The Lego Effect

Legos hold magical properties. Did you know that?

At least at our house they do. There is nothing else in my house (except the TV or computer -- which I use sparingly) that can hold my kids' attention (all ages) so well and for so long. Let me give you an example.

Yesterday Colby came home from morning Kindergarten at 11:00am  -- he is always hungry and a bit needy at that time. I try to drop everything and give him my attention for a few minutes when he walks in the door but that didn't happen yesterday. He was whining about wanting food and teasing his little sister mercilessly. I said, "I need to put in a batch of laundry. You can stay here and fight with each other or you can come with me downstairs." They both chose to follow me.

Our "Lego room" is right outside the laundry room so they started building things while I was rotating the next batch of laundry. They were so engrossed and involved that when the laundry was done I just went upstairs unnoticed. I decided to get a few things done, keeping an ear out for fighting or whining so that I would know when to call it quits and make their lunch. Well I did some housecleaning, got some things done on the computer and still nothing but the sounds of happy children floated up to me. Weird. I went ahead and made their lunch (PB&J's of course) and then went downstairs. They were both so "into" their Lego creating that they hardly even noticed me. When I asked them if they wanted to eat lunch they said, "Not yet." Now that is just crazy talk! Colby is always starving and never turns down food. Well I hated to break up a good thing, but the sandwiches were already made so I sent them upstairs to eat.

But I can't help but marvel at the power of the Lego. All 4 of my kids (and my hubby) can sit for hours just building stuff out of these little pieces of plastic. Maybe Eric's not too far off the mark when he suggests that we sell all our other toys in the house and just buy more Legos.

Food for thought: Another lesson learned in this scenario is that the cry of "I'm hungry" rarely has anything to do with the stomach -- it usually means "I'm bored."