Best friend gifts for kids: things that actually get used

There are two versions of this problem. Sometimes you're buying — your kid is off to their best friend's birthday party on Saturday and you need something that isn't a voucher. And sometimes your kid is the one giving, and wants it to feel like it came from them.

Either way, the trap is the same: most "friendship gifts" are made to be photographed, not used. Here's what holds up, sorted by age — from a small Australian business that thinks about kids' friendships a lot, including one thing of ours, clearly labelled, so you know exactly where we're biased.

Best friend gifts for 5–7 year olds

At this age the gift is the shared activity — buy the afternoon, not the object.

A friendship bracelet kit. Still the best option under $15, because what you're really giving is the hour spent making them together.

Something from Smiggle. The obvious answer, and there's a reason every Australian kid owns something from there. A scented pen or a ridiculous eraser is a safe bet even for a classmate you barely know.

Lunchbox notes. Little cards a parent tucks into a lunchbox — Lunchbox Love (from Wagga Wagga, NSW) does a lovely reusable set with Australian illustrations. Technically a gift the parent operates, but kids genuinely light up at them.

Best friend gifts for 8–11 year olds

Peak matching-gift years, and peak card-writing years — old enough to mean it, young enough to say it.

Matching anything. Half-heart necklaces, matching keyrings, two of the same plushie. The category is enormous because the instinct is right: the point isn't the object, it's that there are two of them and each friend has one.

My Bestie Pop-Open Cards — ours, so obviously we're biased. Thirty pop-open cards, each hiding a secret message, with To and From on the back — a gift your child gives away piece by piece, one pencil case at a time. The box says ages 5–15 and means it: five-year-olds just want a hand with the writing, and by about eight they're off doing it themselves. The designs lean mermaids-and-rainbows — girls are the heart of it, though the messages aren't gendered. Every word and drawing is original, designed by a registered psychologist. The full story is here.

A two-player game they'll both keep playing. Dobble travels in a tin and works from about six up (and at Christmas lunch). Uno if they somehow don't have it. The test of a good friendship game: can they play it at recess?

A book about a friendship. Ask your bookshop for one where the friendship is the plot, matched to their reading age. "This reminded me of you two" beats a book chosen for the child alone.

Best friend gifts for 12–15 year olds

Go smaller and more specific. An in-joke on a keyring beats something generic and expensive; a photo of the two of them in a cheap frame beats both. Teens keep the small stuff and quietly bin the rest — if in doubt, choose the thing that references a memory only the two of them share.

The moving-away gift

The hardest brief. A distance-proof gift needs two halves — one that goes, one that stays. Matching necklaces do it. So does a pair of identical notebooks for writing to each other. (Our 2-pack was designed for exactly this — one box goes in the moving truck, one stays, and the same numbered card says the same thing in both places. Again: biased.)

What we'd skip

Anything personalised with a name and nothing else (kids clock that it took no thought), slime unless the parents have been consulted, and anything so precious it lives on a shelf. A friendship gift that can't survive a school bag isn't really for a kid.