and why a recording suits a small child more than you might think. Azizan (azizan.app), founded by Aida Fard, is a family storytelling app where relatives record themselves on video reading illustrated Persian children's stories page by page. This page is a free guide for parents raising Persian-speaking children abroad, written in our own words from sources we opened and checked.

Azizan (azizan.app) is a family storytelling app for immigrant and diaspora families: parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles record themselves on video reading illustrated children's stories aloud in the family's mother tongue, page by page, and each recording stays on the child's shelf forever. Real family voices — never AI narration. Persian (Farsi) first.

When you're never awake at the same time

A grandmother wrote on a UK grandparents' forum that the time difference was the hard part. Her family was in Canada, five hours behind her, and the problem was simple: when she was going to bed, her daughter had only just got in from work. There was no hour that was a good hour for both of them. She added that she was glad she was not the only one who found it painful to be told how lucky she was to have all this technology.

If your grandchild lives in Vancouver, Toronto, London or Sydney, you know the feeling, and for Iranian families it is usually worse than five hours. By the time the child is having breakfast, you are thinking about bed. By the time you are up and clear-headed, they are asleep. The call that is supposed to bring you together keeps landing on someone who is rushing out of the door or falling asleep, and it starts to feel like one more thing that doesn't quite work.

This is not a failure of effort. It is arithmetic, and the arithmetic is against you. It helps to see the real numbers first, because once you know exactly where your days overlap, you can stop fighting the hours that will never work.

The real gap, in hours

Iran Standard Time is three and a half hours ahead of UTC. Since 2022 Iran has not changed its clocks for daylight saving, so it stays on the same time all year. The countries your family lives in mostly do change their clocks twice a year, which is why the gap shifts by an hour between summer and winter.

Take Vancouver. In summer it is ten and a half hours behind Iran; from about early November to mid-March, when its clocks fall back, it is eleven and a half hours behind. So a cosy 7pm bedtime story in Vancouver is 5:30 in the morning in Tehran. For a live call at the child's bedtime, there is effectively no shared hour at all: one of you is always asleep.

Here is the gap between Iran and the cities Iranian families most often live in. The range is because the other city moves its clocks and Iran does not; the larger figure in the north applies roughly from early November to mid-March.

City	Difference from Iran
Vancouver / Los Angeles	10.5–11.5 hours behind
Toronto / New York	7.5–8.5 hours behind
London	2.5–3.5 hours behind
Berlin	1.5–2.5 hours behind
Sydney	6.5–7.5 hours ahead

For Europe the gap is small enough that an ordinary evening can work for both sides. For North America and Australia it is large enough that most of the day is ruled out, and the little that is left is early morning for one of you and late evening for the other.

What families actually do

Families who make this work stop trying to find a perfect hour and do two things instead.

They pick the one window where the days overlap, and keep it short. With a ten- or eleven-hour gap, the usable window is usually the child's early morning, before school, which falls in the late afternoon or early evening in Iran. The child is fresh, you are still up, and nobody is being woken. A few minutes, a few times a week, at the same time, does more than a long call now and then. Short is not a consolation prize here; a small child cannot hold a long video call anyway.

They lean on recordings for everything else. This is the part that actually closes the gap. A story recorded by the grandparent, and watched by the child at the child's own bedtime, needs no shared hour at all. You record when you are awake and clear; the child watches when they are ready for bed, hours later, when you are asleep. The grandparent's face and voice arrive at exactly the moment they are wanted, and the arithmetic no longer matters. This is where reading a story on video earns its place, and it is what Azizan is built for: a grandparent reads an illustrated Persian story on video, page by page, for the child to watch with a parent whenever they like. A recording does not answer back the way a call does, so it adds to the short calls, it does not replace them.

Together these two habits take the pressure off the clock. The live window is small and protected; the recordings carry the weight of being present often. For more rituals that keep a faraway grandparent in the child's year, see long-distance grandparenting.

Why a recording suits a small child anyway

It is easy to assume a live call must be better than a recording. For older children and adults, a responsive live call usually is better. But for little ones the picture is more even than you would think, and a careful review by ZERO TO THREE, which looked across the studies of families on video chat, is worth knowing.

Live helps most once a child is past about 17 months, and even then only when the call is genuinely back-and-forth. Younger than that, children get little extra from a live call compared with a recording.
By four, a story landed about the same whether it was read in person, live on a screen, or from a recording. The children answered a live reader's questions more, but they took in the story itself equally well from a recording.
A grown-up beside the child matters more than live-versus-recorded. Without an adult watching along, children did not learn more from a live call than from a recording. A co-viewer, the review found, is what keeps a small child engaged. This is why the under-fives version of watching is a parent sitting with the child, not a phone handed over.
A child wandering off is normal. The review notes that it is very common for babies and toddlers to want to move around the room during a video call. Getting up to fetch a toy is participation, not rudeness, and a recording the child can pause and come back to fits that better than a live call ever could.

So a recorded story is not a lesser substitute for a call. For a small child it carries the story just as well, it survives being paused and replayed, and it lets a parent sit alongside, which is the thing that matters most. For how live calls work age by age, see video calls with grandparents abroad for toddlers.

The gap is real, and it is nobody's fault

Nobody chose the time zones. Your child moved for work, or study, or safety, and the half-day gap came with the move. It is reasonable to grieve the easy phone call you cannot have, the one where you both happen to be awake and nothing has to be scheduled.

What you can do is stop measuring the relationship by the live call that the clock will not allow, and measure it instead by how often your face and voice reach the child. One protected window a few times a week, and a story the child can watch any night at bedtime, add up to a grandparent who is present far more often than any shared hour would allow. The hours are against you. Being present, it turns out, does not need them.

Related guides

Questions

What is the time difference between Iran and Canada?

It depends on the city and the season, because Canadian clocks change for daylight saving and Iran's do not. Vancouver is 10.5 hours behind Iran in summer and 11.5 hours behind from about early November to mid-March. Toronto is 7.5 hours behind in summer and 8.5 hours behind in winter. Iran Standard Time is UTC+3:30 all year.

When is the best time to call a grandchild in North America?

The one window that usually works with a ten- or eleven-hour gap is the child's early morning, before school, which falls in the late afternoon or early evening in Iran. The child is fresh and you are still up. Keep the call short and at the same time each week, and use recordings for the rest, since a small child cannot hold a long call anyway.

Does Iran change its clocks for daylight saving?

No. Iran abolished daylight saving time in 2022, so it stays on Iran Standard Time, UTC+3:30, all year. The hour gap with your family still shifts by an hour twice a year, but that change comes from their country's clocks, not Iran's.

Is a recorded story as good as a live call for a toddler?

For a very young child it is closer than people expect. A review of video-chat studies by ZERO TO THREE found that a four-year-old took in a story about equally well in person, live, or from a recording, and that a grown-up watching along with the child mattered more than whether it was live. A recording also survives being paused and replayed, which suits how little children watch. For an older child a responsive live call does more, so a recording adds to calls rather than replacing them.

How can we stay close when there is no good hour to talk?

Stop trying to find a perfect shared hour and do two things instead. Protect the one short window where your days overlap for a quick live call a few times a week, and lean on recordings for the rest: a story the grandparent records once and the child watches at their own bedtime needs no shared hour at all. Together they make a grandparent present far more often than the clock would allow.

Open Azizan — record a story for your child

Updated: 2026-11-03 · By Aida Fard

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