Long-distance grandparenting: how grandparents abroad stay close to grandchildren, and keep Persian alive

Grandparents who live far away stay close the same way grandparents nearby do: through small, regular, predictable moments that belong only to them, and the best of those moments happen in Persian. A short weekly call the child can count on, a recorded story the child can replay when the time difference makes a live call impossible, voice messages, drawings sent back the other way, the same dish cooked on two continents, and the big dates of the year marked together. One large study links more involved grandparents with fewer emotional problems in teenagers, and live video chat is the one screen use the American Academy of Pediatrics accepts even for babies. For the language, a grandparent who speaks only Persian to the child gives them something no class can: a real person they love who needs Persian to be understood. 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 families 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.

The short answer: small rituals, kept up, in Persian

There is no trick to being a grandparent from far away. What works is the same thing that works up close: small moments that come back again and again, that the child can predict, and that belong to the two of them. A ten-minute call every Friday the child knows is coming does more than a long call once a month. A story only grandma reads. A song only grandpa sings. A word only they use.

There is some research behind the feeling that this matters. A study of 1,515 secondary-school students in England and Wales, by Shalhevet Attar-Schwartz, Ann Buchanan and colleagues at the University of Oxford, found that young people whose grandparents were more involved in their lives had fewer emotional problems and behaved more kindly towards others, and the link was stronger in single-parent families and step-families. It is one study, of teenagers, and it shows an association, not proof that grandparents caused the difference. But it points the same way most families already sense: a grandparent is one more adult who is reliably on the child's side.

For families abroad, there is a second reason. The grandparent is often the person who makes Persian necessary. A child can answer a parent in English and still be understood. With a grandmother in Shiraz who does not speak English, Persian is the only way through, and that need is one of the strongest things keeping a heritage language alive.

Video calls that work: toddlers and school-age children are different

Video calls are the one kind of screen time the American Academy of Pediatrics carves out even for the youngest. Its policy statement advises against screen media for children under 18 months, with the single exception of video-chatting, and notes that babies and toddlers still need a parent's help to make sense of what they see. The reason is that a live call answers back. In a single study by Lauren Myers and colleagues at Lafayette College, children aged 12 to 25 months spent a week either talking with a new adult over live video or watching pre-recorded videos of the same adult. Only the live group later recognised and preferred that person, and the oldest toddlers learned more new words from that person. The youngest, around one year old, did not learn from either.

So with a toddler, the call is less a conversation and more a game played through a window:

Keep it short and frequent. Five to ten minutes, often, beats half an hour once a week. Researchers who study family video chat suggest shorter, more frequent calls for young children; even good calls hold a toddler's full attention for only part of the time, and wandering off is normal.
Bring something to do. Peek-a-boo, a puppet, a ball rolled "through" the screen, a snack the child pretends to feed grandpa, the same picture book open on both sides. Props turn watching into playing.
The parent sits in. This matters more than anything else. Studies of two-year-olds found they looked, joined in and learned more when a responsive adult was in the room during the call; without that adult, video chat lost its advantage over a recording. The parent points, repeats grandma's words, and tells grandma what the child is holding up.
Start the same way every time. The same greeting, the same little song, the same «سلام عزیزم». Toddlers love a ritual they can see coming.

School-age children need almost the opposite: a reason to talk. "How was school?" gets a shrug. A shared project does better. Grandpa teaches one card trick a week, grandma and the child each draw the same thing and compare, the child reads a page of a Persian book aloud and grandma reads the next, or they plan what they will cook together on the next visit. Older children also like being the expert: let them show a grandparent the game, the drawing or the football trick, and let the grandparent ask questions in Persian. More on the toddler side is in video calls with grandparents for toddlers.

When a live call is impossible: time zones, recordings and Iran's internet

Some families can barely find a shared hour. Tehran and Vancouver are ten and a half to eleven and a half hours apart, depending on the season. When the child is awake, grandma is often asleep, and the child's bedtime falls in the middle of grandpa's morning. That is where recordings come in. They are not as rich as a live call, the research above is clear on that, but a recording from someone the child already knows and talks to live is a different thing from a stranger on a screen. It keeps the grandparent's voice and face in the child's day on the nights the call could not happen.

A recorded bedtime story. The grandparent reads a short Persian story on video, and the child watches it at their own bedtime, as many times as they like. Young children love repetition, and each replay is more Persian in a loved voice. See grandparents reading bedtime stories on video.
Voice messages, both ways. A thirty-second "good morning" from grandma, played at breakfast. A reply from the child about their day, even three words long. Small and often is the rhythm.
Things that travel back. Drawings photographed and sent, a letter dictated to the parent, a short video of the child singing the song grandpa taught. A grandparent who only sends and never receives slowly loses touch with who the child is now.

If the grandparent lives in Iran, the internet itself is part of the problem. Freedom House's 2025 report describes nearly all major social platforms as blocked or filtered, access to the global internet as costly and cumbersome, and a near-total nationwide shutdown in June 2025. Many people depend on VPNs, which are slow and unreliable. In practice that means planning for bad connections, not hoping for good ones. Asynchronous beats live: a recording made when the connection is good can be sent later. Short beats long: a five-minute clip uploads where a twenty-minute one fails. A tool that uploads page by page, so one dropped connection loses one page and not the whole story, is worth more than any feature list. And a plain web link a grandparent can open in a browser is often easier than an app they cannot install. This is the problem Azizan was built around: a grandparent reads an illustrated Persian story on video one page at a time, each page uploads on its own, and the recording lands on the child's shelf to replay.

The grandparent as the child's Persian anchor

Of everyone in a child's life abroad, a grandparent is often best placed to be the person who only ever speaks Persian. Parents slip into English to get through the school morning. A grandparent does not have to. Some things that help:

Speak only Persian to the child, gently and always. If the child answers in English, the grandparent can answer back in Persian, repeating what the child said, without scolding. The child learns that Persian is how you talk with grandma.
Use the words only grandma uses. «قربونت برم», «عزیز دلم», «نفسم», a pet name nobody else calls them. These words carry love and language in the same breath, and children keep them for life. The family names themselves are part of this: Persian words for grandparents, aunts and uncles.
Songs and rhymes from the grandparent's own childhood. «اتل متل توتوله», «لالایی». Rhymes stick where vocabulary lists do not, and the child is getting something no app can offer: the version their own family sang.
Stories with the grandparent's own voice. Old tales, family stories, "when your mum was little". Reading the same book again and again is not boring for a small child; it is how they learn the words.
Ask the parents what words the child is learning. Then use them. A grandparent who knows the child just learned «پروانه» can bring a butterfly to the next call.

None of this needs perfect conditions. A grandparent who records one Persian story a week and keeps one short call is giving the child steady Persian input from someone they love, which is the kind that counts.

Nowruz, Yalda, birthdays, visits, and the honest part

The calendar does a lot of work. Families who mark the same days on two continents give the child a sense that grandma's world and theirs are one world. For Nowruz, grandparent and child can each set up a haft-sin and show each other, or grow sabzeh at the same time and compare. On Yalda, read a poem together or cut a pomegranate on both sides of the screen. On birthdays, the grandparent's candle goes on the cake too. And cooking "together" works at any age: the same dish, the same afternoon, two kitchens, grandma telling the child when to add the turmeric.

Visits matter in a way no screen replaces. When they happen, the work of the calls pays off: a child who has seen grandma every week does not meet a stranger at the airport. Between visits, a photo album of the last one, looked at together on a call, keeps it alive.

And the honest part. Long-distance grandparenting is often sad, and it is fine to say so. Grandparents miss first steps and school plays. Some days the toddler refuses to come to the screen, and that stings. Some grandparents feel they are performing for a child who barely knows them. Parents in the middle carry guilt of their own. None of this means it is not working. Toddlers who walk away from a call are still listening, a child who cannot find a Persian word on the phone may use it the next week, and a relationship built from a hundred small calls and recordings is a real one. It is quieter than living around the corner, but it is still a grandmother and a grandchild, in Persian.

In a family where only one parent speaks Persian, the grandparent's part grows even larger, and a grandmother's weekly story may be most of the Persian the child hears from anyone outside the home.

Related guides

Questions

How can grandparents abroad stay close to their grandchildren?

Through small, regular rituals rather than occasional long calls: a short weekly video call at a fixed time, a recorded story the child can replay, voice messages both ways, drawings and letters sent back, the same dish cooked on the same day, and big dates like Nowruz, Yalda and birthdays marked together. Visits matter most of all, and the regular contact in between means the child does not meet a stranger when they happen.

Do video calls count as screen time for babies and toddlers?

The American Academy of Pediatrics treats them differently. Its guidance advises against screen media for children under 18 months except video-chatting, because a live call responds to the child. It also says babies and toddlers need a parent's help to understand what they see, so the parent should sit in, point and repeat. A single 2017 study found children from about 17 months recognised and learned from a person they met over live video, but not from pre-recorded video of the same person.

How long should a video call with a toddler be?

Short and frequent works better than long and rare: five to ten minutes, several times a week, if the family can manage it. Bring something to do, such as peek-a-boo, a puppet, the same book on both sides or a pretend snack, start with the same greeting every time, and have a parent next to the child. Expect the toddler to wander; it is normal.

The time difference makes live calls almost impossible. What can we do?

Use recordings for the days a call cannot happen. The grandparent records a short Persian story or a good-morning message when it suits them, and the child watches it at their own bedtime or breakfast, as often as they like. Recordings are not as rich as a live call, so keep at least one live call a week if you can, perhaps on the weekend, and let the recordings fill the gaps.

My parents are in Iran and the internet is slow or blocked. How do we keep in touch?

Plan for a bad connection. Record when the connection is good and send later, keep clips short, and choose tools that upload in small pieces so one dropped connection does not lose everything. A plain web link that opens in a browser is often easier for a grandparent than an app that cannot be installed. Many major platforms in Iran are blocked or filtered and the country has had nationwide shutdowns, so do not rely on a single route.

How can a grandparent help a child keep Persian?

By being the person the child only ever speaks Persian with. Speak to the child in Persian every time, answer English with Persian without scolding, use the pet names and words only grandma uses, sing the rhymes from your own childhood, and read the same stories again and again. Ask the parents which words the child is learning and use those on the next call.

Open Azizan — record a story for your child

Updated: 2026-11-03 · By Aida Fard

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