Too young for trains?

[Legotom]

i thought I'd start a new thread rather than hijack the other one. I was intrigued by this quote:

Is a 4 year old not a little young for trains?

What do people reckon? I think 4 is plenty old enough. I have a little toddler who has been playing with my Lego trains since he was 2 3/4. He has Duplo trains and Brio too. He's train mad. He kept pestering me ("Daddy, can we play orange train (meaning Horizon Express)), so one day I gave in.

And he's great. Occasionally delicate bits will get knocked off, but it's Lego and easy to fix. He's never broken a train on purpose. He can't quite get trains on the track, and he can't manage to clip it together. He can work points just about. I usually just make a big loop around the sofa, with two or three passing loops so he can have two or three different trains to play with. Whilst I let him use the Power functions, and he understands how to, he prefers to push the trains around. I also tend to find a pile of people jammed in the door of each carriage as he likes to play stations.

So rejoice AFOLs and let your kids play with your trains. After all, if they smash it its Lego and you can rebuild it. And that's half the fun ;)

[v6TransAM]

Uhhhh, some people forget Lego is a toy, that IS ALL IT IS.

You build stuff, you wreck stuff and you build something new, if you really like it, you rebuild it down the road.

My older boy is 5 and I started him on Lego trains when he was 3 1/2. Yeah it can suck at times and it can be hard to deal with, but it does have its good points.

As he learned to count he learned to build and follow instructions. Now I give him a Lego set and tell him to start building lol. When he was 4 he was gutting the Power Functions out of stuff and putting his own creations together with the motor, receiver and battery pack.

We built our own Emerald Night out of parts on hand, snagged some knock off track, modified a few switches to correct the geometry, built a 90 deg. crossing out of flex tracks together and all kinds of other stuff. He even changes his own batteries and battery packs out along with putting them in the charger, I gave up fighting him and had to show him the correct way because as soon as I'm not there he will do it anyhow.......

[Legotom]

My wee boy playing trains. Making the White train go reeeally fast. (Wish I could still sit on the floor like that).

Edited August 5, 2015 by Legotom

[Hobbythom]

I don't think 4 years old is to young. I recently bought my first train, the Metroliner, especially for my son, who is to be born somewhere this month. So 4 is old in my book.

[Lazarus]

I got into lego train about 7y/o now 32. and my two boys plays with my trains to and they started at about 12months they are now 4 and 6.

[JopieK]

Well not to boast, but I was 2,5 years old when I got the 7710 including some extra cars. It just depends on the particular kid. I have quite a few nephews and nieces. Some are 5 and still don't get it, others were 3 when they already made the connection between the PF remote and the train reaction. Also when kids don't stick stuff in their mouth you can be pretty sure that they can handle LEGO. I work at a nursing school (among other things) and recently attended a CPR training for kids where I learned that a soft candy (e.g. marshmallow) is often more dangerous than a hard object for kids to swallow / choke on.

@v6TransAM: so he will probably become an engineer haha (that's where I ended up anyway, you might wonder what engineers do at nursings schools now haha ;)).

[Nemo57]

My son collected his first set of Lego in 1.8 years. Trains had always been his favorite, because they are moving. And in the 10 years he has gathered himself this. And I do not know ..

[Ashi Valkoinen]

Truly said I advice all to our exhibition/club event/etc visitors to buy trains for kid around 8 or more, not the recommended minimum age six. Depending on my experiences with kids (participated running a LEGO-camp for six weeks this year, and in the last previous two years as well) most of them under 8 just like watching the train running around, while they are holding the controller, but nothing more. Well, it is nice to look at the train going around, but they were far away from the real play experience, what lego trains could offer for a kid. On the other hand, a 6, even a 4 year old kid can't take the responsibility to take good care of the train - it is a toy, yes, designed rebuildable - and it quite happened quite often, that after a crash the pin from boogie holder tile, or even from the motor broke off, or wiring got damaged after not proper use.

I advice all parents to buy first train around age 8, even better, if the little kid gives some of his/her pocket money for the train, it can make them to play with more responsibility and enjoying their train for a long while without the need of replacement parts.

[JopieK]

Ashi you are generalising too much! It just depends on the particular kid and also (at least a little) on how it was brought up.

[Legotom]

I don't think 4 years old is to young. I recently bought my first train, the Metroliner, especially for my son, who is to be born somewhere this month. So 4 is old in my book.

Metroliner. Niiiccceee. Now that's a really good being born present. For me that's the best Lego train ever. I got it for Christmas when I was eight or so, loved it so much.

[dr_spock]

As a parent, you know you own kids best when they are ready for certain things or not. You can always help them build and play if you are so inclined. My father never played trains with me. I had to learn to do everything myself.

[davidmull]

i thought I'd start a new thread rather than hijack the other one. I was intrigued by this quote:

What do people reckon? I think 4 is plenty old enough. I have a little toddler who has been playing with my Lego trains since he was 2 3/4. He has Duplo trains and Brio too. He's train mad. He kept pestering me ("Daddy, can we play orange train (meaning Horizon Express)), so one day I gave in.

And he's great. Occasionally delicate bits will get knocked off, but it's Lego and easy to fix. He's never broken a train on purpose. He can't quite get trains on the track, and he can't manage to clip it together. He can work points just about. I usually just make a big loop around the sofa, with two or three passing loops so he can have two or three different trains to play with. Whilst I let him use the Power functions, and he understands how to, he prefers to push the trains around. I also tend to find a pile of people jammed in the door of each carriage as he likes to play stations.

So rejoice AFOLs and let your kids play with your trains. After all, if they smash it its Lego and you can rebuild it. And that's half the fun ;)

That was my quote and simply I was implying to the expensive creator trains not city trains. If u want to give a 4 year old a misb emerald night worth over €300 it's up to u.

[DanFraser]

I've been experimenting with Lego with my 5 year old daughter and my 3 year old son. I am a little bit of Will Ferrell because they are mine (!). To be fair I don't think my kids are old enough to be let loose with Lego because they have tidiness issues, many things get lost. But... Both have proven they can follow 60052's instructions to build the green van and my son did the forklift and my daughter did the book for the wheelbarrow carriage. I did have to use encouragement and careful guidance so that they do it themselves. My son has some behaviour issues but Lego is a great motivator for him. Right now he knows me and him might be doing something later but he doesn't know it's probably buying 60051 or 60098.

[Legoboy22]

I got my first 4.5 volt train at 3 1/2 years old and I never swallowed anything or destroyed the train

[Heppeng]

I got my first OO/HO train set at age four and it survived. Got my first lego train at around the same time, can't quite remember if it was before or after it was a long time ago!

[Breakdown]

At around 3 years old my nephew learned how to operate my 12V train system by watching me and just going to the controls and doing it.

I would caution that there is a bad side to allowing a three year old to play with remote control lego and that's that you do want them to build stuff instead of yearning to be distracted by flashing lights and motors.

Sometimes the best way to play is to let them sit down with you and watch you (join you) building.

[AirborneAFOL]

My boy started with a Duplo train at 18 months. Been his favorite toy ever since.

[LEGO Train 12 Volts]

I've my train (set 171) when I was 6 years old but I was already in love for train because my father played Markling with me and now he play trains with my kids.

My kids love trains and they are always around me when I'm building a new locomotive ...I think that 4 years is the right age to become a trains' fan!

Edited August 7, 2015 by LEGO Train 12 Volts

[JopieK]

Fascinating children for trains is a good thing. We don't need that many "fried air" sellers, we need to have more engineers... and trains, especially from the steam era make you want to become fascinated about technology.

[Dread Pirate Rob]

Yes you are absolutely correct. Start them on Pirates first:) Am I right Dr Spock?

This little guy decided Duplo was for babies at 2, built his first Racer from instructions without help at 3 and happily shunts with PF at 4. He has a very proud Dad.

[NBV83]

I've got a 3,5 year old son, and I bought the cargo train 60052 last Christmas and he was all into it. He could not build it, but thought that it was really cool to play with together with me. We found my old Lego from when I was a child, including my old trains and he just loves it. Just today I bought the high speed train 60051 (at 35 % discount!) , and I can't wait to show it to him. :-D so no, 4 is not too young at all.

[elleana]

My two year old recently mastered the PF remote so now she can get a train to start, accelerate, slow down, stop. Lego is all she ever wants to play with these days!

[fred67]

This is one of those really loaded topics because a lot of it is ill defined. What does it mean to be old enough for LEGO trains?

To run them?

Build and take care of them?

And, of course, there's the simple fact that everyone is different (no matter what they try to teach in schools these days).

I got into LEGO trains because, while building an N-Scale layout, my toddler son wanted to play with it all the time... but all he did was crank up the speed to make the train go fast enough to fly off the track which, being on an elevated table meant it when crashing to the floor. Model trains are expensive, and I felt bad about not letting him "play" with my toys. So when we found the Railway Express (possibly the worst 9V set ever, but I didn't even know LEGO had elctric trains at all) for cheap at Sam's club, I ended up getting two sets. We could set it up on the floor, I had to build the trains, he could run them as fast as he wanted, when they derailed they didn't have far to go, and if a piece broke off here and there, you'd just put it back on.

As he grew he eventually lost interest in trains (and at this point, LEGO entirely).

He was probably 2.5 years old when we first got the LEGO trains, and he also had Thomas and other BRIO compatible trains. It was never really a problem for us... it wasn't even a choking hazard, by that age he was over that habit.

Don't know what else to say about it... is four too young? Depends on the kid and what you are envisioning - the age ranges on the boxes are probably more from the angle of building.