Playing with 'your' Lego with kids?

[ficbot]

My four-year-old stepson only got into Lego in the last year, but he is very into it now, and this is great! He does not like to follow the instructions and prefers to build his own things. The problem is that he is not very careful about the pieces. After his last visit, I tried to put some of the sets back together and was unsuccessful; some of the pieces he lost were quite large, I swiffered under the couch and everything and can't find them. I have no idea where he put them.

He has his own box of Lego, but he is curious fellow and likes to see how they are made. So his preference is to take one of our grown-up Lego sets, take it apart to see where all the pieces go, and then incorporate his own things. This is the part we are struggling with! We don't want to be Lord Business as it were,and say 'look, but don't touch.' And we don't want to squash his creativity. But some of our 'grown-up' Lego was very expensive. My husband is struggling to put back together his Ghostbusters car. A few key pieces are missing, and they aren't the kind of pieces we can replace from what we have on hand.

Am I a horrible person if I tell the little guy that he can mix and match the pieces, free reign, with his own stuff at his Lego table, but if he wants to play with one of Daddy's sets, he has to do one at a time, at the kitchen table where we can help him? I feel awful for even asking this because we love him to bits and would do anything for him. But...he makes such a mess, you know? Can I balance this somehow without being the terrible ruiner of ruination who squashes all his dreams?

Edited July 31, 2015 by ficbot

[Phoxtane]

This sounds entirely reasonable to me. A lot of time and effort goes into building these more adult-oriented sets that are more of a display piece than a playset.

[HawkLord]

I would just use positive reinforcement of other sets. Try to redirect his attention to sets you know are more conducive to him taking apart. Maybe keep the collector sets out reach or out of sight (as best you can).

Or maybe see if he would find interest in viewing the instructions only for those collector sets so that he can try to recreate the collector set with different parts and his own customization.

[Alfadas]

I agree with Hawkman, just hide the sets you care most about, the rare and expansive ones, and just let him play with the "normal" ones. He probably don't care what he is messing with, as long as it's Lego.

[Off the wall]

Setting appropriate boundaries for a child should not squash his dreams.

[JopieK]

Setting appropriate boundaries for a child should not squash his dreams.

Agreed!!! Setting no boundaries does squash dreams. That is why I let certain nieces not play with our LEGO and give free access to some other cousins and nieces to virtually all our LEGO. If children never learned how to behave well and be careful they will often become reckless. Although we don't have kids ourselves we work both in Education (my wife in special education) and know from experience that is both is hard to set good appropriate boundaries, but on the other hand that it is vital for the performance of kids and adolescents to get boundaries or learn how to handle situations if there are no hard limits.

I'm taking a young family friend on a tour for a few days, he has some challenges but enjoyed LEGOWorld Germany very well and is helping us prepare new builds for exhibits :) we found very useful parts today in "the Factory". Tomorrow AFOL shopping, for sure we will get some Architecture for him, he loves it.

[Peppermint_M]

I have something I call the "Monkey Box". It is a free-for-all box I use to distract kids, visitors and my brother-in-law.

Also, teaching respect for others property is an important thing for kids.

One of my brothers has been LEGO mad since he was old enough to appreciate his toys. He is 12 years younger than me. So when we had to share a building space, he was about 5, I told him he could look at my sets and MOCs, he could borrow instructions and ask me how I built a MOC or made a particular feature work. Once experience taught him that LEGO creations can be fragile (from his own builds) I trusted him to handle my MOCs (he often watched me build) and once or twice even fixed things my dad broke by accident. He would never dream of borrowing without permission and owns up if something breaks in his hands. He is 14 now and a much better builder than I was at that age, simply because he learned from watching me and skipped all the time I wasted on trail and error!

While it isn't quite "The Man Upstairs", I am not about to let anyone tear through my models!

[rodiziorobs]

My kids--my four year old in particular--always want to borrow some of my pieces to put in with their own stuff. I always ask why they need it, so I can suggest pieces from their own collections instead that would accomplish the same thing. There are a lot of times I let them, but more often I don't.

They have learned that it doesn't hurt to ask, that they need to be responsible when I do loan pieces, but that sometimes I get to say 'no' and that they have to be okay with that.

The same is true if I ever ask to borrow some of theirs. I have tried to teach them to respect each other's stuff and mine by always respecting theirs, and for the most part it works out okay.

Edited August 3, 2015 by rodiziorobs

[BlockLogo]

My 4 year old son and I share all our LEGO. Other than the modulars and some Ideas sets, there is no LEGO that is only mine or his, and even with those, we still build them together and he gets to play with them (he did drop the Parisian Restaurant a while ago during playing, shattering it, and we spent the rest of the day re-building from scratch, which I didn't mind at all after the initial shock of horror). With themes we collect, like The Lego Movie, I make him keep the sets intact, or we put them back together after playing. He does a really good job keeping most of the other sets together as well, though there are some that got taken apart added to the big mixed bin that he just builds and plays with.

Recently I've been trying to MOC, which is obviously next to impossible with this arrangement. He wants to "help", meaning adding a bunch of rainbow greeble wherever possible mid-build...

[ilikeboomerang1]

I let my kids play with my sets. Yes, even the first generation Modulars. This weekend they demolished the CC with their digger and the other demolition vehicles. They said that they would give ''the mayor'' (that's probably me) the bricks to ''build another building'' (make an MOC).