At our kitchen table, three people who were born ninety years apart sit shoulder to shoulder, heads bent over the same coloring pages. Two of them are my sons, ages three and four. The third is their great-grandmother, who is ninety-four. They can stay like that, happily, for forty-five minutes at a stretch, and every time it happens I am reminded that connection does not need much. Sometimes it just needs crayons.
I want to tell you about this, because it has become one of the most meaningful things we do as a family, and I think it can be for yours too.
What happens at the table
If you had asked me what a three-year-old and a ninety-four-year-old could possibly do together, I might have struggled to answer. The gap seems enormous. One is just learning to hold a crayon, the other has held ten thousand of them across a long life. But coloring erases that gap completely. There is no skill barrier, no right way, nothing anyone has to be taught first. You sit down, you pick a color, and you begin.
And something lovely happens in that shared quiet. My boys smile and laugh with her in a way that is different from how they are with anyone else. They watch how she works, the colors she reaches for, the careful, unhurried way she fills in a design, so different from their own happy scribbling. They are learning from her without either side calling it a lesson. And they get to see their great-grandmother in a new light, not as someone far away and fragile, but as a person sitting right beside them, choosing purple for the flower and telling them why.
It is not all quiet harmony, and I would not want it to be. Often the squabble is between the boys and their great-grandmother herself. She reaches for a color, they want the very same one, and suddenly a three-year-old, a four-year-old, and a ninety-four-year-old are all after one crayon. I let them work it out. Learning to share, to wait, to take turns, to hand the marker over and trust it will come back, is real work for my boys, and there is something wonderful about them learning it with her rather than from her. I stay out of it on purpose, because they can sort it out themselves. And what makes me smile most is that she is right there in the mix, not refereeing but playing. In those moments, all three of them, my two boys and their ninety-four-year-old great-grandma, feel like exactly the same age at that table, equally delighted and equally reluctant to hand a color over. It is a joy to watch.
The part that surprised me most
We started doing this, along with other simple art activities, for a straightforward reason: I wanted my children to know her, really know her, while they have the chance. What I did not expect was how deep the connection would run once we made a habit of it.
Now my sons ask about her on their own. They want to FaceTime her. She is not a name they hear at holidays. She is someone they think about, someone they miss, someone woven into their week. That did not come from a single grand visit. It came from many small, ordinary sessions at the table, a crayon in every hand.
Why coloring does this so well
Most parents I know want the same thing: for their children to talk to their grandparents and elders, to really know them. But you cannot force that. Telling a three-year-old to go talk to great-grandma rarely produces more than a shy hello. What my wife and I have found is that you do not create those conversations by asking for them. You create them by building a space where they happen on their own. A creative activity, done side by side, is one of the best spaces there is. The talking comes as a byproduct of the coloring, which is exactly why it feels so natural.
As a former teacher, I could give you the developmental reasons this works, and they are real. Side-by-side activities lower the pressure of face-to-face conversation, so words come more easily. A shared task gives a young child and an older adult a natural, equal footing. And because coloring asks nothing of anyone’s memory, mobility, or hearing in the way a busier activity might, it meets people of very different ages exactly where they are.
But the truest reason is simpler than any of that. Coloring gives two people who love each other a calm, unhurried reason to be together. No screens competing for attention. No performance. Just presence. And presence, more than anything, is what closes a generation gap.
How to start this in your family
If there is an older person in your child’s life, a grandparent, a great-grandparent, an elderly neighbor, you already have everything you need. A few thoughts from our experience:
Keep it low-key and regular. A short session that happens often does far more than a big one that happens rarely. Ours are woven into normal visits and calls.
Let the older person lead sometimes. Ask them which colors they would choose, or to tell a story about the picture. Children love this, and it gives the elder a role beyond simply watching.
Print pages that spark conversation. A scene with people, animals, a familiar place, or a family tradition gives everyone something to talk about while they color, which is where the real connection lives.
Do it over a video call when you cannot be together. Print the same page in two homes, color at the same time, and hold up the results. My boys light up every time.
The bigger picture
We spend a lot of energy worrying about what pulls families apart, especially screens and busy schedules. We spend less time on the small, repeatable things that pull us back together. For us, a box of crayons and a stack of coloring pages turned out to be one of them.
My sons are three and four. Their great-grandmother is ninety-four. And thanks to a habit that costs almost nothing, they are close. If you have been looking for a way to bridge the distance between the youngest and oldest people you love, I hope you will pull up three chairs and try it.
Browse our free printable coloring pages and print a few for your next visit or video call. Every page includes a conversation prompt to help the talking flow and creative activities so our pages to do more for you.