Introducing your children to your collection

[Moriboe]

 

I’m looking for experiences and/or advice about introducing your kids to your Lego collection.

I have a daughter that is approaching Duplo age, but I’m already (over)thinking ahead 🙂. I get that my collection will never have that magic for her as it had for me. That needs longing and anticipation; seeing this stuff new in shops and again and again in catalogs, plus proper unboxing. Maybe she won’t even be interested in Lego at all. Or at least not in large parts of my collection (space, castle, …). Maybe she’ll think the old stuff is boring and only want new shiny Friends sets. Then the situation might become her toys and daddy's toys, separated, easy.

Supposing she is interested in all of it, my collection is nearing 250 sets now (mostly true children’s sets): if I were to introduce her to it gradually, that would mean a new set every week for 5 years! That would also mean keeping everything bagged up for years, which I'm reluctant to do. So maybe I’d want to start with setting up a small town quickly and grow from there, letting her browse my Brickset listing to give her enough agency to work up a little excitement. Still I’m afraid the overload of stuff will devalue it to her, and adding sets too frequently might stifle her creativity by taking away the need to turn what she has into something new. As might my involvement in her play. Then there’s the inevitability of everything getting mixed up and interfering with my own potential plans, but I’ll get over that 🙂.

For now my strategy is just building with her around if possible to pique her curiosity, and getting the most out of Duplo very soon!

Looking forward to reading about your experiences.

[MAB]

Personally, I'd pack it all away if you are tight on space or have it in a home office or similar if you have somewhere she doesn't go.

At that age, she is likely to mix up your existing LEGO or possibly break parts. But more importantly, she is also likely to be very underwhelmed at gifts of one set if she gets one for a birthday or Christmas and is used to having tons of it around. With my kids, we started off small (even though I had loads stored away), mainly Classic style boxes or bricklink buys to get them used to free building rather than building a set and displaying it. Young kids don't need a huge amount to get them interested. Give them too much and they will spend ages looking for parts. Better to have a bucket or bag full that you and they can play with together.

[TeriXeri]

Something like the new 11030: Lots of Bricks is a good start, really reminds me of how there used to be brick buckets in the past, and now LEGO finally made a set with 100% just bricks again.

Lots of 2x4  and 2x2 bricks makes it the basic stepping stone from Duplo to LEGO , without introducing complex parts.

And then add a baseplate or some 16x16 plate as a base to build something on.

Edited March 6, 2023 by TeriXeri

[MAB]

36 minutes ago, TeriXeri said:

Lots of 2x4  and 2x2 bricks makes it the basic stepping stone from Duplo to LEGO , without introducing complex parts.

The other good thing about 2x2 and 2x4 bricks is that they also stack on top of DUPLO bricks, so good while the child transitions from DUPLO to LEGO.

[Rjbricks]

My stuff stays in boxes for me to play with. The kids have their own Lego that they can do with as they wish.

my youngest did see some of my Lion Knights on a base plate awaiting the arrival of some shields and asked to play with them. But I’ve seen how he plays; none of them would have any heads or hands within 10 minutes…