Lego Mum: Entry 1

Lego (other brick building systems are available) has always been one of those things I could take or leave. Eight-year-old Hugo on the other hand is obsessed with it – and when I say obsessed I mean OBSESSED!  Any place, anywhere, you will find Lego scattered; he just loves building and creating with it and of course when it is his turn to choose the music we have back-to-back Lego movie tunes.

When I was a kid we had a fixing base and a basic bucket of a few bricks and tended to build houses, or if you were really lucky got the wings of a plane to stay together for about 10 seconds to play with it.  Nowadays of course there are Lego shops to buy from and specialised Lego sets which let you build anything and everything and Lego robots and programmes on the television where they compete to build with Lego etc. – that’s all lovely – but it doesn’t tell you what you do about a child who loves Lego enough to always have pen and paper on his bedside table so that he can draw the ideas for Lego construction he dreamt up in the night, BUT HAS ABSOLUTELY NO IDEA that Lego should be put away and not left at the bottom of the stairs where his mother will put her foot on it, jump up in the air, land awkwardly on a second piece of Lego and sprain her ankle.

He is of course very sorry that I hurt myself, and very relieved that the Lego minifigure Darth Vader that I fell onto after my ankle turned has withstood the battering of my weight.  He constructed a quick hospital for it on the living room floor and the Lego figure doctors have declared that Darth Vader will be home very soon.  Which of course means that he is currently building Darth Vader a Star Wars suitable home for convalescing; all before 7 in the morning.

As I lie here on the sofa, with an icepack on my swelling ankle, he has looked up once from his construction to ask why I made such a fuss, why did I find it so painful? Now, I know I am the sensitive type, but I am presuming it is a weight thing and I am googling it for him now, because you know what HLP kids are like for wanting their facts to be accurate.  I’ve just found a great explanation about nerve endings and force through the foot while we walk and how tough Lego bricks are (apparently a brick can take 432 kilos of force before it reaches breaking point, so Darth Vader didn’t need to worry)  – I’m sharing the link here in case you ever have a Lego-related incident – http://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/2014/06/stepping-Lego-hurt-much/

Not sure whether to show him the picture of the scale model of the Titanic that some kid has just built out of 56,000 Lego bricks  http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-43813267 .  It might keep him busy for a while trying to duplicate it, but I think dad would have to go to the shops to buy some more bricks!

Yours in Pain,

Lego Mum

p.s. I’ve just looked up – hadn’t seen the Lego moon on the light fitting before – DS8 says it is the Death Star so it needed to be hung up!

p.p.s. For those who have not had a constant diet of Lego music blasting through your consciousness (you lucky people!)  Everything is Awesome is from The Lego Movie (2014).

The HLP Diaries are fictional tales of parenting children with high learning potential. If you are a Potential Plus UK member and have an anecdote you would like to share then we’d love to hear from you: email focus@potentialplusuk.org