A lesson from Lego

I am very uptight when it comes to Lego.

There, I’ve said it. It really annoys me when the girls mix stuff from different sets up, or keep losing a certain part of a set.

I love fixing up the Lego with them, and watching them fix it up themselves. K is at the age when she can independently fix up an entire Lego Friends shop, and it’s so much fun. B loves making the little figures go here and there, and both love telling stories and making the figures talk.

Thereafter, I love admiring the little features, the cute things you can make the figures pretend to do, but after playing-house, my expectation is for everything to be put back EXACTLY where it’s supposed to be.

But no. As you can imagine (or as you know, if you have Lego playing kids), they make the figures hold stuff that they are not quite supposed to, or mix up the sets and scenarios such that the lamb that comes with the grooming set is in the horse’s stable and everything gets. messed. up.

“Where is the umbrella for the ice-cream stand?” I have been heard to yell.  “What is this lamp doing on the floor?! Where is it supposed to be?! Why did you take it out and just leave it on the floor?!?!” Or “Where is the cup? There are supposed to be two cups! How come the colour top of the cups are GONE?” Other times I look at the juice shop, and go “Where is the handbag? The handbag is supposed to be here!! Find it NOW!”

Yes, I’m psycho. I know.

One day, as I was looking mournfully at the set-with-too-many-missing-pieces, and trying to salvage it with whatever I could find (which was not much), it dawned on me that I was missing the point.

Lego is meant to be played with.

And if they can make up a story where the lamb is consorting with the horse, then so be it.  If they want the vet to be holding the handbag instead of the juice shop patron, then I guess that’s their story.

If I insisted that everything is played the way it SHOULD BE, and everything can only be placed in one spot, i.e. what the instruction book displays, then I’m the one cramping their style.  It’s not that they are ill-disciplined, or forgetful, or just can’t abide by my instructions.  They are doing exactly what they are meant to do.

PLAY.

In fact, the time when I went “WHERE ARE THE SANDWICHES??”, K said “Oh I took them apart to make something else.” And she could find the new thingy that she had converted them to, and set towards making my sandwiches back just the way I wanted. Oops. I wonder if she took the implicit signal that it was not a good thing to innovate, to re-create, but rather there was one right thing for sandwich pieces to be, and mummy certainly didn’t want them ‘transformed’ into non-sandwiches. Sigh.

Upon this peripeteia, I stopped pathetically trying to put everything back into their store-display Pyrex glass case prettiness, and started writing this blog post.  I shall live with this imaginative mess. And let them do what they will (within reason of course) with their toys.

If I want a perfect set of toys, I guess I shall have to buy my own (cackle) and keep them in my own unreachable space (top of the bookshelves is not a bad place if you’d like to find one for yourself), where they can live in pristine loveliness, with not a hair out of place.

Note: Much as I wish it were, this post is in no way sponsored by Lego. 😛