Connected Play: Grandma, the Screen Controller, and the Little Gamer

I'll admit it: I have a love-hate relationship with screens. My kids are both under six, and the pull is magnetic — everything is shiny, beeping, colorful, and hands out a little star popup for the tiniest, most insignificant thing. And honestly? The pull is just as strong for me. When they're stuck to a screen, I get long stretches of quiet to work, clean, or — miracle of miracles — take a shower by myself.

But I've never liked what's actually on offer. Most kids' games are (1) in English and (2) gimmicky — all lights, sounds, and dopamine hits. And I didn't want to ban games outright either. How are they ever going to learn to put a screen down if they never get the chance to pick one up in the first place?

Then I had a small realization, and it came from something dumb: drawing on a blank canvas on a tablet. When I sat down and drew with them, I didn't feel bad about the screen at all. We'd talk about what they were drawing, they'd tell me a story about it, I'd draw something back, we'd turn it into a guessing game. Language, connection, imagination — every feel-good box, checked.

Except that's not something they'd do on their own. They need a co-pilot. Enter: the grandparents.

They don't live in our city, but that's exactly the beauty of playing online — it's live. The kids get to talk, interact, and have their own running jokes with Grandma, an adult I trust has eyes on the screen the whole time, and I get to go fold laundry in peace. Everybody wins.

What Do You Actually Need to Make This Work?

The kid and the grandparent need to see the same screen and act on it together — when my kid draws, Grandma should see it happen and be able to draw right alongside them, their lines crossing. They need to see and hear each other too. It turns out almost no platform does all of that cleanly at once.

Discord tries, but in practice its built-in Activities have been buggy for us — voice drops, video drops, commands just stop responding mid-game — on top of the pool of activities that are actually fine for an under-7 being pretty thin to start with. Steam's co-play (their "video" there really means screen share, not a webcam) is probably solid, but I honestly never got to test it myself: the games that support it just aren't made for the under-7 crowd. So here's the DIY kit I actually landed on:

  • a smartphone with a video chat app (WhatsApp, Signal, whatever Grandma already has open)
  • a laptop — a touchscreen helps but isn't a dealbreaker (most of this doesn't work well on a tablet)
  • RustDesk — free, open-source remote-desktop software that lets Grandma take over your mouse and keyboard from her own computer, hundreds of miles away
  • and of course a willing grandparent in a timezone that is not wildly out of sync with yours

Wait, What Are These Words?! Discord, Steam, and RustDesk

  • Discord is a chat app built around "servers" — free rooms you create and invite people into, with built-in voice, video, and screen share, plus a menu of small built-in games ("Activities") the whole room can play together. In our experience it's a bit fragile for this — see below.
  • Steam is a games store and game "console" for your computer. Most of its catalog isn't remotely appropriate for young kids, but a handful of calm, simple games are available. Some Steam games support built-in co-play (screen sharing plus voice, no webcam support), but I didn't find any that were also appropriate for young kids, so we pair Steam with RustDesk instead.
  • RustDesk is the odd one out — it's not a game platform at all, it's the glue. It lets someone on another computer request control of yours, so Grandma can actually click, drag, point, and help the little one if they get stuck.

The Setup Guide

1. Discord

The Discord "server" handles the screen share, voice, and video all at once, so Grandma and the kid are looking at (and talking over) the same screen — when it works. The catches: the pool of built-in Activities that are actually good for the under-7 crowd is small, and the whole setup has been buggy for us in practice — voice cutting out, video dropping, an Activity's commands just stop responding mid-game and you have to relaunch it. Our rotation, bugs and all:

  • Gartic Phone — everyone draws badly and the results get funnier each round. It's technically built around reading, but when it's your kid's turn they can just draw whatever they want and let Grandma guess out loud. Nobody's actually keeping score.
  • Sketch Heads — same idea with a timer: players get a written word and have to draw it. Again, the kid can ignore the word entirely and just draw, with Grandma guessing along.
  • Cozy Corners — a calm hidden-object game.
  • Color Together — a paint-by-numbers game where two or more players fill in the same canvas. Age-appropriate, though mine personally weren't that into it.
  • Jamspace Whiteboard — collaborative doodling. A hit with my kids, though both they and Grandma got a bit lost on the infinite canvas.

To set it up:

  1. Create a Discord account — both you and Grandma need one. Open the Discord desktop app or go to discord.com/login and register with an email, username, and password (see Discord's Sign-Up and Registration Guide if anything's unclear, or their Getting Started on Mobile guide if Grandma's on a phone or tablet). Check her email for the verification link.
  2. Create a server — click the + icon at the bottom of the server list on the left, choose "Create My Own," and pick the "Gaming" or "Friends" template. Give it a name (full walkthrough: How do I create a server?).
  3. Invite Grandma — open the server, click the "Instant Invite" icon next to a channel name, and send her the generated link over WhatsApp or email (details: How do I invite friends to my server?). She'll need to click the link and join.
  4. Join a voice channel together — both of you click the voice channel in the server's channel list on the left to enter it; this turns on voice, and video/screen share are one click away from the same panel (Voice Channels FAQ).
  5. Launch an Activity — while in the voice channel, click the rocket-ship icon at the bottom of the app and pick one from the list (Gartic Phone, Sketch Heads, etc.) to launch it for everyone in the channel at once.

If anything above doesn't match what you're seeing, Discord's own Beginner's Guide to Discord covers the whole flow with screenshots and is kept up to date — their UI shifts around more often than this post will.

2. Steam + RustDesk — the game library, remotely controlled

Steam has a small pile of kid-appropriate games, and a subset of the Steam catalog does support built-in co-play — screen share plus voice, so Grandma can control the game from her own computer. Note that's still not a video call, though: if you want the kid and Grandma to actually see each other's faces, you'll need a phone on a video call alongside it, same as the RustDesk setup below. In any case, none of the games we actually wanted for our kids were in that co-play-supporting subset, so I've never tested Steam's own version myself — we use RustDesk instead, which works with any game regardless of whether Steam supports co-play for it.

To set it up:

  1. Create a Steam account — you only need this on your own computer; Grandma doesn't need Steam at all. Go to store.steampowered.com and register (walkthrough: How do I create a Steam account?).
  2. Install the Steam client — download and install it from the Steam site (Installing Steam), then buy or grab your games. We picked up Gravity Snake (free) and Educational Games For Kids (about $10).
  3. Install RustDesk on both computers — download it only from the official site, rustdesk.com (avoid third-party download mirrors). Install it on your computer and walk Grandma through installing it on hers too — no admin rights needed on Windows. Opening it shows an ID and a one-time password on each machine; that's what you'll use to connect (see RustDesk Client docs if you get stuck).
  4. Get your own Computer ID ready — open RustDesk on your computer (the one with Steam on it) and read out the ID shown on your screen; Grandma is the one who'll use it to connect, so it needs to go to her, not the other way around.
  5. Start a video call with Grandma (WhatsApp works fine), and point the phone's front camera at the kid so Grandma sees the kid and the kid sees Grandma. Tell her your Computer ID over the call.
  6. Have Grandma send the connection request — on her RustDesk, she enters your Computer ID and clicks Connect. You'll get a prompt on your end to accept; walk her through this the first time so you both understand what's being asked. Getting this backwards hands the kid control of Grandma's computer instead of the other way around, so double-check it's Grandma initiating, not you.
  7. Open Steam and launch the game — go to Library, open the game, and let it take over the screen (it'll probably go fullscreen).
  8. Step back and let them play — Grandma now sees and controls the game through RustDesk while watching the kid over the video call. Esc gets you out of Steam's fullscreen mode when you need it.

This works best on a laptop with a touchscreen, but the arrow keys do the job too.

A safety note: only ever hand remote control to someone you trust completely, and never leave a RustDesk session running unattended — close it out when you're done. Never accept a RustDesk connection request unless you know it's Grandma sending it and you're already with her on a video call confirming it in the moment.

3. Websites + RustDesk — anything in a browser

Same idea as Steam: a RustDesk connection plus a phone propped up for video chat, except Grandma and the kid explore a website together instead of a Steam game. Everything I found is in English — I couldn't turn up decent options in our home languages.

What We're Building at LinguWhee

Discord, Steam, and random websites got us started, but none of them were quite it — too loud, too English-only, too full of flashy lights and sound effects. So I started building the games I wished existed.

Live now:

  • The Story Dice Game — our first launch. Ad-free, calm, no flashing lights or reward sounds. You roll a set of picture dice and build a story together from whatever comes up — great for sequencing, imagination, and just getting kids talking out loud, which is exactly the kind of thing that works over video with a grandparent on the other end.

Just get RustDesk on both your computer and the grandparents', have the grandparents send a RustDesk invite to you, then open The Story Dice Game and let them play away.

In the lab, coming soon:

  • The Golden Beads Bank Game — our take on the classic Montessori "bank game" material. Your child drags golden units, ten-bars, hundred-plaques, and thousand-cubes onto a virtual mat to build numbers, then physically combines two numbers' worth of beads to practice addition — including the "changing" step, where ten loose units get exchanged at the bank for one ten-bar, and so on up the place values. No correctness checking, no score, no hints — like the real material, it's just there for the child to work with, mistakes and all. We're also extending the same idea past the thousands, all the way into the millions, using the same cube-based visual logic — handy for travel, when you'd rather not be packing a set of Montessori thousand-cubes in your suitcase.
  • Tracing Letters — you type in a letter, a short sound like "sh", or a whole word, choose cursive or print, and it renders large on screen in a soft grey outline. The child picks a color and traces it with a finger. No scoring, no correction — just a reset for the letter and a separate reset for just their tracing, so they can try the same letter again.

Same philosophy across all of them: no flash, no ads, no bells, no whistles — just calm surfaces built for two people to sit down and do something together.

Screens don't have to mean a kid alone in a corner chasing the next dopamine hit. With a little setup — and a grandparent on the other end of a video call — they can be a bridge to the people we love. That's really all I was after.

Happy playing!