Category: Parenting
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My wife and I had just turned out the light the other night when our youngest called on FaceTime. She’d just wrapped up her first full week at college, a few hours’ drive from home, and she was missing us It’s not like she hadn’t already called a few times that week. But as tired…
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And maybe it’s more than just a LEGO disaster. Maybe it’s a complete disaster. It can be easy to walk into a very messy bedroom and get upset as a parent, especially when you work so hard to keep the rest of the house reasonably tidy. What about guests? What will they think? What will…
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Some kids love diving into a brand-new LEGO set, opening the bags one at a time and following the instructions step by step until the finished model comes together. Others would rather find a pile of new-to-them LEGO pieces and dive right into inventing. Some might even open a brand-new set, dump out all the…
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She’s the mom who watches carefully for loose LEGO pieces as she walks down the hallway. She might stop to pick them up—or, more likely, call for her child to come take care of their toys. He’s the dad who helps his child pour a bin of LEGO bricks onto a sheet instead of directly…
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We all reach this point as parents. The kids have toys they don’t play with anymore. Clothes they’ve outgrown. A few games with missing pieces. Maybe even a chair that’s seen better days. But what about the LEGO collection? Unlike most toys, LEGO is different. Every brick made today still connects with bricks made decades…
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Earlier this week, we talked about two ideas. First, letting go of old LEGO creations isn’t losing memories. It’s making room for new ones. Then we talked about how LEGO building is a lot like reading a chapter book. Most children aren’t finished with their story after one afternoon. They want to pick up where…
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Which LEGO theme makes your child’s eyes light up the most? When I first started building with LEGO, there were really just three big themes: City, Castle, and Space. I spent countless hours bouncing back and forth between building castles, hosting jousting tournaments, and designing spaceships. By the time my own kids came along, our…
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Imagine sitting down with your child each evening to read a chapter of a favorite book together. When you finish Chapter 3, you don’t immediately close the book and say, “Well, that’s over!” You don’t throw it away because you haven’t reached the ending yet. You don’t return it to the library halfway through the…
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One of the hardest parts of LEGO building isn’t putting the pieces together. It’s deciding when to let them come apart. It usually starts with a single set. Maybe it’s your child’s very first one. They carefully follow the instructions, sometimes with a little help from you, until the picture on the box is sitting…
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You name your car. You name the dog and the cat. Some people even name their lawnmower. So why not name the things your child builds out of LEGO pieces? The next time your child proudly holds up a little green car they just built, instead of simply saying, “That’s awesome!” try asking: “What do…