Nylon strings carry less tension than steel. In order to get more sound they tend to use higher action. Between that and the 'looser' strings you need to have a bit more space in between strings to be able to fret cleanly. Every time I've seen somebody get a nylon string guitar with a nut less than 1-3/4" they've been unhappy. It's hard to make a neck wider.....
OTOH, if your grand daughter has small hands there are ways to accommodate that. Classical players don't use 'thumb over' technique in the left hand nearly as much as steel string players, and some of the real 'snobs' eschew it entirely. It's easy enough to make a new nut with the string notches moved a bit toward the treble side if she really has trouble reaching all the way across, and it won't cause problems with playing technique. If her hands get bigger, as they may, she can go back to the original nut.
The 'crossover' models are often meant to be amplified, and some don't even have a sound hole. They often have a shallower body (and less 'full' bass tone) and a cutaway. Again, in part because of the difference in left hand technique, classical players are not nearly as interested in cutaways as steel string players are.
Classical fret boards are not always dead flat; in fact, many of us feel that's a mistake. Over time fretboards shrink and try to get narrower. BEing glued down, they can't, so instead they just curl up at the edges, which makes the surface concave. Trying to play barre chords on a fretboard like that will wreck your hands in a hurry. Some classical makers these days make the fretboards slightly arched; maybe a 24"-26" radius. It makes barre chords a lot easier, and saves problems down the road.
Swapping out strings is not usually a good way to see how you feel about nylon strings. The strings are the change between steel and nylon strung guitars that drive all the other differences. And it's not just the tension. Nylon strings have a lot less energy in the high frequencies, particularly in the sustained tone, and they also tend to die out quicker anyway after they're plucked. For a maker, the main design issue on a steel string is getting enough low end to balance out the highs, and that's relatively easy: you make the box bigger. On a nylon string guitar you have to get the most out of the small amount of treble the strings give you, and that's harder. Light construction and smaller size helps, but the maker also has to pay more attention to the way the top works.
A classical player I know onc tried some of his repertoire on a wide necked steel string. He said it was like listening to Julie Andrews in 'The Sound of Music': "...there's no darkness!" A classical player can brighten up the sound (to the extent the guitar will allow for it), but there's not much a steel string player can do to make the sound darker. Classical players learn to exploit that wider range of timbres that is hard to get on even a very good steel string.
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